So what is considered to be the best World Cup has come to a close. Congrats to Germany
there 4th win, tieing them for 2nd most all time with Italy. The 5x champions Brazil gave there nation much joy but in the final 2 games it fell apart horribly. The 2014 edition is the most watched World Cup ever, with massive viewership worldwide including the US. It dwarfs all other televised events, and also saw unreal numbers on twitter with some 35.6 million tweets during the GER vs BRA semi.
A massive 171 goals were scored during this 64 game tournament with 5 being own goals. USA's Clint Dempsey has the honor of fastest goal scored at just under 30secs. Colombia's James Rodriguez wins the Golden Boot award with 6 goals. The victorious German squad had the most wins(6) and goals (18). A total of 187 yellow cards were handed out with Brazil unfortunately receiving the most of any team with 14. Surprisingly only 10 red cards were shown this tournament, considering all the bad behavior and antics. The ref's were somewhat lenient yet pretty shitty as a whole with many bad calls. Guys like Tim Howard, Messi, Robben, Van Persie, thrilled but in the end came up short. The local hero Neymar had the fans excited until a brutal injury saw him out of competition with spinal damage. Some of the great futbol giants were out early Spain, Italy, Portugal, England. This competition was filled with shock & awe moments.
Personally i feel the success of this years Cup has a lot to do with the local, Brazil the spiritual home of futbol. A exotic beautiful destination for fans attending and tv viewers alike. An estimated over 3.3 million in attendance at the 12 stadiums used. Yes there are a lot of human/social issues and tragedies that were caused by the massive undertaking of these games, but I'm trying to look at the sports positives.On to Russia in 4 years, we can only dream of what lies ahead. In short, obrigado Brazil for the excellent memories.
