How Luca Brecel struck oil at World Snooker Championship as Crucible king brought new meaning to the word slick
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Updated 02/05/2023 at 16:57 GMT
Luca Brecel's 18-15 win over Mark Selby in a riotous 47th World Championship final at the Crucible will be celebrated as a landmark moment for snooker, writes Desmond Kane. In becoming the first player from continental Europe to conquer the Crucible since 1977, the man dubbed the 'Belgian Bullet' dispensed with the notion that you need a back-up safety plan to claim the sport's biggest prize.
Brecel clinches 'sensational' maiden world title against Selby at Crucible
A ground-breaking 47th World Snooker Championship in Sheffield that began with orange powder being scattered across a Crucible snooker table ended with a magical sprinkling of gold dust on the old green baize. From Belgium with the Luca of love.
, Luca Brecel struck oil in the Steel City by bringing new meaning to the word slick during an 18-15 win over four-time winner and strongly fancied favourite Mark Selby in a wildly undulating final that had to be seen to be believed.
The £500,000 first prize he snagged for his career-defining triumph was a form of black-ball gold for an unrelenting and irrepressible 28-year-old force of nature.
Of much greater value was how he went about his mission as a potting prospector during the 17 days of his life that included a uniquely giddy approach to pre-match preparation.
There is clearly method in the madness with his stellar effort coming before some more celebratory drinks – this time alongside a magnanimous Selby until daybreak on the morning after the frantic night before.
Who said there are no characters left in snooker? Brecel may not be big Bill Werbeniuk, but he is an intelligent, good-natured bloke with a measured approach to life that is at odds with his extroverted willingness to dispense with the sport’s much-loved percentage shot.
"I really have the best team, best friends, best parents and best girlfriend in the world which makes me strong on the table," he said in the immediate vicinity of his career-crowning glory.
"If you don't have that team, it's difficult to play the best game."
During times in what felt like a frazzled free-for-all, especially in a rabid semi-final with trigger-happy 20-year-old gunhand Si Jiahui – see no safety, play no safety was his mantra on a wonderful debut year – Brecel lived up to his excoriating handle as the ‘Belgian Bullet’.
Always apparently leaving one in the chamber to bail him out of a tight spot, he was the last man standing from the sport's acid test.
Even when he witnessed Selby claw his way back from 15-10 to 16-15 behind with some time-served formidable matchplay nous on a manic Monday, Brecel refused to crumble when he endured a ghastly 50-minute period of failing to pot a ball and wilting with his antenna from distance suddenly scrambled.
He was not to be denied his destiny even when Selby, as expected coming on strong after compiling the historic first maximum 147 in a Crucible final 24 hours earlier, crept within three frames of a fifth title.
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147 in full: Watch Selby's 'wonderful' maximum break in Crucible final
This onlooker had tipped Brecel for world title riches during the pandemic tournament three years ago.
The only surprise is he has taken so long to reach the potting promised land, but he is proof that nice guys finish first in the cut-throat world of professional sport.
To borrow a line from Humphrey Bogart in the 1942 epic Casablanca: Here’s Luca-ing at you, kid. Back in Bogie’s time period, Joe Davis had totted up 14 of his 15 World Championships before the start of the Second World War.
It was Davis, the man who purchased the old trophy lifted by Luca on Monday in 1926 for £19, who penned the book How I Play Snooker, a tome first published in 1949 and later read and recommended by modern day world champions Ray Reardon, Steve Davis and Ronnie O’Sullivan about the basics of the craft they mastered.
One suspects Luca won’t be dusting it down any time soon for a quick nosey. Not when you have penned your own original script on how to conquer the Crucible.
On a bank holiday Monday brimming with possibilities, this was a heist never before witnessed at the Crucible as Brecel threw caution to the wind and was rewarded handsomely for an uninhibited policy of all-out attack.
The accepted logic in snooker states that any player attempting to win the World Championship, the most challenging competition in any cue sport across the planet, must have a Plan B to fall back on when Plan A isn’t working.
Selby, probably the finest matchplayer of all time with an admirable single-mindedness matching his refusal to retreat, has stoically strode to this tournament using Plan A, B, C and D. He won it in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2021 at times playing within himself.
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White and McManus hail Brecel and his 'character' after Crucible triumph
“I love winning, but I don’t mind losing and that’s a dangerous combination to have," said Brecel. "I always play the same game, people say I don’t have a B game but I do, I just don’t use it."
Luca’s Plan B for Belgium is committing yourself to ensure Plan A works.
There is no failsafe for failure with such an approach, with no guarantees and no refunds for lost years. Yet his own Eurovision astonishingly paid off where others have traditionally come up short.
A 21-year-old Judd Trump and his euphoric brand of naughty snooker almost carried it off at the 2011 World Championship when he lost to a teak-tough John Higgins 18-15 having led 10-7 after the first day of the final.
He was a much more measured figure when he triumphed against Higgins in his 18-9 win in 2019, producing a stout tactical game to curb and complement his natural attacking enthusiasm.
