Sealing the World Cup With a Kiss

A fan’s remix of a post-game interview between Spain’s captain, Iker Casillas, and his girlfriend, Sara Carbonero on Sunday night,

Soon after Spain won the World Cup on Sunday in South Africa, the Spanish broadcaster Telecinco sent its star sideline reporter, Sara Carbonero, to interview the national team’s goalkeeper and captain, Iker Casillas — who also happens to be her boyfriend. The interview was a sequel of sorts to a far more awkward one between the journalist and the player after the team opened the tournament with a loss.

The earlier interview was at first little remarked in Spain, where both participants were judged to have acquitted themselves with professionalism. But, thanks to a poorly-sourced report in the British press, it soon sparked a wave of speculation in the English-speaking world about whether the goalkeeper’s fetching girlfriend was a distraction to the player — or “hen-pecking” him on camera — and so was to blame for the team’s loss.

Even though the Spanish press roundly denounced the reports by their British colleagues as “nonsense,” and defended Ms. Carbonero’s right to do her job despite her relationship with Spain’s captain, the idea that she was somehow at fault for Spain’s stuttering start to the tournament lingered for weeks.

So on Sunday night, Telecinco proudly posted an article on its Web site with video of their reporter’s post-game interview with her boyfriend, minutes after he had hoisted the World Cup above his head, which ended with a sudden kiss on the lips.

The soccer blog Kickette reports:

Basically, here’s the translation from Iker: he repeats how happy he is about 40,000 times before he thanks his parents, his (hot, younger, French-speaking) brother, and then pauses to shed a tear. After he collects himself he says, ‘and you’, before going in for the kill.

Telecinco explains that a shocked Ms. Carbonero, before regaining her composure and tossing back to her colleagues, could only respond, “madre mía,” — which is Spanish for “mama mia.”

So, a happy ending to one of the World Cup’s many subplots. In other news, the Spanish victory, coupled with Germany’s win in Saturday’s contest for third place, meant that “the Oracle of Obehausen,” Paul the octopus, finished the tournament with a perfect record having indicated which team would win before all eight matches he was consulted on.