Mario Gotze chested Andre Schurrle’s cross from the left wing and then, as time stood still, swivelled to volley the ball with his left foot, ending Sergio Romero's 485-minute run without conceding a goal. It had been the third-longest such streak in the history of the World Cup. And with its end, the world’s greatest football experiment had culminated in Germany became the first European country to win the World Cup on South American soil.
Gotze took the plaudits, coach Joachim Löw branding him a "miracle boy", while the official Fifa website named him the Man of the Match. Away from the cameras, a Bavarian warrior, one of the pillars of German football’s renaissance, their very own FußballGott, or football god, lay spreadeagled on the Maracana grass, all of a sudden looking very human.
For 120 minutes, Bastian Schweinsteiger, sporting the tag of The Chosen One on his boots, had given his all on the pitch, his “legs gone” in his own words, no quarter given, none taken. He had run farther (15.3 km) than any other man on the pitch, recovered the ball the most number of times (11) and had made spraying, incisive passes, 105 of them, with a staggering accuracy of 90 per cent. If the German players had run themselves into the ground, Schweinsteiger had run himself into the basement.
Der Kommandante had conducted the German train from its engine room with majestic finesse and, in the process, had shed sweat, tears and even blood in order to spur his team to a World Cup win and end 18 years of hurt in the process. He had been singled out for rough treatment by the Argentines, drawing six fouls, one of which, by Sergio Aguerro, extracting blood from a gash right below his right eye. If a German football triumph is what the world had seen, then that image was as German as it got.
Premature obituaries
Premature obituaries had been written about Schweini much before the World Cup started. An ankle injury had limited his impact at the 2012 Euros before two surgeries in the 2013-'14 season had almost ruled him out of the World Cup. A German magazine had even termed him "Die Randfigur", the marginal figure, as he witnessed his team’s opening match from the bench.
But an incredible amount of steel, for that is the right word to describe Basti’s exploits in a German shirt, had seen him come on as a substitute in Germany’s second group stage game against Ghana. He had improved with each subsequent display, climaxing in a masterclass in the final.
The steel was not necessarily always physical or technical. It had to be mental too, as midfield partner Sami Khedira had been ruled out of the final moments prior to the kick-off and replacement Christoph Kramer had to be taken off half an hour into the game. For the rest of the game, Schweinsteiger simply took charge of the midfield while nullifying one of the greatest players of this generation and all-time, Lionel Messi, on the grandest stage of them all.
Always a man for the big occasion, he had been assigned the task of man-marking Messi many a time, whether it was Bayern vs Barcelona or Germany vs Argentina. The most noteworthy of those occasions, apart from the 2014 final, came in the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup, as Germany ran riot while winning 4-0, Schweini not only marking a peak-form Messi out of the game, but also adding two assists to highlight his all-action enforcer style of play.
He was always on hand to answer the call of the black, red and golds, as his world record of 38 major tournament appearances will attest to. An injury-ravaged 2015-'16 season with Manchester United did not deter him from playing in his fourth Euro. Coming on in the dying stages of the match against Ukraine, he ran from his own half to score a goal deep into injury time, Löw stating after the match that it hadn’t been part of the plan when he had brought his captain on.
Centre of Germany's rise
Over the years, Schweinsteiger’s positional progress and tactical discipline had proved to be at the centre of Die Nationalmannschaft’s evolution as a major tournament force. When he had come on as a 19-year-old substitute against The Netherlands in Euro 2004, the German head coach at the time, Rudi Völler, had hailed Schweini as the face of a new generation.
At home in 2006, Germany had gone agonisingly close, Lahm and Schweinsteiger giving their country a taste of what was to follow, the latter earning his team third place with two goals over Portugal. Over the next decade, the duo would be ever present in a new chapter of their country’s footballing story.
If Schweini in 2004 proved a refreshing change to the slow, rugged, defensive play at the core of an ageing team, he would prove to be the calming factor during an feverish period in German football, which had mercurial talent flowing through the doors of training academies by the time Germany reached the finals of the Euros in 2008. He watched agonisingly from his seat next to German premier Angela Merkel, missing Germany’s 1-0 defeat to an excellent Spanish team through suspension.
In 2010, Germany were playing attacking football from a different planet and Schweinsteiger’s metamorphosis from a powerful winger to a deep-lying destroyer was complete. He added the metal to the jazz that the German forwards displayed during the tournament and was part of, arguably, one of the greatest teams after the Magical Magyars in 1954 and Brazil in 1982 not to win the World Cup.
Jaded at the end
The man from Kolbermoor, located at the foothills of the Alps, looked jaded at the end of his international career. Missing a crucial penalty in the quarter-final against Italy and then giving away a penalty via a handball in the semi-final loss against France convinced him to hang up his boots, but not before clocking up an incredible 120 national team appearances.
For 12 years, Schweinsteiger had been the constant in a sea of change and had never received the credit that his fellow midfielders – Andrea Pirlo, Xavi Hernandez, and Andres Iniesta – did. Blame a footballing style that was less pleasing to the eye even as it went all-out in the quest for victory.
Yet, it all could have been so different if had he chosen skiing instead of football at the age of 14. The footballing world would have lost a warrior and an icon, and Germany might have gone two decades trophy-less despite their best efforts.