So after 30 days, 30 sad goodbyes, 63 matches and a million story lines, this is it – the game that will bring four years of joy and an eternal place in history.

The World Cup final.

More than one billion people will be tuning in around the globe to see football’s ultimate prize battled for on the field of Soccer City. And it will all be decided by a small group of men from the Netherlands and Spain who know that their greatest moment and a permanent spot in folklore await them. Here’s the deal of the Live Screening we are hosting in Mumbai.

There is no more cherished feat in football than this. The performances of one night can shape the legacy of the combatants and the mood of two nations. Here is what you should be watching out for: Read the rest of this entry »

Spain have booked their place in the World Cup final with a classy 1-0 win against Germany, guaranteeing a new team will win the World Cup. The Dutch, despite making it to two finals in a row(1974, 1978), have never won the competition and Spain … well it was the first time they’d reached the semis.

Carles Puyol’s thumping second-half header was enough to send Spain into their first World Cup final, and to ensure there will be a new name on the trophy when they dace Netherlands on Sunday. The European Champions dominated possession and barely gave the Germans a chance, although a slow, bobbly pitch at the Moses Mabhida Stadium took some sting out of both teams’ attacks. Germany will rue the moment Sergio Ramos appeared to catch Mesut Ozil as the playmaker ran through on goal in first-half stoppage time. Any contact took place just outside the box but a harsher referee than Viktor Kassai might have shown a red card. Thereafter it was all Spain, who passed the ball relentlessly. David Villa just failed to make contact with a low cross in front of goal in a move similar to Paul Gascoigne’s against Germany at Euro ‘96. It took Puyol to break the deadlock on 73 minutes, converting emphatically from a Xavi corner. Spain should have finished it off late on when they raced through two-on-one, but Pedro inexplicably failed to pass to an unmarked Fernando Torres. It was another triumph for Paul the Octopus, who has correctly predicted the result of all six Germany matches. Spain have won all three games in the knockout rounds 1-0.

Uruguay, Italy, West Germany, Brazil, England, Argentina, France… on Sunday an eighth team will win the World Cup. Will it be twice beaten finalists Netherlands, widely acknowledged as the best football nation never to have won the tournament? Or will it be Spain, who have never finished better than fourth before, but who are European champions and favourites?

The World Cup has been a remarkably closed shop, with only the occasional win for the hosts spicing things up. If you discount tournaments won by the hosts, the list of winners looks like this: Read the rest of this entry »

OK! I’m no football pundit, but here are five changes I would make to improve the World Cup. Three of them are alterations to the laws of the game, two are World Cup-specific.

Challenge system

Following Frank Lampard’s non-goal against Germany, FIFA will look into goal-line technology again, and this time it has every chance of being introduced.

Good, but it will only cover a small percentage of the errors made by officials. Instead, I would introduce a challenge system similar to that used in the NFL.

Each coach has two challenges, which he can use to review any call during the game. A goal, an offside, a handball, it doesn’t matter - everything is reviewable.

The game is stopped for a maximum of 60 seconds while the officials look at replays. If the challenge is right, the call is reversed. If not, it stands.

Crucially, the challenge is used up whether you are right or not, meaning coaches would have to save them up for really important decisions and a maximum of four minutes would be added to game time.

If you are out of challenges and you suffer a major injustice, tough - managing them becomes a major part of the coach’s job. If you suffer three huge injustices in one match… well, you’re extremely unlucky.

It satisfies FIFA’s desire to make officials’ human error part of the game, and it satisfies everyone else’ desire to see the right decisions made.

Penalty goals

The demonisation of Luis Suarez after his now infamous handball against Ghana was unfair, but it did show the laws need a tweak.

Uruguay’s Suarez saved a goal-bound shot with his hands in the dying moments of extra-time - had he not acted, Ghana would be in the semi-finals.

Referee Olegario Benquerenca correctly awarded a penalty and sent off Suarez. But Asamoah Gyan missed the spot-kick and Uruguay won the shoot-out.

Comparisons between Suarez and Thierry Henry are wide of the mark (Suarez’s act was seen and punished, Henry’s handball against Ireland was deception that went unseen by the officials), but there is no doubt Uruguay profited from a deliberate act of foul play.

So why not take a leaf out of rugby’s book? In Rugby - “The egg-chasers have a penalty try which can be awarded when foul play prevents a certain try, or when a team persistently infringes when defending their own try line.”

It would be simple in football - if a player handles to stop a goal-bound shot, the goal is awarded directly. Any other fouls inside the box remain straightforward penalties.

