The U-20 World cup.

I love football, and will continue to love football. If you call it soccer, footy, the beautiful game, whatever you call it does not matter. This is the ultimate sport, it has national pride, personal pride, it has generational fellowship, and it is the team, the beauty of the individual; the ability to see a man running 40 yards and drop the ball onto his path. This extra sensory perception which extends to players with the ability to make the ball seem like it is on a string. The majesty of control and the preciseness of timing, where I do not have to sit for 4 hours of a supposedly 60 minute game (my only gripe against American football, which not coincidentally I love).
But, as a fan, I hate football tournament finals, they are terrible cagey affairs. I could only think of a few finals that were actually interesting, and most of them almost are in club cup competitions where glorified all star teams are assembled, and of course produce beautiful football. Even in these competitions; those are few and far in between. So in the spirit of being a constructive fan; I will dissect the U-20 youth cup final and point out some of the changes I would love to get implemented when it comes to finals.
First change; referees; we do not come to watch you. You should be invisible, and your whistle should only be heard when it a serious foul.; which means the only offenses that should stop play are tackle from behind, handballs, scissors tackles, and of course the zidane or materazzi no more and no less. Please, please do not act like the referee from this final who not only gave a red card to one of the teams at the 30th minute, which of course forced the Ghanaians to play ten men behind the football for all time, and we ended with a terrible final. Another thing referees whatever happened to the whole it can be a foul but not a yellow card. I mean unless it is one of the aforementioned fouls no yellow cards. They will only put us in the Ghanaian situation, which kills a final.
Secondly coaches, please watch Brazil in the 2002, and France in 1998, Fortune favors the bold. Your team is just as nervous as your opponents. You want to take the nervousness from them, attack and attack, you might luck out into an early goal, because the other team will be too rattled, and get the other team to come out of their cagey game, and voila counter-attack. You will win most of the time. If you play for penalties, most times you will lose, unless you are an African team, playing on African soil, trying to win the tournament for the first time ever. I am sorry Brazil; even I knew you were going to lose when penalties started, VIVA L’AFRIQUE! You should have ended things during normal time but you were content to play for penalties too. You barely created any chances even though you had close to 80% possession. This loss is on your coach. Instead of crying (I know it hurts) blame your coach and smack him around for not going all out attack.
Lastly, and most important, coaches tell your players to keep their heads, no more Zidanes, Matterazis. In fact please show every bone-headed decision and please note that every team whose player made the bone-headed decision lost the finals. If you have to do a slide-show, a few viewings, whatever it takes do it. Players sometimes need to be reminded that the moment is bigger than whatever the other player is going to say to you, or if he grabs you, the referee will catch your reaction and not his. So let that be the lesson for all players.