FIFA World Cup 2014: Top 5 Unique Moments

Take yourself a week back and it wouldn’t be hard to imagine moments which topped the charts for you - Who would eventually be the world champion this time?

You waited four years for a month of madness, and when it’s finally over, few unique moments linger in your mind, while few may even slowly fade into oblivion as time flies by.

Here are a few unique moments which caught our attention in the sense that such things were never seen in any World Cup before.

Cooling Time: If you follow T20 cricket, you’d know about ‘time-outs’. Something similar happened for the first time this World Cup. The Group 16 match between Holland and Mexico in Fortaleza saw the Portuguese referee Pedro Proenca implementing the first official cooling break in the competition.

The cooling break was of three minutes each in both the halves for the players to rehydrate. This came into play because of the hot and humid conditions in Brazil. In this case, the temperature went up to 39 C°.

Vanishing Free-kick Spray: The ‘Magic Spray’, invented by Heine Allemagne, which keeps the defenders' wall 9 metres away and disappears after 60 seconds became one of the big successes of this World Cup.

Source- The Guardian

The ingredients of the spray include water (80%), butane gas (17%) and surfactant (1%). The butane expands when the pressure changes and forms small drops of butane covered with water on the ground. Eventually, the butane evaporates, leaving only water and an invisible surfactant residue on the ground.

Goal-line Technology: At this year's FIFA World Cup, wristwatches worn by the referees had an add-on feature to just showing time. It buzzed within a second each time the ball crossed the goal line.

Source- FIFA

This came as a result of England’s Frank Lampard’s goal being disallowed the last World Cup in a crucial match against Germany. The ball had clearly crossed the line. Thus, this technology was introduced in this World Cup to avoid such ghost or phantom goals.

First Left-footed Hat-trick: Yes, 84 years after the World Cup started, this was the first where the left-footed player Xherdan Shaqiri from Switzerland scored a hat-trick. You must be wondering what happened to the other great left-footed players like Diego Maradona, Roberto Carlos, Lionel Messi or Johan Cruyff?

Source-Sportskeeda

Goalkeeper Blinded by a Laser Beam Concedes a Goal: Sounds freaky, but yeah, the Russian goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev was blinded by the beam from a laser pen directed at him from someone in the crowd.

Source-Guardian

This resulted in Akinfeev not being able to defend a shot kicked by the Algerian Islam Slimani. The match between Russia and Algeria ended in a 1–1 draw. It’s sad because Russia needed a win in order to go to the next round. What a strange way for a team to go out of the World Cup!

-Sayan Ganguly

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