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Withdrawal symptoms as four-yearwait starts

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Withdrawal symptoms as four-yearwait starts

Many of you, like me, may suffer from withdrawal symptoms after the title clash that will bring the curtain down on 32-day of entertaining and nail biting Fifa World Cup football championship.

Published: Mon 14 Jul 2014, 2:07 PM

Updated: Fri 3 Apr 2015, 10:34 PM

  • By
  • Sunil K. Vaidya (OFF THE BENCH)

Neymar weaved his magic before he was injured. — Reuters

The 2014 edition was one of the best Finals in the recent years. It had all the ingredients to satiate football aficionados’ insatiable appetite.

There was sublime football, goals galore, dark horses galloping at the cost of hot favourites, joyous celebrations as well as agony of defeat and add to that controversies on and off the field.

In our parts of the world, we burnt midnight oil to watch Messi, Robben, Ronaldo and Neymar weave their magic on Brazilian turf. We were also fortunate to see Neuer, Romero, Navas and Ochoa entertain us with their acrobatic saves.

We jumped for joy with Costa Rican’s fairy tale run in the tournament in which they toppled three past World Cup winners. On the other hand most fans sympathised with the weeping home team crowds when Brazil conceded ten goals in their last two matches of the quadrennial championship.

If record 170 goals (before the final match) provided fans loads to cheer for, they also had good enough reason to shed tears with Neymar, who went out of the tournament crying in pain after being ‘kneed’ in the back that broke his third vertebrae. His injury also broke Brazil’s back and they collapsed like a house of cards in the remaining two matches.

The Dutch provided moments of joy by slamming five goals past defending champions Spain while Brazil’s 7-1 defeat to Germany was one of the most agonising moment for a follower of any team. So much so that even the German team was restrained in celebration so as not to hurt the ‘good hosts’.

And, Uruguay’s Luis Suarez provided one of the most controversial moments of the tournament with a bite on Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder.

The tournament also saw some of the European giants making an early exit. It was death-knell for the defending champions Spain’s famous ‘tiki-taka’. The Spaniards lost two of their three league matches for an early flight home. Italy and England too joined them for an early return to Europe.

Throughout these ups and downs for the past one month, the fans have lived and breathed football, soaking in all that the 736 footballers had to dish out.

Every move of their favourite stars or teams was relentlessly followed. There were people, who had no real allegiance as their home country had failed to qualify but they followed every match, news and gossip of this biggest sporting show on earth.

From tonight there won’t be a reason to stay up late and chew on nails as television sets would fall silent and it would be hard to cope without the World Cup matches beamed from Brazil.

The football fans may continue to replay the World Cup moments by watching the best goals, the best tackles and of course ‘the bite’ on YouTube and other social media platforms but like every good thing comes to an end, the World Cup also has to end.

The four-year wait starts from today.



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