THURSDAY’S BIG STORIES
Fair Play, Poland, Fair Play
The World Cup is constantly finding new ways to surprise and entertain. You think you’ve been through every possible emotional state, every conceivable florescence of footballing desire, and then you find yourself staring at the television and asking, begging, praying: please, please, exactly two more yellow cards.
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In the end, Poland managed not to kick anybody too hard, and Saudi Arabia’s late consolation goal sealed the deal. We would not see Group C decided by the drawing of lots. Instead we’ve ended up with something much more depressing: another game for Poland.
Perhaps that’s a little unfair. Perhaps it’s a hard line to walk, to go into a game knowing that defeat will be fine as long as it’s not too spectacular, and that the other game is the really important one. It’s hard enough to keep track of Lionel Messi when you don’t have anything else to worry about. And Argentina, particularly in the second half, started to look a bit like the team they’ve been in the last few years.
But on the other hand, Poland were dreadful. Unambitious to the point of invisibility; shaky to the point of near-implosion. Perhaps it was all a galaxy-brained plan to protect that fair play record by barely getting close enough to commit any fouls. Or perhaps a gesture of kindness to Wojciech Szczęsny: he must be worried about the situation at Juventus. Let’s see if we can take his mind off things.
This isn’t just the Warm-Up being mean for meanness’ sake. This is a genuine concern. By virtue of finishing second in the group, Poland head into the last 16 to play France, in what scientists are already predicting could be ‘the worst game of football of all time’. The solitary confinement of Robert Lewandowski against Didier Deschamps’ punishmentball. We give Poland as much chance of actually beating France as we would Mexico or Saudi Arabia, but we know which games we’d rather watch.
Argentina’s greatest enemy, perhaps, is the schedule. Both they and their next opponents Australia have a brutal turnaround ahead of them: two days and change. After the game, Lionel Scaloni called it “crazy”, and said it was really harshing his buzz. “Today we are happy but not euphoric … It’s almost 1am, tomorrow is Thursday. We could have had more rest.” He didn’t add “If only we’d beaten Saudi Arabia, we could have rotated here, but could we make things easy on ourselves? No we could not. We’re our own worst enemies. Clowns, the lot of us, and me the clowniest of them all.” But we all knew what he meant.
Your Dark Horse Looks a Bit Pony
An ancient and well-worn World Cup proverb: beware the Dark Horse. If you’re a big team, you might be caught unawares. And if you’re a spectator trying to sound clever before the tournament begins, you might end up looking very silly indeed. Fancy Denmark, do you? Semi-finals at the Euros, was it? Christian Eriksen back, is he? Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Denmark failed to score in two of their three games, managing only a goal in the defeat to France. From memory, we can recall exactly one really good chance over the two games. That came against Tunisia, when Andreas Cornelius got confused and tried to head a ball that was there to be kicked, and so missed from a couple of feet. Otherwise, it’s been a case of half-chances and quarter-chances not converted, and pretty passing moves smothered on the edge of the box.
Of course, you’d hardly call Australia’s goal yesterday a good chance. Mathew Leckie was all alone, on the edge of the box, with a defender and a very large goalkeeper between him and glory: one man against all the massed forces of xG. Call it beautiful precision, call it luck, call it the dread power of narrative. Three games is just the right amount of time for a team to ride a minor statistical anomaly into something quite beautiful.
Or for a team to create the square root of naff all and go home with as many goals (one) as points (also one). Lack of a cutting edge leaves a team vulnerable to sides that can turn up, run themselves into the ground, get a little lucky, and get crucial bodyparts in the way of almost everything. Sides like Tunisia, say, or Australia. Denmark knew what they were up against less than two minutes into their first game, when Aïssa Laïdouni slid into a tackle, cleared everything out, and then celebrated like he’d just toppled an emperor. And over the three games that followed, they never quite got themselves un-rattled.
VAR-Ha-Ha-Ha
That strange, worrying noise you can hear is the laws of the game, creaking. Another day of World Cup football, another day of frankly weird VAR action. At this point, the beautiful game resembles nothing so much as the old You Are The Ref comic strip come to glorious HD life.
France are asking for their goal against Tunisia to be reinstated, on the grounds that the referee let the game kick off at 1-1 and there are no takesies-backsies once the game has restarted. Whatever the French for takesies-backsies is. Meanwhile, in chilling news for goalkeepers everywhere, it appears that some VARs are deciding to get tough on the incidental contact between a keeper’s windmilling arms and a passing forward’s face. At least, if that forward is Leo Messi.
We have been lucky, thus far, in that the controversial (as opposed to merely confusing or irritating) VAR calls have all made minimal difference to the outcomes of the tournament. Portugal were already winning when they got their non-penalty, France will finish top of the group regardless of what happens with their complaint, and Messi missed his penalty. But to us, these feel like warning tremors. Something spectacular, daft, and most of all important is coming down the line. That earpiece, that little monitor, they’re just getting warmed up. Brace. And keepers, keep your hands to yourselves.
IN OTHER NEWS
Notes towards greater European integration, part 265.
And this gesture of fraternity has been accepted at the highest level.
HAT TIP
Watching Wales in Qatar has been deeply frustrating (unless you’re English, in which case it’s probably been quite funny). It’s not that they failed to get out of the group, they were never favourites to do that. It’s that they got to the tournament by being a sharp, well-organised team that made the most of their wildly variable talent level, only to arrive and look like a feckless rabble trying to close-harmony sing their way into the last 16.
As Pritchard puts it, “to simply bask in the fading afterglow of previous achievements would be to do Wales a disservice. As a nation in a sporting context or otherwise, Wales has never enjoyed a global audience like the one it has enjoyed at this World Cup and, as we have heard from players, fans and politicians, this is a country that wants to project a vibrant and self-confident image of itself to the world. So with that in mind, there should be demands that these historic new standards are maintained, that qualifying for World Cups should be something to aspire to on a regular basis.”
OTHER HAT TIP
“The 1982 tournament was the first to face the tricky problem of trying to whittle 24 competitors down to a suitable number for a knockout bracket. They eschewed getting to 16 or eight in favour of a double group-stage to leave just four. … This format is a touch less fiddly than some third-place teams making a last 16 but is also altogether too much group stage and not enough knockout. It all takes too long to arrive at the serious stuff.
“It also shafted England, who swept all before them in the first group stage – including eventual semi-finalists France – before a couple of goalless draws in round two sent them packing. Up to you whether you put that in the positive or negative column for the format as a concept.”
COMING UP
First it’s the end of Group F. Canada are out but can still ruin Morocco’s party, on the condition that angst-riddled Belgium can find something against Croatia. Then Group E will resolve itself: Germany need to beat Costa Rica and hope that Spain beat Japan. Or at least keep them to a scoreless draw. Otherwise it gets complicated.
But not to worry. Andi Thomas will be here tomorrow with all the solutions.
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