Hasn’t the Confederations Cup been great?

Tahiti

Jumping on the bandwagon a bit by here, but just like many other viewers of the Confederations Cup, my heart melted for the Tahiti national team and their efforts to go toe-to-toe with some of world football’s elite. I’m sure the Tahitians will take no offence at being dubbed international minnows, but unlike most teams that lurk in the dark nether regions of the FIFA rankings, Tahiti haven’t parked the proverbial bus and put 11 men behind the ball. In fact, they’ve attacked teams with the marauding Steevy Chong Hue being particularly impressive.

Some pundits had the audacity to suggest before the tournament that a nation that lacked such footballing prowess should be refused entry to one of FIFA’s Confederations Cup, yet Tahiti ‘qualfiied’ for the tournament no differently to anybody else – by winning their respective FIFA confederate championship, in this case the Oceania Cup. I can’t remember there being such complaints when New Zealand entered the 2009 edition of the tournament in South Africa, nor would I have imagined that there would be too many protests if they had played in this 2013 tournament as well.

Tahiti embodied the true spirit of football throughout and best of all, it looked like they were enjoying themselves as much as the spectators in the stadium and those in front of their TVs were enjoying watching them play.

The interesting conundrum of Spain

How people can find watching Spain play boring is beyond me. They are the greatest national team of my lifetime so far and I struggle to believe that I will ever witness a better one. Although many pundits and fans alike keep predicting that the end is nigh for Spain’s worldwide domination, they continued to show very little sign of easing off – that was until the 30th June 2013, the night of the Confederations Cup final. Perhaps a sign of some small chinks in the La Roja armour.

Big Phil and Brazil executed their gameplan against the Spaniards to perfection. Time will tell whether more teams now follow Brazil’s blueprint for ‘how to beat Spain’or whether any other nations have the sufficient quality to pull off such a demanding strategy. The 2013 Confederations Cup will definitely have a lot of other teams now licking their lips at the notion that Spain are actually mortal and there’s sure to be a hell of a lot more teams who now fancy their chances of winning the ultimate prize next summer.

However, football fans’ memories are short. Spain are still the ultimate footballing force in my eyes, even if they were usurped in one game to an excellent Brazil team playing with a rapturous home crowd behind them. Even in this tournament they have been at their stunning at times and for me their opening game was one of the highlight displays of the tournament.

Spain’s tour-de-performance had to be the masterclass put on in their 2-1 win victory over a talented Uruguay team, who were chasing shadows for the majority of the 90 minutes. Admittedly, their other performances in the competition never quite reach the high standards of that win over Uruguay.

Many may dub their football ‘boring’ and ‘pragmatic’, but for my own taste their style of football is perfect for my footballing palate (but maybe that’s just the ‘cultured’ Swansea City fan in me). Their pragmatism is the sexiest type of pragmatism there can ever be.

They are still the best national team in the world for me, and judging by the all conquering performances of their U21 and U20 teams in their recent respective, and once again, final aside, it has once again been a pleasure to watch this incredible and history-making side at the Confederatons Cup. Doubted them in 2014 at your peril.