On With the Show

FIFA’s message to the world

WE’RE underway with Russia 2018, the first two days are in the books, and I’m killing some time here before the bonanza that is the Saturday quadruple header kicks off with France v. Argentina at 3:00 a.m local time – yes, that’s right, I said 3:00 a.m. But this is the World Cup, damn it, and sometimes that means you gotta be up at 3:00 a.m. for kickoff. This is no time for sleep. Sleep is for sissies.

Four games down mean four interesting storylines. Two of the games were dramatic, if not always that exciting. One of them, meanwhile, was as an exciting a group game as I’ve seen since, well … honestly, I’m hard-pressed to recall the last group game which was as good as the thrilling 3:3 draw between Spain and Portugal – in part because it’s rare you see teams that are as good as those two paired in a group. The fourth game also made me comb through my memory as well, as I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a team in the World Cup as bad as Saudi Arabia.

But there’s only one place where we should start this entry, which is with the spectacular diving header in the 95th minute by Morocco’s Aziz Bouhaddouz to give his team a dramatic 1:0 … loss.

Good technique, lousy sense of direction

• It’s bad enough to lose a game when you’re dominating the opposition. Morocco came out flying in this game, swarming in the first 25’ while Iran could barely get the ball out of their own half, but missing chance after chance. Iran was so hopeless early on that Morocco were basically playing a back two and sending their fullbacks on bombardier missions all the way down the Iranian flanks.
It’s worse to lose a game when you’re dominating the opposition which has more or less stopped trying to win the game. The Iranians looked dangerous on the break for a spell – mostly because the Moroccan defense thought so little of them and basically stopped paying attention – but the game turned into a slog in the second half and the Iranians retreated, parking the bus and trying to play for the goalless draw. Even then, the Iranians still almost screwed it up, but a shot by Moroccan star Ziyech was parried away by the Iranian goalkeeper (who has the sort of back story that makes you want to root for the guy). Iran were basically killing time for the last 30 minutes.
It’s worse, further still, to lose a game when you’re dominating the opposition, which has more or less stopped trying to win the game, by doing something as mind-numbingly stupid as Bouhaddouz did in the 95th minute – a play set up by a completely silly and needless foul on the flank, affording the Iranians one last set-piece opportunity. The late-game set piece is one of the game’s most perilous predicaments. Guys are tired, the legs are going, it’s easy for the mind to go wandering amid the fields. We saw thrice today where teams threw away points giving away set pieces late in games on completely needless fouls where simply playing sound defense would cause the offensive player’s movements to amount to pretty much nothing.
The ball that’s served up on this Iranian free kick isn’t great, but it also isn’t terrible. Bouhaddouz has to play the ball in this situation – he’s got two white shirts behind him, which speaks to some generally bad defending from the rest of his teammates. But he’s not under any real duress here. All he has to do is make a simple play, maybe concede a corner and take time to reorganize. But instead, he unleashes the sort of spectacular diving header that is the stuff of a striker’s dream. Given that he normally plies his trade as a forward, you can tell that he’s been practicing. All of a sudden, the Iranians have three points, which were three more than they deserved.

This was a game neither of these teams could afford to lose, and couldn’t even really afford to draw given the other two teams is in the group. Morocco had the looks of being the best of the African sides in the run-up, their success built on a citadel of a defense which hadn’t allowed an opponent to score in all of CAF qualifying. And they still haven’t allowed an opponent to score, yet realistically, their World Cup is probably over. Iran, meanwhile, have always been a team capable of playing some decent football but who rarely gets the results at this level. I wouldn’t exactly say this game was decent, nor would I say the better team won. A friend of mine likened Iran winning this game to playing pool and watching the other guy going about running the table, only to then scratch on the 8-ball. But this game can be cruel and you best accept the gifts when they come. They also brought some pride back to the AFC after what was a shambolic performance by the Saudis in the opener.

