Before the World Cup begun, no one was expecting Croatia to be in finals.....But that is just what had happened in this World Cup. It was the beauty of this year's World Cup, in which we had seen a rise of the so-called smallest nations and these nations dubbed regularly as football giants. In this World Cup we have seen not only that ,but also saw the breaking of few football curses and continuing of some others.
This year we have seen some great moments came not from the great teams like Brazil, Argentina and like as such but we saw these moments by less-known underdogs.
We witnessed great moments like World Cup debutants Iceland holding former champions Argentina to a draw, Japan making favourites Belgium work hard to go through in what looked to be a one-sided affair on paper, and Russia pulling off one upset after another in their historic tournament run during which they famously knocked out Spain in the Round of 16.
CURTAIN CALL
Belgium with a special performance, deserves a recognition, that instead of being down with 2 goals in the 16 Round against Japan, they somehow encouraged themselves to hold on their nerves in drastic environment, they managed to comeback and then won the match in last minute. Before playing semis match versus France they beat Brazil in quarters. Belgium's ever best world cup performance, Golden Generation finally delivered something in form of third-place finish.
One must also applaud the stamina of the Croatian team, who played back-to-back three matches into extra-time (two of which even went to penalties) on their road to the final in Moscow.
CURSES and CRASHING OUT
In this World Cup, England break their 'penalty curse'. It was first time in the history of the tournament ,in the Round 16, when Three Lions managed to win match against Colombia on penalties.
Another curse, "the curse of the defending champions", they stuck for last time champs Germany. It was the fourth time when the last edition winners were knocked out in the 1st round.
EXPECTATIONS versus REALITY:
As we all know the legends of football, they were also playing in this World Cup for their representative teams. It was supposed to be Ronaldo's Cup, Messi's Cup ,Neymar's Cup, but a determined group of peoples had some other plans.
Russia 2018 pitted the quality and experience of former champions against the will and sheer hard work of newcomers in what became a delectable showcase of David vs Goliath.
For a neutral view, it was probably considered as the most entertaining World Cup ever in the past years. It was rare but was interesting to see the rise of small teams and showing the better performance than what it was expected of such teams in these big tournaments. In this year contests made by audience gave the surety of that the audience always being invested to see what would happen next.
This World Cup was completely unpredictable for the eagle-eyed pundits and the avid fans both. In Russia, no one could write any team off and herein lies the true excitement of the beautiful game.
At the end, France took the iconic golden trophy for second time in their history of football and deserved it because of showing incredible consistency throughout the tournament.
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