“This year’s World Cup has featured some of the planet’s greatest athletes performing seemingly impossible physical tasks. Bicycle kicks. Spectacular goals. Mind-bending saves. Displays of endurance, determination, and balletic grace. And, of course, turning to the left and folding your arms. It turns out that’s surprisingly hard to ace on your first (and, presumably, only) try. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions of television viewers have watched players from all 32 teams botch this seemingly simple technique in the lineup presentations before each World Cup match.” Slate (Video)

“‘How good was that?’ Anyone who watches sport on British television will be familiar with the Question Asinine asked by interviewers after a game. In the case of this World Cup, we can say already, ‘Very good indeed.’ This is one of the best tournaments even those with long memories can recall, endlessly exciting and continually surprising, with a feast of great goals, and almost more of great goalkeeping. Apart from anything else, the epic Thibaut Courtois v Tim Howard match, aka Belgium v USA, showed that an amazing save can be as good to watch as an amazing goal.” New Republic

“In the third minute of added extra time in Tuesday’s Belgium-U.S. World Cup match, Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne took a pass in the box, dribbled to his right and hooked the ball into the left side of the net. Finally, after 31 shots, the Belgians had broken through. Or … wait. Was it 32 shots? It depends on which Twitter account you follow. ESPN’s Stats & Information Group tweeted that Belgium had scored on its 31st shot of the day. OptaJoe, the U.K. Twitter account of the soccer stats company Opta, said it was the 32nd. At the World Cup, shots are in the eye of the beholder. At least three major soccer stats companies are logging every match, and they have yet to all agree on each team’s number of shots and shots on goal. For every one of the 58 games so far, the companies can’t quite get their stories straight. Sometimes their counts have differed by as much as two or three.” fivethirtyeight

“Banks are good at making money (or crashing the economy), but can they predict the outcome of the World Cup? The short answer: kind of. On May 30, Goldman Sachs released its 67-page World Cup and Economics 2014 report, that—between interviews with Franz Beckenbauer and in-depth breakdowns of every team (really, it’s a pretty good read)—includes a statistical model designed to predict the outcome of the tournament.” New Republic

“Last week, Helena Costa resigned from her job as the head coach of second-division French club Clermont Foot. In the midst of World Cup fever, the news slipped under the radar, but it was momentous. The first woman ever appointed to lead a professional men’s club just quit her groundbreaking job—before the first ball was even kicked. Costa, who had previously scouted for Celtic and coached the Iranian and Qatari women’s national teams, had only been appointed in May in what had been praised around the world as a landmark decision.” New Republic

“After a scintillating batch of round-of-sixteen matches, it’s time once to announce the World Cup All-Hair Team. The All-Hair Team Selection Committee deployed a meticulous, scientific rating system to assess the coiffures of the 736 players who made the voyage to Brazil. The committee considered four main criteria…” Fusion

“The World Cup’s knockout stage began this weekend. From here on out, each match must have a winner and a loser, and if the game is tied after 120 minutes of open-field play, it gets decided by penalty kicks. On Saturday, Brazil played Chile in the very first of these matches, in the tournament’s Round of 16, and it ended with the most dramatic penalty shoot-out since Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup final. You got the sense that everything Brazil had put into hosting this year’s event was at stake—not just the money or the national pride Brazilians take in their own soccer superiority, but also the public’s tolerance for the outright absurdity and lack of humanity of the government’s investment in the tournament. The Brazilian team doesn’t have to win the World Cup to keep its people’s political dissatisfaction at bay, but it has to get pretty close. The Round of 16 is not close.” Vanity Fair

Notes on Penalty Kicks and Other Neuroses
“These are terrible times in which the ‘beautiful game’ can be reduced to Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Not since the summer of 1914 has the world had such reason for anxiety and neurotic behavior. I am referring to the dreaded penalty shoot-out that threatens to consume the progress of our World Cup now that it has reached its knockout stages. Famously it is the goalkeeper who is alleged to be anxious over the penalty kicks. But in truth we are seeing great and brave players hiding from their coaches in the huddle and begging to be excused the nightmarish duty.” New Republic

“In the end, not even Greece’s Gods could save her. It seems that the penalty shoot-out belongs so squarely and brutally in the realm of chance that it was beyond even their powers of intervention. For once in a high-stakes match, she had been the better side. But she had proved unable to kill off the surprisingly meek Costa Ricans, who had been playing since the 66th minute with 10 players. The Central American team was able to hold on until the end of extra time and relief at this seemed to turn into boundless confidence during the penalties. The Greeks matched them goal for goal until the fourth, when the Costa Rican keeper Keylor Navas produced a spectacular one-handed save to deny Fanis Gekas. The next shot sent Costa Rica into the quarterfinals for the first time in its history and left Greek fans tasting an unfamiliar flavour: the bitterness of undeserved defeat.” New Republic

“Mexico’s national soccer team trains in a modern facility in a neighborhood where the vast sprawl of Mexico City begins to fade southward into the mountains of the state of Morelos. The setting is almost idyllic: golf carts, low-slung country-club architecture, wide soccer fields landscaped into the hills. Were it not for the hovering smog and the bare cinder-block apartments rising behind high fences, you could mistake this for Tucson. Miguel Herrera eases up to the complex’s gate in a black coupe with a 10‑cylinder engine.” SI