„Es ist auch interessant beim Fußball, es ist immer noch ein Spiel. Stehste da einmal richtig, machst das Tor. Das sind genau diese Momente. Das Glück muss auf deiner Seite sein, da muss einfach so viel zusammenlaufen. [...] Es gibt auch Momente, wo ich sag, ‚Okay, wär vielleicht zu einem anderen Zeitpunkt besser gewesen.' Wenn ich ein bisschen älter gewesen wär, noch ein bisschen mehr Erfahrung. Aber im Nachgang– im Finale zu sein und zu spielen, ich mein, was gibt's Besseres für einen Fußballer?“
2014 FIFA World Cup Final | Maracanã Stadium | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 13 July 2014
This lovely place was used as one of the film locations for 'Grand Budapest Hotel' (2014) as the Mendl's bakery. This unique dairy store was established in 1880 and kept its original interior with hand painted decorative tiles.
I love that in 2014 manu had 1 chrikra attached to the hip at all times
Oh, sweet, sweet Neumer 🥲 they really had something special, didn’t they?
I love that Chris was so taken with Manu that he could do little more than cling to him the entire tournament. There was this undertone of adoration—of reverence—to his every touch and lingering gaze. And in truth, I suppose Chrikra’s no better than the rest of us; the poor thing was rendered completely helpless by Manu’s charms and boyish good looks. He could only resist for so long.
And for Manu’s side, he clearly gave as much as he got; in fact, he was just as much of a hopeless case—forever looking at his beloved Chrikra like he hung the moon and stars himself.
Hell, he was rarely more than arm’s length from him, always ready to swoop in for a cuddle when the opportunity arose.
All this to say, there’s a reason these two were the breakout ship of 2014. What’s not to love?
The day Thomas Muller became a national hero in Colombia (South America)
Because of my husband Thomas Muller's NT retirement, I decided to remember that time when he became an icon in this unknown third-world country~
Storytime~
Get something to eat because here comes my longest post ever and one of my favorite things to ever happen in this hellhole <3
No introduction is needed for the 2014 World Cup. So let's just skip to the good part. One of the breakthrough teams was Colombia, a humble but passionate team, they were having their best run so far, and literally everyone in the country wanted them to go as far as possible.
In a country where literally every day the government makes you hate every part of living here, the NT is always a beacon of joy to make us feel proud of being Colombian. And even more now, that we had the Best goal of the match and the Top scorer of the whole tournament.
After an amazing run against teams like Uruguay and Ivory Coast, the day came, when we had to play against Brazil. I don't know how it was perceived in the rest of the world, but here in South America, almost everyone knew Brazil was winning the whole thing, even with rumors of the WC being fixed to favor them (ofc rumors or not but still).
In the Colombia V Brazil match, 3 important things happened.
Neymar was Injured
Thiago Silva was suspended via accumulation of yellow cards
And the catalyst of this story
3. An equalizer Goal from Mario Yepes was mistakenly determined as offside and annulled.
Due to this last event, Colombia was automatically eliminated without the chance of going to penalties.
THIS is Colombia's Trauma™, you can ask any of us. We even have a popular saying we use to this day because of this 'Era gol de Yepes' (Like saying that goal was always legit). But we weren't sad. We were infuriated. We demanded vengeance, we wanted vengeance (We're way too passionate about this, what do you want me to say).
After that, yeah, there were the other quarterfinals, whatever, we didn't care. All of us were waiting for the Germany V Brazil and due to the rumors I spoke about before, we were very scared of Germany losing.
As an important note here, while we were very angry, a very good portion of the Colombians just dropped the whole thing due to idk post-elimination depression. On a personal note, never in my life did I see my country in such silence. I went out to visit my family and the capital had the most depressing silence I've ever experienced. When I tell you this WC meant the world to us I was very serious, a lot of Colombians went to Brazil in buses or walking to see the matches, and some even slept on the streets or stuff like that to keep on supporting.
So, the day of the Germany V Brazil match arrived, and oh boy we didn't have an idea.
At this point, very few of us were still watching the tournament. In the beginning, they were very balanced... And then the game started.
We already knew what happened in that legendary game so let me just tell you the story from our point of view. All of Colombia was rooting for Germany, we wanted, no, we needed Germany to win. Brazil started attacking first so we were quite nervous.
Then a certain player bested Brazil's clueless defenses and scored the first one for Germany.
Everyone was celebrating as if it was our own country, we started calling other people to turn on the TV, our family, neighbors, everyone. The stores and cafeterias tuned the match to see the ones that (in our eyes) did us so wrong, get humiliated by such a great team.
Of course, almost no one knew who this guy was, but Javier Hernández (the most popular commentator here) felt exactly the same as everyone else and loved every second of that first goal, making sure every single Colombian heard this player's name loud and clear, the one that avenged us. Thomas Muller.
Here you can hear what all of us heard that day: (Turn on audio to witness the insanity)
(Sorry for the quality of the video, I know it's ass but this was a recording from a fan from a TV 10 years ago lol)
Then the goals came one after another, and the rest is history. But to us it was special, we celebrated as if it was our own country. Here are some comments from Colombians:
T: Thanks for avenging us Germany
T: Forbidden to forget this match, when all of us were German for 90Min, Thanks! (Germany x4 Trophies) I'll never get over him and neither any colombian, Thomas Muller 7-1 / 8-2
T: Muller 2014: 7-1
Muller 2020: 8-2
He's always in every historic scoring in football
T: In that match
All of Colombia was Germany
And like those you can find hundreds and hundreds. The day after the match we kept on celebrating, the memes were everywhere, especially one where James (our star player) called Thomas and asked him to score against Brazil (ofc that never happened, was a silly meme that reflected the general feeling). Also, I clearly remember the news and variety shows on national channels opening their broadcast greeting in German (or at least trying lol). It was so funny and at the end, we received our NT and celebrated their progress and Germany won the cup.