Post World Cup Post!

It's over!  After 3 weeks with multiple games most days, we are all suffering from a bit of soccer withdrawal!  

The winner wasn't our 1st choice - Argentina nor our 2nd choice Spain or even our eventual favorite tiny little Croatia. France has a fantastic team with super stars in every position.  And while my head said that they would win, my heart surely wanted Croatia with a population of 4 million to win their first ever World Cup.

One of the reasons I cheered for Croatia was this man right here - Ivan Rakitic..  Yes he is a Barca player and that is one reason I like him but the other is that he looks so much like our son, Scott.  It's his coloring and hairline and general build.  Even Monica's family in Argentina agrees.   Scott says that sometimes soccer savvy customers come into Starbucks where he works and mention how much he looks like Rakitic.

When he stepped up to take the 5th shot in not 1, but 2, overtime shootouts, I was as nervous as if it had been Scott.  I didn't need to worry as he rifled both shots in to help Croatia advance.  

  

Estimates are that 550,000 people showed up to welcome the Croatian National Team home to Zagreb!  That is about 10% of the entire population there to celebrate their 2nd place heroes!

I can't imagine what the celebration would have been like had they actually WON the World Cup!

I am sure that this eased some of the pain of the loss.

And it was a Croatian player who won the Golden Ball for the best player of the entire World Cup - Luka Modric.  He's a Real Madrid player but I can't hold that against him, can I?  This was the money shot....Luka Modric and Kylian Mbappe, who won the award for best young player.  He's only 19.  What a future he has before him!  The next Messi/Ronaldo??? Maybe?  I say, "Lets get a Barca shirt on him."

Oh, and in case you are wondering, Matt won the family predictions game with 13 of the round of 16 predictions right on and 7 of the knock out round games correctly placed.  Way to go Matt!

Four years from now the World Cup will be in Qatar! Eight years from now in the US!  Maybe I will finally get to got to a World Cup game in person!