my thoughts about the football world cup

Now that the real life one month long drama has ended, I thought I might just as well sum up my impressions of the same.

To start with, I must say that I am not a football expert, neither an avid football watcher nor a hardcore enthusiast. Even after watching the tournament all month long, I cannot claim to be any one of those. My previous experiences with the game, be it watching or playing, could be best described as 'occasional'. I had intermitently watched the 98 and 02 editions of the Cup and never had any inclination to keep myself abreast of club football. I am not sure what made me take keen interest this time around, but possible reasons could be the lack of good cricketing action and the urge to remain informed about the most talked about sport in the world.

I would probably rant about two observations. Observations on the field and off the field.

Quality?
Having said about my limited knowledge of the game, I can still say that the quality of football at this world cup has been far from desirable. When we talk about football, we talk about goals and about how flamboyant and free flowing was that striker. But instead of the Ronaldos, people talked about the Zidanes, the Cannavaros and the Buffons, and all that the top goal scorer of the tournament, Klose, could manage is a meagre tally of five goals, the lowest since 1962(source:FIFA 2006 site). All that mattered was how good a midfield or how strong a defence a team had. There was hardly any good show of footballing skills beyond the half line.All this is fine, but to keep a viewer like me interested there have to be goals and goals that are breathtaking to say the least. I longed to see the Latin American artistry and arrogance.
Nevertheless, it did keep me glued to the TV set, most of the time beyond midnight, and the only reason I can attribute for that is the unpredictability of it all. Who had predicted that the Italians would take home the final honours? I bet no one, not even the Italians.In my opinion, Italy wasn't the best team consistently. Every team had its moments and the one which kept its nerves surged ahead(how we all saw zidane lose his cool during the final).

Indian Women and Football
We have all heard stories and jokes about how women hate sports, particularly when their husbabnds/boyfriends tend to neglect them as the result of some "happening" sporting action going on somewhere in the world. I pretty much had the same impression until recently when the conversations with my fellow female friends started with the 'F' word i.e 'Football'. As they began discussing the tackling skills of the Italians and the dribbling skills on the Brazilians at length, I wondered if I had something to contribute to the discussions. Astonished by their knowledge and interest, and ashamed by mine, I thought it was high time I start watching the game seriously. :D. Women did watch football but I always thought it was just an eye-candy for them than anything else. Never knew that they actually had good enough knowledge about the game. Now I know how to strike of conversations with females, an activity which is as tough for me as is using the cricket bat for Ashish Nehra.

To conclude, I must say it was a good worldcup, less of brilliance and full of shockvalue. The final was an icing on the cake, a cake which wasn't as sweet as expected.