A Final-and-Forget Mission

Greetings gentle readers.
In just a few minutes, I'll eat some tasty braai chicken and pork and shortly thereafter trot down the street past the enormous moving truck that's blocking the lane and down to the pub to watch my final — Germany v. Uruguay.
Not that Uruguay are worthy finalists.  Far from it.  They got to the Semi-Finals by drawing France, then beating South Africa (86th in the FIFA World Rankings), Mexico (15th), South Korea (52nd), and Ghana (37th).  Wow.  Awesome way to conquer the titans of the sport en route to the semi finals, where the first top-ten team they met promptly snuffed them out.
On the other hand, the Dutch have only managed to beat one top-ten team themselves in Brazil, and they had to yawn their way past over-rated Cameroon (a generous 11th), Denmark (26th), Japan (43rd), and Slovakia (34th) to get to Brazil.  Commendable patience in dealing magnanimously with the weaklings of the tournament.  Terribly Dutch.
No, Uruguay are not great opposition for a German team that disposed of the poorly-prepared English and the arrogant Messi-sideshow that was Argentina. (Ninth and eighth-ranked in the world at the time of the draw respectively, BTW...)  No, the reason that I want to see Paul the Psychic Cephalopod and all of his various magic sea-monster pals vindicated in their opinion that Deutschland will triumph over Uruguay is that Uruguay have made themselves the most hated team since Maradona's Argentina in 1986.
Both teams used handballs.  Both teams claimed that the infringements were "Hands of God." Unfortunately, the difference between the two was that Maradona cheated to beat the English, decent contenders of the day, and he consequently scored a fantastic solo effort later in the game that justified his reputation as the most skilled player of his generation.  Luis Suarez managed to irritate a tremendous amount of Africans by handballing because:

1. They eliminated the last African team in the final.
2. They eliminated the team with the squad with the youngest average age (24.1).
3. They had been taken to the brink of losing by a team that might generously have been considered the third-best of the African contenders to start the tournament.  A goal would have supported Africa's claim to be the next footballing hotbed.
4. Suarez is a bit of a moaning minnie about offsides and other infringements the other 99% of the time.
5. They blitzed Bafana Bafana 3-0 back in the group phase, effectively torpedoing them out of the next round — the first host nation in history to not progress to the second phase.
6. At least the Brazilians are South Americans who have the decency to play with black players, dammit.
7. Gyan's failure to score the resulting penalty destroyed any belief that Ghana deserved to be in the next round anyway.

Bottom line:  Everyone here hates Uruguay.  They are Africa-killers, cheaters, divers, whingers, and one-dimensionally dependent on their two strikers to shoot the ball.  That means that everyone is on my side.  Germany, the second-youngest squad in the tournament, now has a chance to prove that the balance of world footballing power is changing.

Here's the danger:  if Spain win tomorrow, but do not score four goals or more, they will be the lowest scoring winners of the World Cup in history.  I don't care how much Johan Cruyff lauds them as fantastic ambassadors of the world's game - tell Americans that Spain can win a World Cup by scoring fewer than two goals per game on average  (right now, they're on seven goals in five games), and they will say the usual "Yeah, that game is boring.  They all end 1-0."

Spain's last three games?

• Spain 1 - 0 Portugal
• Spain 1 - 0 Paraguay
• Spain 1 - 0 Germany

They might be entertaining games to the cognoscenti, but goals change games, goals win games, and most importantly, goals put bums on seats, and advertisers on HD satellite channels.

So bully for Spain if they pull off another 1-0 win.  Ruud Krol will babble endlessly about ball-possession, assurance in the midfield, etc.  Give me the freewheeling Germans any day of the week.  Like today.  I'm done dinner and off down the pub.  Also flying out tomorrow, so my next bit should be from North America.  Cheers, and thanks for paying attention.

—mARKUS