End of an Era.

I first started watching football in 2007, and my first international tournament was Euro 2008. I started out supporting Croatia for some reason (as an Arsenal fan, that was probably due to then-Arsenal striker Eduardo being in the squad). Spain was my second team as they had loads of brilliant players but never seemed to win anything (I later learned that they were European champions in 1964), and I had a thing for underachievers.

Image courtesy of www.croatia.org

Croatia (and their awesome uniforms) won all three of their group games, as did Spain, and I was a happy child. However, Croatia duly got knocked out in the next round, so I only had Spain left to bank on. Not a problem, as it turned out, as they then went on to win the tournament. Once again, I was a happy child.

I didn't know it at the time, but that was the start of a truly golden era in Spanish football. The Spanish national team went on to win the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, while Spanish club Barcelona won basically everything during that time period as well, all the while playing the mouthwatering style of passing football known as tiki-taka. Suddenly, everyone wanted to play like Spain. Any team that played passing football were said to be following the tiki-taka 'philosophy'. Kids playing football in the park would be exclaiming "Tiki-taka!" whenever they managed to string a few good passes together.

Image courtesy of  worldsoccertalk.com

As for me, I never really was a tiki-taka player. I did admire the beauty and brilliance of it, but I was more suited to direct, counter-attacking football. This caused me a few difficulties whenever I played with my friends, as everyone would want to go tiki-taka while I was the only one looking to launch long balls forward.

Anyway, I digress. Last year, Barcelona were thrashed 7-0 on aggregate in a Champions League semi-final by a Bayern Munich side playing direct, attacking football. This caused people to proclaim that this was the death of tiki-taka, that this tippy-tappy passing lark was no longer relevant as it had finally been 'found out'. This point was reinforced even more after Spain were undone 3-0 by Brazil in the 2013 Confederations Cup final.

However, there were still a good number of people who thought otherwise. Barcelona and Spain would bounce back and be back to sweeping aside all those before them in no time. Tiki-taka would return to being the best way to play winning football.

Those people were proven wrong. Barcelona finished the 2013/14 season without a trophy, while reigning world champions Spain were eliminated from the World Cup after only seven days after limp showings in losses to the Netherlands and Chile. Both these teams played direct, attacking football.

Image courtesy of www.azcentral.com

I was pretty disappointed with Spain's elimination, but truth be told, there was a certain degree of inevitability to it. All good things must come to an end, and all that. Looks like I'll be supporting Croatia and the USA (I was born there; so sue me) for the rest of the World Cup - at least until both teams get dumped out, in which case I'll look to whoever's still left in the tournament.

All in all, it really is the end of Spain's golden era now. Maybe this will signal the start of a new trend of playing: the direct, attacking football that I've always craved. And maybe, if Spain don't adopt this approach, I'll start supporting a team that does. Sounds fickle, I know, but it's not my fault the Malaysian national team is rubbish.

Would be interesting to see which team goes on to dominate the world football scene now.

Revisits.

I finished the final paper of my final exam for the past semester a few days ago, and finally went home after what seemed like forever. I don't remember a time when I wanted to go home so badly, be it during my days in Rembau or in Nilai.

In the days leading up to the exam, my thoughts were dominated by the potential excitement of the next semester. It's going to be a short semester, meaning that we'll be having seven weeks for lectures instead of fourteen. I'll also only be taking two subjects, so that means I will likely have a lot of spare time for other activities - and there will be a lot of those, I'm sure.

However, after the exam began, I started to yearn for home. Some things happened during this time that caused me great distress (although I believe my studying was fortunately not too greatly disrupted) and I realized that I needed to take a break from my university life. I'd gotten so engrossed in it that I'd forgotten that I had other lives outside of Manipal.

So after reaching home, I (finally) watched Frozen (which was amazing, by the way) and spent some quality time with my family. The next day I went with my sister to the city to renew my driver's license and to buy some books using my government-issued book vouchers. We ended up using up all of them plus a little extra cash to purchase eight books. My personal portion of that comprised of five novels. I'll probably finish reading them next year - not because I'm a slow reader, but because I'm not ten anymore and have other things to do besides sitting at home and reading books all day, every day.

That trip to the city took me back to my Foundation days at Nirwana College. Sometimes you just need to revisit the past to remove the clutter in your mind that was caused by the present, and the nostalgia from walking around those familiar streets and riding those familiar trains just seemed to have a calming effect on me. I couldn't remember how long it had been since I last went to KL by train and walked around the streets around Pasar Seni, but it must have been pretty long as I found myself feeling warm and fuzzy inside upon hearing a loud, lengthy car horn. You'd never find anything near to KL's hustle and bustle in Nilai.

I went further along memory lane as I went to the mosque behind my old school for Friday prayers. I could have walked for about 15 minutes to the one nearest to my house, but the pull of the mental and emotional calm I was bound to receive from revisiting the area near my former school was just too great and I ended up driving three to four kilometers to get there. Sure enough, being at that mosque brought back memories of my pre-Rembau secondary school days. They weren't the best years of my life, but I still had plenty of good times then.

Now I have two weeks left for my semester break, which I plan to spend well this time around - reading all those books would be good; I actually even finished one of them on the same day they were bought. Returning to old places for a couple of days was nice, and it certainly helped to unclutter  my mind. However, being only less than 20 years old, there are only so many experiences I can look back on to remind myself of the so-called good old days.

I am a forward-thinking person, and I generally try not to dwell too much on the past. However, I do believe that our past defines who we are, so whenever I do look back on my past, I try to learn from it. And I don't just mean my past mistakes and other painful memories; there's plenty to learn from the good times as well. Some people would rather not analyze their good memories too much, though, for fear of spoiling them. Can't really blame them for that, I suppose.

Yesterday made us who we are today, but today will make us who we are tomorrow. Going down memory lane for a while was nice and all, but I shouldn't stay on it for too long. After that good start to the holidays, here's hoping it will inspire me to be productive during these next two weeks before returning to the grind of life as a student in Nilai.

Either that or I'll end up being so bored that I'll find myself wishing that the short sem would go ahead and start already. Whatever works.