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I watched the live telecast of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa amidst the hullabaloo around my living room though by the time Charlize Theron came on I got too comfortable and fell asleep. My overly subdued state is probably a delayed reaction to the build-up to 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa but the thing that really rained on my enthusiasm was the style, or rather, lack of style of the South American teams in recent times. In turn, this has shattered my illusion of world class football and on it’s biggest stage.
There sure is a lot less flair like they used to be in the recent international friendlies and World Cup qualifying matches leading to the draw, same goes for the last World Cup for that matter. This scourge is particularly apparent with the South American teams, in particular, the two multi-champions most known for individual skills - Argentina and Brazil. Having more and more Argentineans and Brazilians playing with the European clubs has taken a toll on the entertainment factor of the sport at the national level since adapting to the European style of playing as a unit leaves very little room for individual inventiveness. This is with an exception of Spanish La Liga, of course, where players do have a fair share of freedom to show their stuff.
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We’ve all seen the gifted contemporary Argentineans and Brazilians by the likes of Messi, Robinho, Requelme and Ronaldinho work their wizardry at club-level yet underperforms when it comes to playing with their respective national teams. It’s explicable in the sense that these players spend more than twice as much time playing and training with their European clubs than they do their national teams.
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While the European exposure had a somewhat off-putting effect on the South Americans in terms of playing the game beautifully, the same can’t be said on the Asian and African players and so too the their respective national teams. The best teams from both continents have improved tremendously, stepping up their game to the same level as the best of the best (Spain, Brazil, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Germany, France and Argentina). Their performance and results from the last two World Cups proved that the Africans (i.e. Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal) and Asians (South Korea and Japan) have the ability to take on the European and South American giants or, at the very least, hold their own.
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I just miss being entertained by players by the likes of Romario, Ronaldo (the goofy one), Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos, Denilson (the older one who's playing for a Vietnamese club) and Maradona. Then again you can’t really blame the modern virtuoso South American players when the fame and fortune in Europe are just too good to turn down even when it means forgoing their individual panache and colourful style of play that are unique to their respective national teams. But the crisis still remains in the forthcoming biggest tournament of the most beautiful game where the Brazilians are not doing the samba and the Argentineans, well, they seem to be struggling in the hands of a football legend Maradonut (Hey, take it easy. I do have tremendous respect for the guy as a player but we'll see how he does as coach). Amidst all the drama and excitement the poignant fact still remains where today’s football is not about winning or losing. It’s entirely about winning.
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