Ever since the “Un’estate italiana†World Cup of 1990, this editor has been perhaps abusing his rank to analyze the tournament from a geopolitical perspective on the following Sunday and this year is no exception.
Back then in 1990 Argentina lost the final 1-0 to Germany and came away as self-styled “moral champions†— last Sunday saw the same result at the same level to the same rival but this year’s analysis would like to argue that they were not so much the moral as the logical champions (even if it earned the high ground more than then from its courageous re-invention as a genuine team from the “Fantastic Fourâ€).
Hindsight is always easy but I can actually quote my final lines from four years ago to prove that I saw Argentina going all the way: “But my own hunch for 2014 is Argentina, if only because Messi starts the tournament at 26 — the ideal age for a soccer player and the same age as Maradona when he won Argentina’s World Cup in Mexico 1986 (unless, of course, Messi & Co continue to be mismanaged by Maradona or unless soccer is banned because it interferes with vuvuzela concerts).â€
That magic 1986 combination of the world’s best player on Latin American turf had never been repeated until now — hence the unique chance for a cup which was Argentina’s to lose on the basis of strict World Cup logic. Because in the eight decades until South Africa, forecasting the continent (as opposed to the nationality) of the winner had never been rocket science. Every single World Cup in the Americas was won by a team from that hemisphere while Europe was almost as effective in the Old World (just dropping Sweden 1958 to Peles’s Brazil) — Asia’s only World Cup in 2002 went to Brazil. So the first 18 World Cups all obeyed the formula: the winner will always come from the same continent and when in doubt, Brazil.
