There are no decent defenders in football any more

Defending is dead the World Cup has proved it.

That’s why I can’t get on board with the idea that this year’s tournament has been the best ever.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed it, but the overwhelming impression I’ve taken from it is that there are no decent defenders any more.

Gone are the astute, tough-tackling heroes of the past, guys like Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Franz Beckenbauer. Those guys were such good players, so clever, so strong and so difficult to get the better of.

The battle between strikers and defenders at that time was so fascinating to watch THAT was football for me. But who have we got now? Judging from the quality of the defending in Brazil, no-one at all.

Some people reckon that has made this World Cup exciting, especially by comparison to the last one in South Africa.

But when you really look at it, while the group stages were great this year, the goals dried up as soon as the knockout stages began with one notable exception.

And in keeping with the theme of the tournament, that was down to one of the worst displays of defending I’ve ever seen in my life. In retrospect, Brazil never had the team to win it.

With David Luiz in central defence and Marcelo on the left, they were always going to be hugely vulnerable.

And having sold Luiz for £40m to Paris St Germain before the tournament, Jose Mourinho must be laughing all the way to the bank after his defensive disaster against Germany.

I backed the Brazilians before the tournament only because I didn’t think there was an outstanding side, but the Germans might just have proved me wrong.

Even before tonight’s Final, I think it’s fair to say Joachim Lw’s side have been the best team at the tournament by a mile.

Even so, in terms of real, historic brilliance, I don’t think they are there yet. It’s just that so many teams have been poor defensively while they have gotten away with it.

But the good news for the Germans is that whatever happens tonight, they WILL get even better in the years to come. If they do that with a World Cup under their belts, all the better for them.

If they don’t, they can rest easy knowing that claiming the next one is an achievable ambition especially if the art of defending is allowed to suffer the way it clearly has been.

It’s a difficult thing to sort out because the game is always changing. But for me, modern football is increasingly reliant on the kind of gung-ho approach that sees defending as a barely necessary evil.

For as long as that is the case, the game is missing a huge part of what makes it great as far as I’m concerned.

That’s why this World Cup is nowhere near being the best ever staged. And until it gets sorted, I don’t think it will be fair to call any future World Cup “the best-ever”.