Spain take on the phony cult of the star player

While watching the World Cup at home and on the sofa has many pleasures and offers considerable comforts, I have been itching to watch the final games in the company of a crowd. Queen’s Square, commercial and historical home of Bristol’s slave traders, has been converted to a fan park for the tournament and seemed the obvious venue for Wednesday night’s semi-final between Spain and Germany.

While the place has been overflowing for England’s miserable games, more than 10,000 people showing up for some of them, on Wednesday night there were perhaps a thousand punters, with the major contingent from Spain. In a rather disappointing reflection on our own football and drinking cultures, we were not able to enjoy the game with a beer or a glass of red wine as the England games and the overflowing bars that had been open for them combined to produce a variety of scuffles.

As a coffee vendor wearily told me, the organisers had decided that there would no more alcohol at England games. The beer tent sponsors decided they couldn’t be seen serving only at games without England, and pulled out all together. As a consequence security were brusque and unnecessarily twitchy about the odd can of larger in people’s knapsacks. Pleasingly, the Iberian contingent made up for this by smoking furiously, refusing to sit down and cheering the bolder souls among them who would run with the Spanish flag in front of the big screen every few minutes to whip up the volume.

Holland vs. Uruguay had been compelling the previous day, and as the game went on I felt my distaste for Uruguay’s victory over Ghana turn into whole hearted support for the “little guys”. Uruguay’s failure to capitalise on the periods of play when they had the better of the Dutch were in the end just reward for the loss of striker Suarez who had handled the ball on the line against Ghana.

Last night the BBC commentary team appeared endlessly disappointed that we weren’t seeing fireworks and a sackful of goals, but for me this was the most satisfying game of the tournament yet. Spain raised their game another notch, denied Germany the opportunities and spaces that other opponents had conceded and showed relentlessly good touch, patience, perception and interplay.

If there is a footballing lesson from this World Cup, it is surely that squads that are able to summon the emotional, personal and institutional resources that make for team spirit, identity and play will do well. If you have a plan and a consistent way of playing, even better. If you don’t, then expect the pressure, the media, the defeats and the exposure to send you home—as they did France, England and Italy. Stars and key individuals have consistently failed to perform; Portugal, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon, often seen as one man teams, came to grief. Take note too of Nike, whose entire global advertising campaign alongside the World Cup has offered narratives of individual brilliance and success. How very pleasing that they are completely out of keeping with what we have seen that actually works.