” I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup. ” – Andrea Pirlo
This world cup had so many elements repeated from the past world cups it felt at times as if the gods had decided the script by cherry picking some of the best and worst moments in past history. A singular flawed genius dragging his team through to the finals by sheer force of will like Maradona in ’86 and ’90, Italy coming into the world cup on the back of a match-fixing scandal and winning the world cup through some disciplined defence interspersed with flashes of creativity ala ’82, a titanic semi-final between the 2 giants of European football, Italy and Germany, decided in extra time like ’70, a match which devolved from a game of football into a straight up game of brutality like the Battle of Santiago in ’62, some of the world cup’s truly memorable moments had their own versions in 2006.
The 2006 World Cup was an odd one. It was the last world cup for a lot of legendary players and the first world cup for quite of a few of the current stars. Indeed you could name a XI of the players for whom this was the last world cup and it would have been a pretty mean team. This was the last world cup for players like Zidane, Viera, Makelele, Thuram, Totti, Del Piero, Nesta, Inzaghi, Ballack, Kahn, Lehmann, Figo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Riquelme, Van Der Saar, Van Nistelrooy, Nedved, Raul, Morrientes, Shevchenko etc. while players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Rooney, Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Podolski, Van Persie, Sneijder, Robben, Modric, Ribery, Xabi Alonso, Ramos, Fernando Torres, David Villa, Fabregas, etc. were enjoying their first World Cup.
The world cup kicked off with the host nations taking on Costa Rica. The fruits of the dramatic restructuring of their youth setup post EURO 2000 were finally being borne and youngsters like Lahm, Mertesacker, Podolski, Schweinsteiger formed an integral part of the team. Germany easily qualified through their group winning all 3 of their matches. England also went through as group winners despite not beating Sweden again. Argentina and Netherlands got through the so called group of death winning 2 and drawing the match between them. Italy seemed unfazed by the ongoing Calciopoli scandal as they cruised through their group with 2 wins and a draw. However their progress was marred by a 4 match suspension for Daniel De Rossi for a horrific elbow to the face of United States’ Brian McBride. This meant he would directly be eligible to play in the final, missing the last group game, the round of sixteen, quarters and the semis. France squeezed through after winning the last game of their group which Zidane missed through suspension. Spain, Portugal, Brazil all got through their groups easily and reached the knockout stages.
It was in the round of sixteen that the infamous Battle of Nuremburg took place between Netherlands and Portugal, a game unmatched in brutality. A total of 16 yellow cards and 4 red cards were handed out by the referee and Portugal somehow held their nerve to go through. Italy won their match against Australia after a rather controversial penalty earned them a victory deep in injury time. The other big game of this round involved Spain and France. Spain had played well in the group stages and advanced comfortably while France had scraped through. For all intents and purposes Spain were the favourites in the match. Apparently Zidane did not get the memo as he ran the show and topped off his performance by an exquisite finish past his club team-mate Iker Casillas to make the score 3-1.