Today I'm going back 11 years to 27th June 2010 on another one of the 14 days of the year on which I've yet to see a match. However, I've got strong memories of a match on the day in question from the South African World Cup. I bet you do too. Do you remember the Round of 16 game between Germany and England and the goal that never was? Thought so!
As is usually the case for World Cups, there were no programmes issued for the individual matches. There was programme issued for the whole Tournament however and, in the case of South Africa, there were two of these: one for the Group Stage and one for the knockout stage. In practice the majority of the content of the two programmes is identical with less than 20% of the pages being different. Either programme will set you back around £20 from a dealer today compared to the cover price of 70 Rand which works out to be around £3.50 at the current exchange rate.
As part of it's strategy to globalise the game and in order to keep the African voting lobby happy, Sepp Blatter's FIFA awarded the Finals of the 2010 World Cup to South Africa. In practice this required the South Africans to invest Rand 40 billion (about £2 billion) into new stadia and surrounding infrastructure. In a review of the investment post Tournament, Grant Thornton concluded that it was money well spent with the infrastructure improvements providing a major boost to the South African economy, However, if one of the FIFA criteria used when awarding a World Cup is "legacy" then South Africa 2010 was a failure. A number of the stadia built especially for the tournament haven't been used since. Not for football or indeed anything else. At least these white elephants don't need to be kept on a game reserve I suppose!
The match up between England and Germany is and remains one of the classical International fixtures. Most famous in the history of the fixture are the tournament matches of 1966, 1970, 1990 and 1996. There have been others before and since and this coming Tuesday's encounter is yet another in this International clash of such heavyweights.
In South Africa this fixture was a Round of 16 knockout game. Fabio Capello's England had failed to cover themselves in any glory in the Group Stage and had only narrowly qualified following a 1-1 draw with the USA, a 0-0 draw with Algeria and finally a nervous1-0 win over Slovenia. The Germans hadn't had things their own way in their Group either albeit that they eventually won it following a 4-0 victory over Australia, a shock 1-0 defeat by Serbia and finally a narrow 1-0 win over Ghana.
The stage was set in Bloemfontein and sadly the Germans took the lead after just 20 minutes following terrible defending by John Terry and Matthew Upson which allowed Miroslav Klose through to score. Things were soon to get worse as Lukas Podolski got a second for the Germans with 32 minutes gone. We looked for a response from a disappointing England and, to our surprise, we actually got one courtesy of a fine header from Matthew Upson in the 37th minute. It was 2-1 and England finally had some momentum.
What happened next is probably the biggest single event that led to the subsequent introduction of VAR. Frank Lampard got the ball just on the edge of the German penalty area and shot over keeper Neuer. The ball hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced down clearly over the line but Neuer grabbed it as it span back towards him and we saw that the officials had missed the goal. We'll never know whether things might have turned out differently had the teams gone in level at two a piece at half time but the moment was gone and the German lead was intact.
Frank Lampard's love affair with the German crossbar knew no bounds as he hit it again early in the second half, this time the ball bounced over however. Another Lampard free kick a few minutes later proved to be crucial however as the Germans broke away and scored through Muller. It was the decisive goal and England looked beaten. Three minutes later and Muller scored another breakaway goal this time from a cross from Mesut Ozil (remember him?) and England were on the plane "Back Home". 4-1 to the Germans and this time a goal not given for a ball over the line to compare to that famous goal given in 1966. Oh the irony!
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