What makes a good footballer? Is it his ability to dribble, ruthlessness in front of goal, eye for tactical detail, athleticism, a combination of all? Thomas Muller isn’t the answer to any of those questions, yet he will feature in every conversation about this decade’s greats.

Mathematics explains football. It lends us a perspective beyond the obvious, shows us a pathway into the minds of the game’s deepest thinkers and philosophers, and gives an avenue for analysts to quantize, engineer and optimise every little sinew. Mathematics reduces football, too. It turns a sport that has broken and built governments into a gory dance of arithmetic possibilities, labels players with numbers, and manufactures a weighing scale to judge their differing, detached skills on. Most importantly, it fails to count for emotion, the universal thread which binds any sport, its purveyors, and consumers, together.
We like watching big matches and tournaments because there is much at stake, and the resulting heightened emotional graph engulfs the fans and athletes in one hot embrace. Champion sportsmen are often judged by their performances in these high-value battles, and it’s there that any sport goes beyond mere physical and technical competence. It takes a lot more than ripped muscles and purity of technique for an Usain Bolt to get 9 gold medals in the 9 Olympic events he’s ever participated in.
The football World Cup is one such tournament. It has made heroes out of the seemingly ordinary, and ever so often, it has reinforced greatness. In this year’s edition, defending champions Germany were a minute and a half away from sinking deep into relegation zone in only their second group match. As the game drew to a close, they were gifted a free-kick just outside the left edge of the Swedish penalty-box. It would be the last kick of the ball, and a proud nation’s last throw of the dice to momentarily save themselves shame at a tournament they have always done well in. Toni Kroos, the most German of Germans, stood over the ball. His blue eyes were transfixed on the goal, and much before he began his run-up, an air of inevitability around what was to follow swept around the Fisht Stadium in Sochi. Kroos soaked the pressure up, like he always does, and took emotion out of what was a pivotal moment.