My team, Holland, had just completed an improbable victory, and I was floating in a swimming pool in Brasília. Tropical birds chirped in the trees above, and friends chirped in the water around me. It was then that I had a eureka moment: of the seven straight World Cups I’ve been to since 1990, this is the best. And that’s an unbiased Olympian judgment. As Nigeria’s coach Stephen Keshi said straight after being knocked out: “So far it’s been wonderful.” The task now is to work out exactly why, so that we can bottle the Brazilian feeling and reuse it in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
我支持的荷兰队刚刚赢得了一场不可思议的胜利，而我正躺在巴西利亚的一座游泳池里。树上，热带的鸟儿叽叽喳喳；水里，朋友们在我周围叽叽喳喳。就在那时我得出一个结论：自从1990年以来，我连续赴现场报道了七届世界杯，而这届是最棒的。我的判断公正公平。正如尼日利亚主教练斯蒂芬•凯希(Stephen Keshi)在球队被淘汰后所说：“迄今为止，这届杯赛很棒。”现在要弄清楚的是这届世界杯为什么很棒，这样我们便能总结巴西经验，在2018年的俄罗斯和2022年的卡塔尔加以推广。