Not just flair and flamboyance but also power and precision contribute to success in football. Over the last three weeks, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa saw the top teams find winning ways through a combination of possession football and counter-attack. As the tournament enters the quarter-final stage, last World Cup's finalists, Italy and France, are back home but the pre-tournament favourites, Brazil and Spain, are still in line for a summit clash. Uruguay, Paraguay, and Ghana, the only African team in the last eight, have outperformed themselves. But other than Italy's exit in the first round, this World Cup has served up no shockers thus far. A group stage draw with Portugal aside, Brazil won all its games comfortably. With an unusually solid defence led by fullback Maicon, and a variety of attacking options with Robinho as the spearhead, the five-time champion revealed no flaws in its four matches. But while two unfancied teams, Uruguay and Ghana, will fight it out for the other semi-final slot from the same half of the draw, Brazil finds the Netherlands standing in its path. Argentina and the Netherlands are the only two teams with an all-win record thus far. Argentina, with 10 goals in four matches, tops in both goals per game (2.5) and shots on goal per game (9). Lionel Messi may be scoreless but he holds the record for the highest number of shots on target (13) among all players. Spain, which is taking possession football to new heights, tops in total passes completed (2,265) and pass completion rate (81 per cent). Youthful Germany is a strong contender for the crown: it has shown impressive speed and precision in counter-attacks that have demolished the opposition.
This World Cup could turn out to be the tournament that set football officialdom thinking seriously about the use of technology in refereeing. Several teams have suffered from faulty application of the offside rule but what will rankle fans and administrators the longest is the refereeing blunder in the Germany-England match, when Frank Lampard's shot landed in and bounced back and was not ruled a goal. While apologising to the English and Mexican federations for the refereeing errors, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has put the topic in sound context. Only goal-line technology, which can help determine whether the ball crossed the goal-line or not, will be on the discussion board. The irrefutable argument against bringing in video replays to settle questionable refereeing decisions is that they will ruin the free flow of the game. Fortunately, the two most talked about refereeing errors turned out to be of little consequence: Germany thrashed England 4-1, and in the match where Carlos Tevez scored from an off-side position, Argentina blocked out Mexico 3-1. By refusing to follow the cricket example of flirting with technology-supervised umpiring, football can remain a game of glorious uncertainties.