• All it took was one game for me to completely rethink my opinions of this tournament. Just watching that atrocious performance by Saudi Arabia in their 5-goal defeat to Russia in the opening game did it for me. There is no doubt who the worst team in this tourney is. Quite honestly, there hasn’t been a performance that bad in the World Cup in years. Hell, Tahiti were better than that in the Confed Cup in 2013. Tahiti were, at least, playing against élite opposition in that tournament, in the form of three separate continental champions. The Saudis got waxed by a Russia team widely considered to be the weakest host nation ever, a team which had was winless in seven straight matches prior to this competition kicking off. All it took was 12 minutes before a Saudi defender fell and gifted an open header to the Russians, at which point the folly begin.
And let’s give the Russians some credit here. Their goals in this match were well-taken. But the Russian strategy – which proved to be a sound one – appeared to be to let the Saudis try to play out of the back and carelessly give the ball back to them. Positive Saudi possession consisted mostly of one guy going on about a 60-yard run into a blind alley. Their best effort going forward wound up being a wayward shot sailing high over the bar and into outer space – an act of “hunting pigeons,” according to the cool Saudi slang I learned. (And let’s be honest here, one of the best things about the World Cup is learning new soccer slang.)
I’ve spoken poorly of Asian football in the past, but I can’t speak any more poorly about it than Saudi Arabia did on Thursday. Seriously, what does it say about your confederation when a team this bad earns a qualifying spot for the World Cup? They do no phase of the game well: they have nothing going forward, they clearly can’t defend, and the goalkeeper’s reaction was so slow to the fifth goal – a well-taken free kick he wasn’t ever going to get – that his obligatory dive was still taking place as the Russians were already celebrating. He looked more like he was belly-flopping into a swimming pool.
The Saudis have 17 of their 23 playing on two teams in the domestic league, and while such an arrangement leads to familiarity, such familiarity can also breed contempt. Apparently, several La Liga clubs were willing to take on some Saudi players this past season, undoubtedly happy to cash some Saudi cheques for doing so, and these guys played less than an hour of first-team football combined while they were there. There is always something of an unknown quality to a team that is entirely domestically-based – they may be good, they may not be – but it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for the Saudi league.
And remember, folks, as bad as that team is – and they are really bad – the U.S. contrived to lose to a must-win game to a Trinidad & Tobago team that’s even worse.

Lettuce hands

• Cristiano Ronaldo managed to have about as good a day as one can have for a guy who just had an €18.8 million judgment levied against him in a tax evasion case that morning – an act which, given the timing and the fact that it occurred in a Spanish courtroom, may very have well have been an attempt act of big-time trolling. Ronaldo had a hat trick today in a 3:3 game which had everything. High drama, back-and-forth action, great players making great plays, and also a few comical gaffes along the way. Great games often have great mistakes, and this one had some doozies. The penalty Nacho gave away was pitiful – yeah, Ronaldo went for a dive, but Nacho got completely cooked by him and left in a lazy boot. And the second goal, of course, was a shocker, as David De Gea – widely considered the best goalkeeper in the world – went all rubber wristed at the wrong time and played a pretty routine shot like a hand grenade. As I’ve said before, the shot that’s right at you is actually one of the most difficult of shots to judge – and the fact that it’s right at you makes you like even more of a horse’s ass when you mess it up.
But that third goal from Ronaldo, meanwhile, came on a free kick and was an absolute thing of beauty:

