Lionel Messi faces destiny but German pragmatism may defy sentimentality
It is called Brasil decime que se siente - Brazil, tell me how it feels - and the supporters who made it up, and can now be found in that cavalcade of beaten-up vans and sleepers along Copacabana, will tell you they came up with the lyrics specifically for this tournament. Brazil, tell me how it feels/To have your daddy [Argentina] in your home/ I swear that however many years pass/We will never forget/That Diego [Maradona] out-skilled you/That Cani [Claudio Caniggia] surprised you/You've been crying from Italy until today/You are going to see[Lionel] Messi/The World Cup will be ours/Maradona is greater than Pelé That reference to Italy goes back to the 1990 World Cup, the last time Argentina reached the final and had the chance to see their name engraved into the malachite base of the 18-carat lump of gold - 36.8 centimetres high, 6.1 kilograms - that will draw our gaze in the Maracanã lights tonight. Caniggia had scored the winning goal, from a Maradona pass, in a last-16 tie against Brazil that finished with Branco, one of the defeated players, claiming Argentina's back-room staff had put tranquillisers in his drink. Maradona, years later, confessed to the "holy water" scandal and Branco threatened to take it to the courts. Even ignoring all the other sporting enmity, it is not difficult to understand why some Brazilians have chosen to sell their tickets rather than risk putting themselves through an ordeal of blue and white ticker-tape. Or why A Tarde newspaper led with a front-page headline of O Pesadelo Continua(The Nightmare Continues) after Argentina had reached the final. Especially when the Argentinian fans will also be holding up seven fingers and chanting siete in honour of the most wild and eccentric result of this tournament, Kazinform quotes the Guardian. Germany, however, may just remind Argentina which nation invented schadenfreude. A victory parade has already been provisionally arranged for Berlin and Joachim Löw's team have played with enough distinction to merit their position as marginal favourites. They have to be after that night last Tuesday when Brazil were systematically dismantled and Wolfgang Niersbach, the president of the German football federation, talked of seeing "football from another galaxy". They have the greater momentum. They should be the fresher side and, more than anything, offer the clear sense that this is their time. "We're in top shape," Bastian Schweinsteiger said. They should also be popular winners bearing in mind what it shows can happen when a nation applies joined-up thinking to forward planning. "We have no fear whatsoever," Löw added. A study by Cambridge University Press, analysing millions of words from various media sources, has just come up with the top three adjectives that have been used to describe the 32 teams in this World Cup. Germany's are "powerful", "focused' and "committed" (Argentina: "confident", "flair" and "unconvincing"). Yet the pot of superlatives almost ran dry when Júlio César was beaten seven times at Estádio Mineirão and the crowd in Belo Horizonte ended up doing olés to every German touch. Niersbach picked three words of his own. "Historic, sensational, a fairytale - and they are all too weak to do it justice." Germany still have to devise a way to negate Messi's threat but Löw quickly made it clear that he was not going to be as fixated on this as Holland were in the semi-final. "This team is not only about Messi," he pointed out. "If you believed it was, you would be making a mistake." And, besides, this is not Messi playing at the point of maximum expression. Not on recent evidence, anyway. That might sound a little harsh when there did not seem too much wrong with the Barcelona player in the group games, when he was busily setting about making traffic cones of defenders and showing that uncommon ability to find his way to the opposition goal. Full story