World Cup: Italy-Germany

Today's World Cup futebol game was spectacular. It epitomized everything that I hoped for in a World Cup game.

The crowd gathered in my local watering hole were (mostly) supporting Italy (yes, even the Germans!), but everyone agreed that Germany would beat Italy because they enjoyed the home-crowd advantage. But like those pleasant surprises that are often only brought to light after plenty of drunken speculation combined with wishful thinking, our confident predictions were not to be: Italy had other plans.

After an exciting but scoreless game, Italy managed to kick a goal near the end of the second overtime .. a beautiful, horizontally arcing kick that slipped past the goalie and sailed inside the goal post. That moment was beautiful.

Suspended.

Airborne.

That moment is frozen even as pandemonium broke loose, as a riot of movement occurred, and then, within seconds after that goal, the Italians stole the ball from the Germans and scored. Again. And then the game was over.

Everyone watching the game seemed to burst into tears at the same time but for different reasons: the Italians were overjoyed, the Germans, heartbroken. Assembled on the street outside my watering hole, the crowd broke into wild delirious shrieks of joy, and much hugging occurred. Busses stopped. Taxis paused. People walking down the street stepped in to our shadowy bar under the clouds to share the moment.

I had the great pleasure to watch today's game with a wonderful mixture of overseas visitors, resident aliens and native born Americans. It doesn't get any better than this, does it?

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Image source.

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