2014 World Cup - Day 23 - Beach and 3rd Place Game

---

---

I didn’t have much planned for today other than to watch the 3^rdplace game between Brazil and Holland. Because the game was only at 5pm, we went to the beach after eating a late breakfast. We had breakfast at the local supermarket’s cafe.

At the beach, Bruno and I kicked the ball around and took turns taking shots at each other. Everything was going alright up until I kicked the ball way up high and onto the field behind our net. It was then that someone punted the ball up in the air towards us, and Bruno decided to catch it. He managed to bend his finger backwards while trying to catch the ball and hurt himself. It got pretty swollen fast but we kept playing nevertheless.

Afterwards, we joined Antonia and Nina closer to the water. We were thinking about going for a swim but the water was pretty rough with strong current and big waves crashing on the sand. We thought it was best to just watch. Some people braved the ocean and went knee-deep. Lots of helicopters were flying back and forth monitoring the swimmers quite low; two rescuers were also patrolling the ocean on a seadoo. These rescuers were whistling and waving trying to get all swimmers out of the water. I guess this confirmed our decision not to go in the water. Nina and I just played in the sand watching the big waves crashing.

After the beach, we got ready and went to Bruno’s friend’s house to watch the game. I had hopes Brazil was going to show a better version of themselves but that was not the case. We went down 1-0 2 minutes in via a penalty shot off a foul that had occurred outside the box. A little while later, Robben fed the ball out wide to a player that seemed to be in an offside position. This guy crossed the ball and David Luiz headed the ball towards a Dutch player that was open right at the penalty spot. 2-0 Holland. Great.

In the second half, Brazil tried making a comeback but it was not to be, In the last minute of play, Holland scored the third and final goal. With the win, Holland captured 3^rd place to go along the 2^nd spot from 4 years ago in South Africa. Brazilians didn’t care much for this game, but the loss did make Brazil the team that conceded the most goals as this World Cup. How embarrassing!!! This for a team that has the most expensive defense in the world with David Luiz, Thiago Silva, Dani Alves and Marcelo. Defense was supposed to be our strength at this World Cup, which is not very common for us. Oh well, moving on.

After the game, we grabbed a beer or two at a local sidewalk bar and then moved to another bar to get some food. We ended up back at the apartment at 2am.

Tomorrow is the big day, the day of the Final between Germany and Argentina. Looking forward to it.

---