Germany VS Argentina

Final meeting of two golden World Cup generations:

Two promising crops today in a World Cup final that celebrate collective brilliance rather than individual genius Rio de Janeiro has spent the last few days before the World Cup final in a state of rather clunky pathetic fallacy. As is often the case at this time of year Brazil’s beach-front capital has been drenched with Atlantic rain storms, as though – and here the music begins to swell, the berimbau strings to plonk poignantly – reflecting the tears of a nation, the day the samba died.

The salt-water caipirinha of that 7-1 semi-final thrashing by Germany in Belo Horizonte, a result that has, in reality, been accepted with a gasp and a bemused shrug of the shoulders.

It is always tempting to look for wider patterns in sport. As Germany and Argentina prepare to contest their own final at Brazil’s gaudily trailed Copa Das Copas there is a natural urge to find a broader story, to gouge some more fulsome narrative out of how and why these two teams have ended up contesting the last match of a spectacular and hungrily consumed World Cup.

First time a sporting parable

The first time these nations met in a World Cup final in 1986, the match resembled in outline a kind of sporting parable: systems and team play versus a lone spike of individual genius, the ballad of el Diego against the machines. It would perhaps be tempting to see something similar here.

There is no “i” in Deutsche Fussballmannschaft, but there is a “me” in Messi and much of the pre-match hype will centre on the possibility the world’s most alluring attacker can provide some decisive spark of individualism in a match contested otherwise by two measured teams: Argentina’s mix of subdued attack and worthy defence and Germany’s supremely gifted crop of processed modern footballers.

As ever sport tends to defy this kind of analysis. In the event the 1986 World Cup final was decided by a set piece header plus goals from two European-based players, with Diego Maradona in controlled mode, picking off a slightly ragged West Germany at the death. Similarly the urge to see this final as a meeting of Mannschaft-spiel and Messi-spiel overlooks perhaps the final’s most intriguing pre-match detail.

And so here we are: two generations that genuinely deserve to be called golden will meet in a brilliantly intriguing final, while a World Cup billed in its early rounds as a triumph of individualism, a pop star-ish affair of the celebrity No10s, has been pared down at the last to something more structural. Never mind the narrative, forget for now the random accident of individual genus: welcome to the jogo colectivo!

There are of course still considerable differences between these two final crops. Not to mention equally poignant levels of fear and anxiety. Germany are probably favourites to win this World Cup, just as they should probably be favourites to win every tournament given the supremely well-resourced and productive youth system put in place by an eminently sensible football association. And yet the burden of such riches is tangible at times.

For the united Germany this is only a second World Cup final in six attempts, whereas between 1954 and 1990 the now subsumed entity known as West Germany reached six finals out of 10.

German football had become fretful before this tournament, deflated by successive semi-finals, troubled by the sense that this bottle-fed generation of players is proficient but nice, brilliantly schooled but missing that vital quality of desperation, what Lothar Matthäus (who would probably know) has called “the really nasty players”.

Perhaps that stunning, unrepeatable semi-final victory has also raised the vague prospect of another Maracanaço on Sunday evening – this one Euro-flavoured: a Maracan-alemaço perhaps – as like Brazil in 1950 Germany have come scooting through at the last on a surge of attacking success. Back then Brazil had also just won 7-1 and faced a final match against a stodgier looking Uruguay.

And, while Bayern Munich’s Champions League win in 2013 confirms the calibre of these players, uncertainty from here will tend to centre now on Joachim Löw, who has the manner, the frown, the chat, the roll-necked jumpers of a footballing genius, just not the medals.

If there is a pressure on Germany to capitalise on its superabundance of talent, the pleasant discomfort of an embarrassment of riches, Argentina’s own anxieties are more about disappearance and dwindling away.

Argentina a fine final of youth

Right now the current team look like a last breath of the superbly fecund youth systems put in place by José Pékerman during his time as coach of Argentina’s youth teams in the mid-1990s. In the Pékerman era Argentina not only won four under-20 world titles (the last that 2005 starburst), but clubs in the domestic top tier were inspired to rearrange their own coaching systems to replicate and feed into the Pékerman vision of small perfectly balanced ball-players and a style based on rapid “vertical” attacking movement.

Oddly enough, without ever managing a national team Guardiola has managed to become a hugely potent background figure, not just at this World Cup final, but at the last one too. Not only is Guardiola’s peak Barcelona style, as adapted at Bayern Munich (with a lineage going back through Heynckes-Van-Gaal-Cruyff) still a dominant influence, he is also the current coach of six of Germany’s starting XI, was coach of seven of Spain’s winning players four years ago, and is the coach who took Messi in off the wing and made him a goalscoring phenomenon.

Teams, systems, groups of players schooled in the same well-ordered habits: this has been the message of the late stages of Brazil 2014, and will be the lurking theme of Sunday’s delicious-looking World Cup final whatever shape the match itself takes. And more broadly this has been the trend here after the early stirrings of star player-ism – that now-distant James Rodríguez, Messi, Neymar mini-era – a tendency for the more coherent, more organised nations to progress.

Good administration got Costa Rica ¼ final berth

Costa Rica’s quarter-final place was a triumph of expert administration, Holland are Holland (and Belgium are the new Holland), while Brazil, who essentially have no system, whose players emerge from a fertile chaos and decamp across Europe as soon as possible, appear to be in a state of some disarray.

Similarly, if England look to be some way off world football’s elite it is as much in the mental as much as technical aspects, the obvious intelligence and tactical acuity of the best players this World Cup. At half-time in their opening match against Bosnia-Herzegovina a delegation of Argentina players approached Sabella and asked to switch to the 4-3-3 that changed the game in the second half.

In England this would have been a scandal, a mutiny. For Argentina it was a sign of strength, of engaged and properly schooled players, and of that team spirit forged not through flag-waving or nebulous national pride, but through a camaraderie of method and an international adolescence spent together.

Messi was reportedly the leader of that delegation, and he remains the centre of Sunday’s final, if not as a lone creative spark, then as a central conduit for the various forces at play. In a way Messi’s more minimal presence last season at Barcelona and at this tournament, the strolling, deep-lying No10, finger always hovering over the nitrous oxide button, is an adoption of a more traditionally Argentinian style.

Messi worked well

It has worked well at times, albeit Messi was shunted to the fringes in the stalemate against Holland. For the neutral there is always a hope that with the final now in his grasp Messi might revert to the style of his earlier years as a relentlessly scurrying false 9, the all-action Messi who seemed the perfect fusion of imagination and athleticism and that deadly cold “European” temperament. Sunday in Rio would be the perfect moment to lift those tired legs one last time.

Either way, it is already a genuinely fascinating final, not so much a clash of styles as a meeting of methods, and a moment of coronation for at least one of modern football’s great golden crops.• This article was corrected on 11 July 2014 to reflect the fact that a united Germany did reach the 2002 World Cup final