Germany And Argentina Face Off In World Cup Final

Transcript

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers. The final match of the World Cup is almost over. Right now Argentina and Germany are still tied 0-0. NPR's Russell Lewis is on the line from Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro where thousands of fans are gathered to watch the game. Hey Russell.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hey Kelly, it's more like tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands here.

MCEVERS: Wow, It gets to be a pint where it's hard to count. How - tell us about the game so far.

GOLDMAN: Wow, it's been pretty exciting of course, you know, there's no score yet. Both teams actually have been evenly matched. Argentina's star Lionel Messi has had a couple almost - several of Germany's strikers have also had a couple of shots but nothing has gone into the back of the net yet. It is been a very sort of, exciting game at this point and fans just can't wait to see what the final outcome is.

MCEVERS: Right, so they can't wait but what's the mood been like so far, especially among Brazilians there?

GOLDMAN: Well it's been very crazy, as you would imagine, of course Argentina is right next-door to here, Brazil, tens of thousands of Argentinean fans have rolled in here in the last couple of days. It is definitely a pro-Argentina crowd here, there are not as many Germans here, but they certainly can make themselves heard. But the Argentines are the ones that are really make their voices heard. They are the loudest by far.

MCEVERS: And even though they are the archrivals of Brazil they're being treated well?

GOLDMAN: Everything that I've seen so far, of course the Argentines have been sort of rubbing it into Brazil just a little bit, talking about the 7-1 loss to Germany and then of course the loss yesterday to the Netherlands. You know, there's always a little bit of playfulness of course, and as you say Argentina and Brazil are archrivals on the soccer field and elsewhere as well, but so far it doesn't seem to be anything so bad yet.

MCEVERS: So, the atmosphere there where you are sounds pretty good but earlier today outside the actual stadium things turn a little violent. Can you tell us about that?

GOLDMAN: Yeah, we weren't too far away from the stadium and there was one of several protests that were held in Rio de Janeiro today and protesters sort of got mixed up a little bit with police. There were probably four or 500 protesters showed up (unitelligible) the protesters just continued basically, they're protest against the high cost of hosting the World Cup, against public corruption and against police violence, for the right to continue to demonstrate. So it was sort of a, you know, the moments of tenseness of course - the protesters are sort of moving up and down the street, they had blocked one of the streets from cars and the police had actually henned them in and basically had them circled, and wouldn't let them leave. And so the protesters sort of kept moving block to block, block to block and then at one point something happened and all then all the sudden the police started firing these stun grenades and firing off tear gas, the whole crowd dispersed and everything. And it just continue to get a little bit worse and at one point police were using batons on a protester right in front of me, seemingly for no reason. So definitely some moments - some tense moments there.

MCEVERS: That's NPR's Russell Lewis in Rio de Janeiro. Russell thanks so much.

GOLDMAN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.