A Father's Love For The World Cup

The World Cup is down to the Semifinals with tomorrow’s Brazil-Germany match and Wednesdays Netherlands-Argentina match with the winners moving on to the Final on Sunday July 13^th. At this point, with the way that the final four teams are playing, it could go any way. If Silva wasn’t out with his second yellow card and Neymar out with a back injury I would have picked Brazil to take it all but with those loses any of the four teams can win the title.

 

To celebrate the final leg of the World Cup I am going to post up some of my recent soccer pick ups. As I have said before the 2014 Prizm World Cup release is one of my favorite releases of the year so I am targeting these cards to build a set. One of the things that bothers me about this set is the flood of parallels but that doesn’t mean I don’t mind picking some up from time to time and here are the three Father’s Day parallels that I picked up this past week. The cards were inserted in to Panini’s Father’s Day packs and are #/7 each. The cards are exactly the same as the base cards except for the "Panini Limited Edition" on the front and the #/7 on the back.

 

While the top named players Father’s Day parallels are selling for well over $150 there are plenty that are selling for less than $5 with shipping. Together these cards cost me a total of $9.05, including the shipping.

 

First up is Alexandre Song

 

 If it were not for Suarez biting Italy’s Chiellini on the shoulder during a match Song would have taken the “A-Hole of the World Cup” award. He was beyond physical, hitting and punching other players during his two games. He received a red card against Croatia and was banned for 3 games by FIFA. He is currently at the center of an investigation, along with 6 other Cameroon players, by Cameroon‘s football federation for fixing World Cup matches. It was no surprise that I was the only bidder of this card and it cost me .99 cents and $2.50 shipping.

 

Next up is Joao Moutinho

 

Moutinho is a solid player but no goals, no assists and being overshadowed by Cristiano Ronaldo on a Portuguese team that did not advance past group play kept his card prices very reasonable. I was happy to pick up this card for $2.25 shipped.

 

Finally is Igor Akinfeev

 

Akinfeev is by no means the best goalie at the World Cup but in the first two games he gave up only 2 goals and with Russia needing a win over South Korea to move along he had to become a brick wall. If you want to surmise Akinfeev’s World Cup experience just watch Korea’s Keun-Ho Lee’s long distance goal in the 69^th minute. Just plain ugly goalkeeping but it worked out in my favor, .99 cents plus $2.32 shipped and I was able to catch and keep the card in my hand.