Jimmy ‘Whirlwind’ White came a cropper in losing 18-16 to Steve Davis in 1984 as the mercurial ‘People’s Champion’, but could not quite clasp the trophy he craved despite taming his tendencies to showboat, appearing and losing in another five finals against John Parrott in 1991 and Stephen Hendry in 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1994.
New world No. 2 Brecel simply turned up in Sheffield hell-bent on laying waste to his opponents with an intimidating exhibition of audacious, crowd-pleasing long potting machismo laced with heavy break-building and a swaggering gait that marks him out as a real menace alongside peak O’Sullivan, Neil Robertson and Selby.
It worked a treat at a venue where he had remarkably failed to record a win in five previous attempts before this year. He had failed to qualify for the Crucible on six other occasions. Talk about coming of age.
Born in Dilsen-Stokkem in Belgium, Brecel becomes the first champion from continental Europe and joins Neil Robertson (2010), Ken Doherty (1997) and Cliff Thorburn (1980) as the only non-UK winners.
He also remains the youngest player to appear at the Crucible after losing 10-5 to Stephen Maguire in his World Championship debut aged 17 years and 45 days in 2012.
His ferocious brand of no-holds-barred snooker left the 2004 UK champion Maguire in admiration of his young opponent's natural attacking instincts. He intimated that it was only a matter of time before he became world champion.
"He's a potting machine isn't he?" said Maguire. "He's one of the fastest players I've seen and he's fearless.”
He retains such raw instincts 11 years later and was not interested in becoming embroiled in elongated tactical warfare with Selby. Which he would certainly have lost.
With Brecel in his element, Selby and Si could have been forgiven, to use another Bogart line, for thinking: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine."
Brecel lifted the European Under-19 Championship aged only 14 and accounted for Mark Williams, O’Sullivan and Selby, battle-hardened prize fighters with 14 world titles between them, at this trend-setting staging of the tournament.
He ran in five centuries in the final from an overall haul of 12 and another 44 breaks ranging from 50-99 during his five-match winning run that justified his high-wire act of going for broke rather than baulk.
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'Extraordinary shot!' - Brecel sinks 'one of the shots of the tournament'
Trailing defending champion O’Sullivan 10-6 in the quarter-finals, he despatched an off-colour snooker GOAT, wrapping up the final seven frames in only 79 minutes in a 13-10 statement victory which hinted at more to come.
In the best possible sense, he is a flat-track bully when he senses weakness in the other chair with O'Sullivan left dazed after his sudden departure.
"He’s such a good player, I love watching him play," said the seven-time champion. "His cue action, he gets through the ball so well. It’s incredible. The whip he gets on the white, the top spin, the thud he hits the ball with.
"He’s such a dynamic player, probably the most talented snooker player I’ve ever seen."
Brecel launched the mother of all comebacks from 14-5 behind against Si in the semi-final, the biggest recovery in the televised era of the tournament, to come through 17-15 after winning 12 of the final 13 frames before leading Selby from start to finish in the final.
Against such a fearsome figure in his own familiar backyard of exacting frames and pregnant pauses, this illustrates the level of self-belief required to overcome inner doubts which creep up as part of existence.
After winning the China Championship, Scottish Open, a couple of Championship Leagues and finishing runner-up in the UK Championship as his major moments since 2017, Brecel has provided his country with a landmark sporting achievement.
For decades snooker envisaged Ding Junhui's coronation at a World Championship. China’s moment may yet come via the majestic play of Si or indeed Ding in future years, but Brecel has planted a flag first from mainland Europe amid a barrage of plants.
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'Goodness me!' - Phenomenal plant from Si
“The interest in snooker has been exploding in Belgium for the last couple of days so I don’t know what’s going to happen now, but I can’t wait to see it,” he said.
“There is no reason for me to feel any pressure any more, I have achieved the ultimate dream, it is life changing and I’m sure it will set me up for many more things to come.”
Is he the Kevin De Bruyne of the green baize? Or the Eddy Merckx of exhibition snooker? No, he is a one-off in his own right, an original of the species, but deserves to be mentioned alongside such Belgian sporting royalty.
Brecel has boldly gone where no man has gone before, a pioneering thrill-seeker whose Crucible victory will be celebrated as a seismic, stand-alone moment since Sheffield first housed the event in 1977.
His astonishing triumph has also set a new gold standard for Crucible greats in what can be achieved without a safety net.
How Brecel solved the Crucible conundrum
2012
- Lost 10-5 to Stephen Maguire first round
2017
- Lost 10-9 to Marco Fu first round
2018
- Lost 10-6 to Ricky Walden first round
2019
- Lost 10-9 to Gary Wilson first round
2022
- Lost 10-5 to Noppon Saengkham first round
2023
- Won 10-9 v Ricky Walden first round
- Won 13-11 v Mark Williams second round
- Won 13-10 v Ronnie O’Sullivan quarter-finals
- Won 17-15 v Si Jiahui semi-finals
- Won 18-15 v Mark Selby final
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