A Final Prediction: Germany Wins a Thriller

Like the Sex Pistols in their prime, World Cup finals rarely fail to disappoint. After all the buildup and hype, the games often turn out to be low-scoring, bad-tempered affairs. In 2010, Holland, the nation that, during the nineteen-seventies, invented “total football,” a free-flowing, attacking style of soccer that enchanted the world, disgraced itself by trying to kick the Spanish “tiki-taka” men off the park in Johannesburg, and almost succeeded. Four years earlier, during the latter stages of a tense 1-1 tie between Italy and France, Zinedine Zidane, the French midfield maestro, was sent off for headbutting an Italian player, Marco Materazzi, who had allegedly called his sister a whore. (Italy went on to win on penalties.)

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