The greatest tales mankind tells itself are those of immortality – of gods and heroes who achieved something so significant, it prevailed till long after its first witnesses had been reduced to dust. The modern world has increasingly little space for the creation of new myths, but one source of a transcendental tale of achievement is sports.
The World Cup of 2014 was a tale of three myths – a death, a redemption and a false dawn.
The Death
From its origins as a cry of joy, the phrase jogo bonito (the beautiful game) has become the copyrighted, corporate brand identity of the Brazilian national team and how it plays the game. The fact that they won the World Cup more than anyone else not only strengthened their own myth, but also that of the tournament itself. Those who play beautifully win the most.
The origins of this myth lie in 1950 – the last time Brazil had hosted the tournament.
Despite being the overwhelming favourites, Brazil lost to Uruguay in the de facto final. The trauma of the nation was compared to tragedies like Hiroshima, but the team returned with vengeance. Playing exhilarating and exciting football, they won the World Cup in 1958 and 1962, and their third win in 1970 justifiably cemented their myth as the team which played ‘the beautiful game’.
They won twice more in 1994 and 2002, and so the myth decreed that in 2014, the Maracanazo – the name given to the 1950 debacle – would be avenged.
After a lucky, unconvincing start, catastrophe struck for Brazil in the quarter-final against Colombia. Despite the win, their captain Thiago Silva was suspended, and their superstar, Neymar was out injured for the whole tournament.
It was due to Neymar, the precocious megastar of the Brazilian side, that the hysteria surrounding the hosts made sense. Brazil’s reaction to his injury – both as a team and a nation – was to cling on to him desperately as the last tangible embodiment of jogo bonito.
His shirt became a sacrament his side clutched onto as they went into the match against Germany. Rather than playing to their limited strengths, they started in a mad rush, drunk on the notion that if they believed in Neymar (and through him, the myth of Brazil) strongly enough, nothing was impossible. In the end, 7-1 was as close to impossible as any of us could have imagined.
And ultimately, Neymar’s shirt was merely a fig leaf the naked emperor was hiding behind. The shirt tried to cover the fact that it had been decades (probably since 1990) since Brazil had ditched the samba football in favour of a more robust, practical approached allied with some flair. The shirt was used to try and hide that the Brazilian state had binged on resources to create a tournament its populace resented. The shirt was used to hide the fact that this celebration of football was built on the back of mass riots, endemic corruption and moral bankruptcy.
Their myth had been exhausted of all its mystique, and in this tournament, the story did come full circle. Jogo Bonito™ had finally come to an end.
The Redemption
Eighteen years.
That’s the longest Germany has ever waited between major tournament wins. In the world of football, eighteen years is a very small gap to have for winning major trophies. Most teams barely have one or two cups to celebrate for every 50 years, but not the Germans. Gary Lineker had famously once said that “football was a game of 90 minutes and in the end the Germans won.”
And that was the German myth – they always knew how to win.
Yet within Germany, this World Cup was greeted with a fever-pitch of anxiety. Where the rest of the world saw a hugely exciting, talented side which had reached consecutive World Cup semi-finals, the people of Germany saw chokers.
In 2000, after a run in major tournaments that only the Germans would have found disappointing, the country radically revamped its entire infrastructure. In 2006, the changes began to bear fruit. Led by the proactive Jurgen Klinsmann, Germany was reinvented as a dazzling, sexy side for the World Cup they hosted. Their run to the semi-final that year was celebrated with great joy as the young team was seen to have overachieved.
In 2010, they were even more exciting, eviscerating England and Argentina before running into Spain in the semi-finals. In between, they also lost a Euro final and semifinal, and so the terror began to rise.
Germans wondered if they had forsaken their myth – that perhaps in the search for playing in an exciting way, for playing in a jogo bonito style, they had lost the German virtues of efficiency and ruthlessness in pursuit of victory. They fretted as their wonderful and talented side kept losing at the final hurdle. Had this emphasis on style killed it?
