Semifinals Preview: More Thrills and Skills, Please!

Some time ago, I booked a vacation for this week, partly so that I would have plenty of time to watch the climax of the World Cup. But now that the semifinals are upon us, I have a little confession to make: I’m not looking forward to them quite as much as I should be. And I suspect many other soccer fans feel the same way.

With two powerhouse matchups lined up—Brazil versus Germany later today, and Argentina versus the Netherlands on Wednesday—every soccer fan, the newbie as well as the lifer, ought to be licking his or her chops. But after a procession of low-scoring games in the quarter-finals, in which two of the surprise teams of the tournament—Costa Rica and Colombia—were both eliminated, some of the joy has gone out of this event. To bring it back to life, and to insure its place among the list of great World Cups, we badly need at least one high-scoring thriller, or, preferably, a couple of games dominated by free-flowing, attacking play rather than regimented defense.

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