Germany's class shines through

Former England forward Gary Lineker once ruefully retorted that 'football is a simple game, 22 men chase a ball around for 90 minutes and in the end, the Germans win.'

Sunday's final of the FIFA Confederations Cup was perhaps another reminder of this oft quoted remark.

Germany, despite being the world champions, were not quite the hot favourites going into this tournament, thanks to their decision to send a very young and rather inexperienced side to Russia. Chile, on the other hand, came here as two-time defending South American champions, and after their win over favourites Portugal in the semifinals, were probably the more fancied side in the final.

But then again Germany are not four-time world champions for nothing. They can be clinical and ruthless, especially when the opponents are feeling the nerves associated with facing Germany at the final of a global event.

Joachim Loew's young brigade were not clinical; they were far from their marauding best but were good enough for a side that seemed to have been struck by stage fright. A dreadful error from Marcelo Diaz was all that was needed for Lars Tindl to score the decisive goal early in the match.

Chile had their chances too, especially in the latter stages of the game, but they had probably left their shooting boots back at the hotel.

In fact it was way too error-prone a game for a match of this stature, which left the 57,000-plus people at the Saint Petersburg Stadium rather disappointed. One obvious reason for the disappointment was most of them were rooting for the South Americans and were quite disapproving of the Germans.

They hardly held back in showing their disapproval of the German players, the referee, and last but not least, the controversial former sports minister of Russia, Vital Mutko, during the award ceremony. But apart from that it seems that the people enjoyed the past two weeks of football festivity and are well prepared to host the next big thing -- the FIFA World Cup in 2018.

Some credit must go to Mutko in this regard as it was during his tenure as sports minister that Russia won the bid to host the World Cup and thereby were default hosts of the Confederations Cup. Now the deputy prime Minister of the country, Mutko was responsible for having got things and people in place.

There was a lot of skepticism regarding Russia's ability to successfully organise a global football event and keep its growing hooliganism in check. There were even questions raised regarding the voting process in which Russia won the hosting rights. But now with the Confederations Cup completed pretty neatly, a lot of the skepticism will probably go away.