Brazil goalkeeper Julio Cesar saves a shot by Chile’s Alexis Sanchez in Belo Horizonte on Saturday. Cesar was rejected by Queens Park Rangers last year.
DPA/Sao Paulo
When a 34-year-old goalkeeper who couldn’t get a game at English club QPR last season became Brazil’s hero in Belo Horizonte on Saturday, it was just business as usual at the World Cup.
So far, instead of being the showpiece of the glamorous Champions League poster-boys, this tournament has been dominated by the veterans and the B-list journeymen stepping out of the shadows to become national heroes.
We saw the “Julio Cesar” effect right through the Group stages with football’s lesser lights illuminating so many games.
In Mexico’s last group A match Rafa Marquez, Andres Guardado and Javier Hernandez got the goals that saw them past Croatia and into the next round.
Marquez retired from Barcelona four years ago and some football fans in Spain, who rarely look beyond the country’s borders, were stunned to see he was even still playing. After a spell at New York Red Bulls the 35-year-old defender is now at Club Leon in Mexico.
After unspectacular spells at Deportivo and Valencia in Spain, Guardado is now underwhelming supporters at Bayer Leverkusen in the German Bundesliga. And Hernandez, aka “Chicharito” or “little pea” was on the bench all season at Manchester United.
In the Group B decider between the Netherlands and Chile it was Leroy Fer who got the all-important first goal for the Dutch. And where does Fer play? Ajax? PSV? Feyenoord? No, Norwich City, where he played 29 games in their relegation season just gone.
The win his goal set up condemned Chile to second place in the group and elimination against Brazil in the next round but they still went home as one of the teams of the tournament.
Quite how they had played so well with a team based on a defence built around Osasuna’s Francisco Silva, Nottingham Forest’s Gonzalo Jara and Cardiff City’s Gary Medel also seemed to fly in the face of sound football reason.
In Group D there were more unlikely heroes. The group of the three world champions was won by Costa Rica, for whom Joel Campbell - who Arsenal have out on loan at Greek side Olympiakos and have never seemed too interested in taking back - was the star.
Costa Rica secured their passage to the last 16 with a 1-0 win over Italy and the goal, scored by Fulham reject Bryan Ruiz, not only sent Los Ticos through it also knocked out England.
In Group E, Iran could easily have beaten Argentina if Reza Ghoochannejhad had been able to take some of his chances.
The Charlton striker ran the Argentine defence ragged for 90 minutes but just failed to find the finish.
In Group H the revelation team was Algeria with the inspirational Rafik Halliche not allowing the fact that he plys his trade at mid-table Portuguese club Academica stop him having a superb tournament.
And the same can be said for Sofiane Feghuli and Yacine Brahimi who play their football at Valencia and Granada respectively.
Even Brazil 2014’s emerging player of the tournament James Rodriguez was the name on nobody’s lips before the World Cup began as everyone looked forward to the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Yaya Toure and Diego Costa repeating their achievements with their clubs on the world stage.
It’s not too late for football gods Leo Messi and Neymar to make the World Cup theirs, but so far the tournament belongs as much to the players of QPR, Granada, Cardiff and Club Leon as it does to the superstars of the Champions League.