The group stages of the World Cup are almost over, ending what is a two week gauntlet for 32 countries hoping to earn one of the 16 knockout round spots to keep their World Cup dreams alive. With the results of Thursday's games still unknown preventing a full knockout round preview (Deadlines are fun!) the best I can offer is a week's worth of talking points from what has been one of the best World Cups of all time. Upsets, drama, and plenty of controversy is to be talked about, so here are my takes on another week of World Cup 2014.
Suarez bite bad for the game, but only so much
At this point every sportswriter and their editor has commissioned an opinion piece on the antics of Uruguay striker/winger Luis Suarez and his nibble on the shoulder of an Italian defender during the late stages of Uruguay's massive 1-0 victory of Italy to advance through to the Round of 16. Most outcrying Suarez for being a disgrace to the sport, and they have fair reason to do so as this isn't the first time that Suarez has bit somebody already having served a ban in the EPL for doing similar in a match against Chelsea.
Suarez has also received a ban for making racist remarks in an EPL match and is generally considered to be quite the villain, but he is also one of the world's most special attackers and nearly lifted Liverpool to its first English First Division title since it became the EPL. That complicates things because his antics mean one of the best players in the game is facing a maximum ban of two years from FIFA should they choose to throw the book at him for what is a repeat offense that also appears to be quite obvious as replays show Suarez digging his mouth into the shoulder of his opponent.
By all means Suarez deserves some sort of suspension, and if the official gave him a straight red card in the moment of play nobody would have blinked an eye in a match where Claudio Marchisio was already sent off for a putting his studs onto the middle of the leg of a Uruguay player, but fans of the sport as well as pundits should know that suspending a player for dirty play accomplishes little besides justice for the opponents who were wronged by bad sportmanship.
The fact of the matter is all sports have cheats and all sports also have dirty players who are willing to get an edge by bending the rules or even going as far to intentionally injure an opponent. Those players should be punished for breaking the rules, but their actions to not disgrace the game or ruin the sport unless you are a casual fan or love yourself so much to truly believe that dirty play, or diving for that matter hurts the sport.
In fact the type of behaviour that Suarez showed in a must win match against Italy simply shows just how intense the World Cup is, a competition that takes place every four years where for the players involved know that each time they step onto the pitch wearing their country's colours that it may be the last time. With everything on the line, players and coaches will do whatever it takes to win. That is also what the fans want out of their players, so when the line between fair play and doing whatever it takes to win gets crossed don't act surprised. In fact, Suarez "disgrace" only proved how intense the World Cup truly is. Other than that you are just getting worked up over a silly little playground bite that only makes the player look like the disrespectful player that most already knew he was.
Germans can't handle the heat against Ghana
After dismantling Portugal, Germany looked like they were set to earn another win against Ghana when in the second half the European favorites took a 1-0 lead on a goal from golden boy Mario Gotze, but withered away down the stretch in a match where it looked like the heat severely changed the quality of the Germans play.
A much slower than usual German team misplaced passes and showed lazy defending while being challenged by an athletic Ghana attack, who took advantage of momentum following an equalizer to score on a counter attack following a sloppy turnover from Phillip Lahm that nearly caused disaster for Germany who went behind their African opponents midway through the second half.
Germany eventually levelled the score to earn a 2-2 draw, and they can still wrap up first place in Group G with either a draw or win against the United states on Thursday, but the way they looked in the sweltering heat in Brazil is a cause for concern. Exhaustion causes mental mistakes, even for a steroetypical German team that makes little errors. In a tournament where the elements are playing a factor, Germany need to prove they can handle the heat if they want to break the European curse in South America and win the World Cup.
Miroslv Klose makes history
Germany's game tying goal against Ghana also helped write the history books as 36 year old Miroslav Klose scored after being on the pitch for less than five minutes, scoring his record tying 15th World Cup goal on a back post finish to tie Brazil legend Ronaldo on the all-time list.
While Klose's age and achievements at the club level do not equal some of the names close to the World Cup top goalscorers list, his consistency in delivering in the big moments for Germany since 2002 have to be admired, and scoring in four World Cups speaks to the type of player that he is. You don't need to be a world class athlete or have amazing dribbling skills to be a legendary striker, and Klose's impending future as the all-time leading scorer at the World Cup is proof that awareness as well as a willingness to go to where the goals are is equally as important as making highlight reel goals happen. With his head and his feet combined with awareness in the box, Klose has taught a generation that if you go to the right places on the pitch it doesn't matter how fast or how powerful you are. A lesson that more than a few of the game's players can take notes from.
Knockout rounds should put an end to the high scoring World Cup
World Cup 2014 has been made famous mostly because of the crazy amount of goals that have been scored in group stage matches as with attacking skill at an all-time high, countries have found the back of the net at an unseen rate in the World Cup with average goals per game still well above three per game heading into the knockout rounds.
Open play excites casual fans and makes matches more entertaining, but with the Round of 16 starting on Friday fans should expect that goal rate to be cut down drastically when it is officially a win or go home scenario from here on out.
It is hard to explain why offense suffers when the matches have higher stakes, and some of it has to do with the lifeline that is extra time and penalty shootouts helping managers make defensive gameplans lead to glory. However most of it is simply players doing whatever it takes not to lose, which means keeping the ball out of their box and their net as much as possible.
Tackling is more intense, risky attacks from defenders happen less which leads to less counterattacks and simply put teams just want to win too much to allow for easy goals to be scored. That doesn't mean the game is boring, in fact the knockout rounds are always better because of that will to win.
So when you are sitting through a Nil-Nil normal time draw during the knockout rounds, don't moan about how bored you are. Sit back and enjoy some good defensive work and hope for the moment of brilliance, it should come eventually. When that moment of glory comes, it is always worth the wait.