Stoppage time

More thieving from rugby here to give players and spectators a clearer idea of how much  time remains.

Under the current, vague, system, the fourth official holds up the amount of added time to the nearest minute, but ultimately the referee is in charge of ending the game. And of course the fourth official’s board cannot account for stoppages within stoppage time.

In rugby, however, the referee can stop the game clock every time play is halted for any length of time. That way, time is up when the clock hits 80 minutes. Simple.

How would it work in football? Just the same. If there is an injury, a substitution or a goal, the referee stops the clock, so time is added on within the usual 90 minutes. There is not another major sport in which nobody knows exactly when the match is going to end. Time for football to catch up.

The ball

There may or may not be something in the moaning every time a ball is released for the World Cup, but it seems bizarre that teams go into the tournament using a ball that they are unfamiliar with.

Whatever the merits of the Jabulani, it seems ridiculous that it was completely new to many countries. And it is an easy fix.

Certain sponsors may not like it, but it should be compulsory for the domestic leagues of all 32 qualifiers to use the new ball for six months before the World Cup.

Some sensible countries like Germany (surprise, surprise) already do it, but everybody should.

That way, even if they are playing the World Cup with a beach ball, every team has had plenty of time to get used to it.

More South Americans

Here are the number of teams from each continent that made it through the group stage of this World Cup:

Europe 6/13
South America 5/5
Africa 1/6
Asia 2/4
North and Central America 2/3
Oceania 0/1

If we ignore South Africa who qualified automatically as hosts, how is it possible that Africa gets the same allocation of teams as South America?

Next time they will get hosts Brazil plus five, which is a help, but the continent still seems criminally under-represented when all of their teams reached the knockout rounds and four got to the quarter-finals.

I suppose it comes down to the number of countries. South America only has 10 teams, while Africa has 53.

But you can be quite sure Ecuador and Colombia would have been competitive, while of the African non-qualifiers only Egypt could say that with any conviction.

Asia seems under-represented following Australia’s defection from Oceania, although it is worth remembering Bahrain lost a play-off to New Zealand. But for all the talk of Africa as the emerging force in football, its population (one billion) is dwarfed by that of Asia (four billion).

Europe’s 13-team allocation looks shaky after more than half went home after the group stage.

UEFA could offer a defence that its teams’ failure was a freak, and that the quality of the sides that failed to qualify (Russia, Ukraine, Ireland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Croatia, Turkey) is higher in Europe than any other continent.

Here’s how I would allocate teams:

Hosts: 1
Europe: 12
South America: 6
Asia: 5
Africa: 4
North/Central America: 3/4
Oceania: 0/1

Winner of Oceania zone plays off against four-placed North/Central America team.

What a night of football! Finally a day that you can say you watched World Cup football and loved it to the Tee.

The favourites are out after an inexplicable second-half meltdown against an appreciative Dutch side. On a sub-standard Port Elizabeth pitch, Dunga’s Brazilian side were in control at half-time, albeit without playing their best stuff. Robinho had captialised on a parting Dutch back four, latching on to Felipe Melo’s through ball and slotting a low shot past Maarten Stekelenburg from just outside the area. But it all went horribly wrong early in the second period. Michel Bastos was lucky not to see a second yellow card for a late challenge on Arjen Robben, but from the free-kick Holland were level; Brazil goalkeeper Julio Cesar missed Wesley Sneijder’s free-kick and Melo glanced the ball into his own net. Sneijder was the man again on 68 minutes, as one of the smallest men on the pitch somehow headed in a corner from close range. Melo then compounded his error by getting sent off for a stamp on Robben, and Brazil’s challenge was over. Dunga has confirmed he is leaving his job.

Africa cruelly missed out on its first World Cup semi-finalist as Ghana lost one of the most astonishing games the competition has ever seen. Sulley Muntari’s long-range strike in the first half was cancelled out after the break by a spectacular, dipping Diego Forlan free-kick. But the real drama came right at the end of extra-time, when Uruguay striker Luis Suarez used his arms to save a goalbound Dominic Adiyiah header. Referee Olegario Benquerenca awarded a penalty and sent off Suarez. Asamoah Gyan, with two penalties to his name already in the tournament, had the chance to win it with the last kick of the game… and hit the bar. It went straight to penalties, and astonishingly Gyan took Ghana’s first kick, planting it nervelessly into the top-right corner. But misses by John Mensah and Adiyiah gave Sebastian Abreu an opportunity to win it, and he coolly chipped the ball down the middle to break a continent’s heart. Just to rub it in, Suarez was carried shoulder-high by the Uruguay team.