A break. What a concept. The World Cup gods had other ideas though.
On Monday night, after Brazil had scorched and swayed their way into the quarter-finals with 26 minutes of effervescent attacking football at Stadium 974, most of the world had purred. The pundits hadn’t. Too much fancy footwork, railed Souness, Keane and Hamann. Midfield diggers all, they apparently wanted more dirty, less dancing. How could that be the takeaway, we wondered? How could you be so joyless as to let yourself be distracted by the celebrations and not the cause of them?
Then we got distracted ourselves and left a MacBook charger in a plug socket in the tented media centre next to the arena. It was Tuesday morning before we’d realised and the utter absurdity of this tournament came roaring back into view. Stadium 974 was “no longer operational” we were told as FIFA’s Help Desk was all desk and no help. Our noble adaptor that has powered so much tortured poetry and visits to Thesaurus.com to find any other word than Magical to go before Lionel and Messi will be right there with the 974 shipping containers and the rest of the debris as the stadium is disassembled. A grand total of 13 matches in its entire existence and just seven at this World Cup will be its lot.
