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Completing our series of goal compilations from World Cup finals, this week’s Video Of The Week goes back just the four years to the last tournament, which was held in Germany. It had been suggested that European football was in something of a trough and there was a good chance of a South American or even African side winning the tournament, but only one African side even managed to get through the group stages and the last two South American sides, Brazil and Argentina, were both eliminated at the quarter-final stages by France and Germany, which set up all-European semi-finals for the first time since 1982.
Other than that, the tournament was most memorable for the pathetic media circus that followed a mediocre England side (and their wives and girlfriends) around until their quarter-final elimination at the hands of Portugal, the first appearance of Australia in the finals since 1974 and the renaissance of Germany, which also ended after a last minute defeat by Italy in the semi-finals. And, of course, Zinedine Zidane’s bizarre World Cup swansong – a sending off which overshadowed everything else that happened in the final. In one hundred days from today, the 2010 World Cup will kick off in South Africa.