The current World Champions certainly didn’t start in top gear, but began to find their stride in the knockouts. Finally, it all came together in perhaps the most shocking score the world has ever seen. The night Brazil’s myth was killed, Germany’s came one step closer to becoming true.
The final offered a scorecard that looked very German – a late goal for a 1-0 win. But a video of that goal would show why that technical revamp mattered. Gotze’s finish was not that of a poacher’s, but rather a phenomenally difficult move that only a highly technical player could pull off.
Germany douses Argentina's fire to lift trophy
Germany’s myth was renewed not by the style of their win, but the fact of it. Germany’s myth demands that it keep winning. And what Brazil 2014 showed was that the desire to create a new technical style was not without substance, but rather the surest way to achieving something substantive.
Because in the end, the Germans always win.
The False Dawn
And so the debate rages on, the story refuses to come to an end. If you weren’t sure of the score, here it is: as of now, Diego is still above Leo.
There is no single player who is a greater source of mythology than Diego Maradona. The myth of Maradona is the myth of Argentina – it is a myth as grand as the one of the Germans’ and the Brazilians’.
His myth was created in two of the four World Cups he played in. In 1986, he was the closest thing the tournament has seen to a divine presence, and Diego dragged his team to the summit – the basic template for the modern mythical hero. Yet, in more subtle ways, Italia 90 truly amplified his legend.
Provocative throughout the tournament, Maradona almost started a civil war after he beseeched his devoted Napoli fans to desert their nation for him. The sheer power of his personality took a dirty, dogged side to within minutes of a successful title defence. This was a leader of men – this was the myth of Maradona.
But somehow, Argentines have never known what to make of Lionel Messi.The world’s greatest player was famously unloved in his home country, accused of having moved away young and never performing for in national colours.
Messi’s cause wasn’t helped by his World Cup run. In 2006, the fresh-faced teenager was left on the bench as the most attractive Argentina side in the modern era lost to the hosts Germany. Like Brazil in 2014, Argentina responded by losing their minds. They entrusted a star-studded side to a myth with no managerial experience, let alone success. Diego’s 2010 side never clicked, Messi never scored, and just like Brazil this time, they were humiliated by Germany.
Messi will be haunted by missed opportunity
Messi arrived at 2014 with more pressure than any player, than any team. The entire planet wanted to see if it would witness the making of a modern myth. Despite a host of talented players, Argentina were woeful and it was left to Messi to drag them through.
When the knock outs began though, the world began to claim Messi was ‘disappearing’.
What they didn’t realise was that he was reinventing himself to become a completely different player from his Barcelona avatar – one who was increasingly Argentine. He dropped deeper, choked the tempo, and played the gorgeous through-balls that his compatriots loved. Argentina improved as a team, but the world wanted goals, not subtlety.
They couldn’t see Messi, so they decided he hadn’t shown up.
Perhaps statistics might show what the eyes couldn’t see. Using mathematical data rather than gut reactions, Whoscored.com is a website that gives players rankings out of 10 in each game. During the knockout stages, Messi’s total of 32 points was only bettered by one German player – Toni Kroos with 32.1. Other than the demolition of Brazil, no one German player was consistent all the way to the end. But when one failed, another raised his game.
In contrast, Messi had to keep putting in the 8-out-of-10 shifts and then be pilloried for not making it a 10. Ultimately the margins were so thin – during one moment in the final, he had destiny at his own feet when he only had Neur to beat.
But he missed.
And because he missed, the myth of Messi suffered from another false dawn. Because despite everything else, the win makes the myth, and without it, the tale is left incomplete.
Some say that he has forever missed his chance, that the stars were aligned, but Messi wasn’t there. An optimist like me might argue that Messi, after three World Cups, has finally found his identity in the Argentine side – he has found a role in the team that is distinct from his club, and he is finally, universally, loved by his compatriots. In other words, the myth of Messi is yet be made.
For now, Lionel Messi remains unfulfilled.