World Cup excitement reattunes us to life beyond the Champions League

A summer of refreshing, proactive football has given Fifa’s jewel a shot in the arm and reminded us of what this sport can be

The World Cup is turning out to be a memorable one, perhaps the most enjoyable ever, and it turns out the world is surprised. There is something different, distinctive and refreshing about this tournament: no one expected it to be quite so compelling. Football is not as old as the sun, it just happens to be almost as ubiquitous, and people have become conditioned to the idea that it too can never offer anything new. We have seen it all – good and bad – the cycles have played through many times before. We know the game too well, there are no corners left unexplored, no exciting discoveries still to be made.

Or so we thought. Agreeing with Sepp Blatter is uncharted territory for most of us, yet when Fifa’s panto villain public face pronounced himself impressed by the group stages, because for the first time he could remember every team had played to win, he summed up the situation quite succinctly. Fancy that in football – teams going out to win matches. Whatever next? Algeria tearing into Germany as if they had never heard of any divine right to reach the last eight, the USA coming back from the dead against Belgium to provide the undisputed emotional high of the last-16 games? The fact that in the end the eight group winners formed the eight quarter-finalists makes it sound like a regular procession, when in reality it was anything but. Costa Rica had already upset the Anglo-Italian applecart by finishing top of their group, and sides such as Chile, Mexico, USA and the incredible Algerians departed the competition only after giving more fancied opponents the fright of their lives.

What will definitely not happen after this World Cup is something that has happened so often in the past that football writers began to build it into their world view. You would get back after around a month away, with a fund of anecdotes and recollections of a few half-decent games or goals, for the sports editor to burst your World Cup bubble with the opinion that the tournament had only been OK. A good way to fill out a few otherwise dead weeks in early summer, would be the deflating conclusion, but really the football was nothing to write home about. You see a higher standard in the Champions League these days, and some of those games have a better atmosphere, too.

Broadly speaking, this has been true of the last half-dozen World Cups, the ones since the Champions League organised itself into a credible and coherent annual event for all the best players in Europe and therefore the world. There was a time when World Cups held all the mystique, because magical performers such as Pelé could only be glimpsed once every four years in tournament situations, whereas had Pelé been playing within the past couple of decades he would have turned up in Spain or Italy and become as familiar as Ronaldo or Lionel Messi.

Fifa’s show has gradually been losing relevance since Uefa sharpened its event into a rival, in a manner not dissimilar to the FA Cup’s loss of status for the same reasons. World Cups would always be colourful, eventful and popular with traditionalists, but they were no longer cutting edge.

Or so we thought. It turns out that not all the best players are in the Champions League after all. It turns out there are plenty in Costa Rica, Algeria or even the USA who can drum up more team spirit and application than tired old European grandees such as England and Italy can manage.

It turns out that James Rodríguez playing for his country is at an entirely different level than the same Colombia player appearing for Porto or Monaco. It turns out, in short, that we were all wrong to worry about the World Cup. The show is far from over, it can look after itself despite Fifa’s maladministration and the shrill voices of the very few who have not enjoyed what they have been watching.

Principally, that would include Ann Coulter, the right-wing US columnist who slated the tournament before it even began on the grounds that for Americans the popularity of soccer represented a form of moral decay, and whose juvenile arguments have been endlessly trashed since Jürgen Klinsmann’s obviously well-supported side began to do so well.

More surprisingly, there have been a few objections raised on this side of the Atlantic as well, with at least one English commentator offering the view that the tournament has been tainted by cheating, diving, biting and weak refereeing. Some of that is true – Arjen Robben, Thomas Müller and Fred have all to some extent exaggerated situations to gain advantage – though even with recidivist vampirism it is a fairly short charge sheet to set against such an overwhelming success.

Football is not perfect, never has been and never can be, because it is played by human beings. But it brings out the best in people as well as the worst, and that has been amply demonstrated in Brazil. Anyone not recognising that, anyone left unenchanted by Colombia, Costa Rica or Algeria, is failing to spot the wood for the rainforest.

Capello and Russia look as stagnant as each other

Fabio Capello has been accused in Russia of taking the money – an estimated £6m a year – and knowing all along that his players were nowhere near good enough to do anything at a World Cup.

This is subtly different to what he was accused of in England, of taking the money and then managing to wreck our excellent chances of doing something at a World Cup, but it shows a similar level of disillusionment.

Once seen as a progressive, demanding and successful manager at club level, Capello is now viewed as a money for old rope merchant, someone looking to line his pockets rather than achieve any further glory on the football pitch. Or, as Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky put it: “He’s a greedy thief who doesn’t even look like a football coach. He dresses like a schoolteacher.”

Capello is under contract until 2018 with no termination clauses – the Russians have checked – so could in theory still be in charge when the country hosts the next World Cup. In practice that is unlikely. He will have to do an awful lot better at the 2016 European Championship to retain the country’s faith and maybe, with no termination clauses, he would not mind being shown the door.

Yet it still leaves the question of why Russia, an enormous country with an established league and a long football tradition, are performing so poorly. People have been laughing at USA being beaten by a country as small as Belgium, though as Jürgen Klinsmann points out, it is not the size of your population that matters, it is the effectiveness of your system for funnelling youth talent towards professional clubs.

America does not quite have that mastered yet, not in the way that leading European nations have, though Russia ought not to be lagging so far behind. USA might not have been able to beat Belgium but had they been able to pick on someone their own size one imagines they would easily have beaten Russia, and what a popular triumph that would have been.

England might have had a lucky escape too. Based on what the Americans produced against Belgium, Klinsmann is getting more out of his players than Roy Hodgson was able to manage.