Three exciting weeks of football came to an end in Brazil last weekend with Germany beating Argentina in the final, the first European team to win a World Cup on South American soil.

I thought it was a good World Cup, people seemed to be very enthused about it and we probably had more people watching it around the world than every before.

Though I wanted Argentina to win it, I thought Germany were the rightful winners. They were the strongest team and defensively very sound.

But not only were they defensive-minded but very good at attacking as well; they were a good, solid all-round team.

As they say, the cream always rises to the top and in this instance the Germans were the cream and rightly champions.

Anybody who knows football will tell you that the Germans are always going to be there or thereabouts.

Ever since I’ve been watching World Cups the Germans always give a strong account of themselves and are strong-willed people who are able to get results. Even the German economy is strong right now while everybody else is struggling.

I would have liked to see Argentina win the World Cup for Lionel Messi, but I’m just as happy for the Germany striker Miroslav Klose who, at 36, is not going to play in another World Cup.

He is the leading all-time scorer in the World Cup, having played in four of them. I understand the captain, Philipp Lahm, has decided to call time on his international career and what a way to finish. For these two I’m glad for them.

I have a few friends in Somerset who support Germany, “Docky” Basden and Clarence Dill and “Sticks” Henderson, the Mayor of Somerset, who I see in Mangrove Bay every morning.

He had his Germany shirt on this morning and pointed to his crest when I drove by.

There were other good teams in the World Cup, too, but when it came down to the crunch the Germans were there.

The coach Joachim Löw did a marvellous job and kudos to the older players who helped the younger players throughout the tournament.

Mario Götze, who scored the winning goal in extra-time in the final, was the first substitute to score a game winning goal in the final.

It was a classy goal and you can see he was taken aback by it; he got very emotional. The Germans were able to break down the left-hand side and Andre Schürrle knocked in a wonderful cross for Götze to control it and hit it.

It was fantastic technique to be able to do that in one motion, it was a bit like the goal that James Rodríguez scored for Colombia when he brought the ball down on his chest and hit it on the volley.

Those are rare moments in football and to see these young guys perfect that skill is fantastic. Classy players do those sorts of things. If you like football those are the moments that you like. I get into it and when they cry it makes me want to cry.

It’s not just the players but even when you look at the fans you can see the passion. For that reason the World Cup was in the right place, in Brazil, where 200 million people are passionate about football, even though they didn’t win.

I just hope they are able to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch and get it right because they have tons of good players down there.

What might be hurting them is most of their players are playing in Europe where the game is different from that in South America.

They have to find a way to keep their players in Brazil like the Germans do and pay them decent money.

To see their coach Luiz Felipe Scolari get fired the day after the finals was not a total surprise.

When you are in the hot seat, whether it is Brazil or somewhere else, if the team doesn’t do well there is one person who takes the blame and that’s the coach.

You understand that going in and any coach who takes a job like that thinking he’s going to be there for the rest of his life is kidding himself.