I’ve always loved Ronaldo’s game, and I miss Ronaldo’s game during the Real Madrid season. Ronaldo just doesn’t do very much when he plays for Real Madrid. Some of this is by design – he’ll never not play, but he’s into his 30s now, so Zidane basically designed a system in which he can be dangerous without having to do too much and tax his body. They can get away with this, of course, because they have a ridiculous team with ridiculous talent all over the park, but Ronaldo tends to just disappear for 30-40 minute stretches of Real games, only to pop into the right spaces to finish off chances.
And when he plays for Portugal, of course, he has to do much more. I spoke four years ago, in the aftermath of Portugal’s 2:2 draw with the U.S., about the cross he made for the equalizer, some 94th minute cross from 50 yards in the 90° heat that he puts on a platter, in between American defenders, right there for the forward to head in an equalizer. There aren’t five guys on this earth who can make that pass. Ronaldo can make all the plays, but doesn’t have to do so most of time. And here he was today, at the center of everything, running at defenders and making them shake. His speed and transition game was just devastating. Spain just didn’t know what to do with him. I have missed that Ronaldo and it is great to see it once more.
And Spain looked great as well, especially given the distractions, thanks to everyone involved in Spanish football deciding that setting themselves ablaze right before the World Cup begins was a good idea. Spanish federation president Luis Rubiales fired head coach Julen Lopetegui – just days before La Rojo’s first game – when it was announced Lopetegui had agreed to replace Zinedine Zidane as the coach of Real Madrid. Rubiales tried to paint this as something he had no choice but to do, which is, of course, nonsense. Yeah, you did have a choice. How about you just let the guy coach and then let him walk when it’s over? What’s the problem with that? There is none, really.
Everyone involved in this imbroglio winds up looking pretty dumb. Rubiales flying off the handle at Real is just the latest in a long line of squabbles between Spain’s federation and the two super clubs of Spanish football, Real and F.C. Barcelona. Rubiales hates the fact that those two – and, more and more, Atleti as well – act as if they’re bigger than the federation. Which, frankly, they are. This has been the source of all sorts of bickering about things like TV deals and the such, as Real and Barca can basically go out and negotiate their own deals for everything and ignore the rest of the country. Rubiales apparently decided that now was the time to put his foot down and stand up to Real for being meddlesome which, in the bigger picture, is dumb since the best thing for the federation would be for Spain to win the bloody World Cup! I mean, let’s keep that in mind here. YOU CAN WIN THE DAMN WORLD CUP! Why on earth would you mess with that?
But you can ask the same of Lopetegui as well. You know you’re dealing with something of a prickly character in charge of the fed, so why are you pushing his hot button? This isn’t even a particularly difficult transaction – like most all Spanish footballing contracts, his contains a simple release clause, in this case something around €2 million or so, and if you pay it, the guy is free. It’s not like this had to be done in secret, and it’s not like it needed to be done right now. And again, he’s coaching a team good enough to win the damn tournament! Why would you risk throwing that away? Maybe he just thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. I have no idea what he was thinking.
And if you’re Real, what’s the hurry? It’s not like much business is being done during the World Cup. No one’s seriously buying or selling right now because guy’s values are going to fluctuate – somewhat foolishly so – based on how they do in this tourney. There was no great need to do this now. It could have waited.
About all that anyone’s managed to accomplish here is make a mess and create chaos where it didn’t need to exist. Fortunately, most everyone involved in Spanish football is used to dealing with crazy makers, so they’ll shrug it off as best they can. It’s a mess that no one needed to make, but everyone seemed determined to do so.

How did he miss this?

• I suspected Mo Salah was never going to play for Egypt against Uruguay. It’s the right decision by the Egyptians, even though they lost the opener. Sitting on no points at -1 after one game is not the end of the world. Salah reinjuring himself in a cameo would have been.
Russia’s big win changes the calculus for the next game, however. The big 5-spot from the Russians means that they can now play their next two games the way they really want to play, which is on the counter. They don’t have to chase results, and a draw against the Pharoahs in the second match would suit them quite nicely. whereas it wouldn’t help Egypt at all. As trash as the Saudis are, Egypt can’t afford to leave it late and be chasing a big number in the final match. So Salah basically has to play against the Russians even if he’s not 100% – and, really, how can he be?
Uruguay played the first hour of this match like a team that had read too many of the pre-tournament press clippings about how great they are. There has been ample buzz about them coming in, with predictions of them possibly even reaching the final. This happens pretty much with every World Cup, of course. One of the South American nations not named Brazil or Argentina because a favorite of hipster football pundits everywhere, only to then frequently fizzle and unimpress. And while Uruguay may have had much the better of the chances throughout the game – and, really, how can Suárez possibly miss that 24th-minute chance? – the fact is that Egypt played harder than they did. They left it late, of course, turning to one of their Atletico Madrid set-piece masters in Giménez to head home a free kick after a dimwitted Egyptian foul on the wing, and the result is all that matters, but Uruguay’s got to be better than that.
But I probably shouldn’t say Uruguay had the better chances because Cavani was taking them. I swear, every time I watch this team with him leading the line, he can’t hit the bay from a boat. We saw them play Jamaica here, in a meaningless Copa América Centenario match two years ago down at The Pants in Santa Clara, in which Uruguay seized control and spent pretty much the last 70’ of the game trying to set up Cavani, who was having a dreadful tournament, and he flubbed chance after chance and eventually came to laugh about it, laughing along with the 35,000 or so in attendance. He was denied late on today by an excellent save from the Egyptian keeper and then he hit the post on a free kick soon thereafter. The guy needs a witch doctor or a seance or something. Uruguay ain’t winning shit if Cavani can’t hit the side of a barn.

That was some good stuff, and we’re just getting started. It’s on to Saturday and I’m going to wake all of your asses up if I find out you’re sleeping instead of watching France v. Australia. Don’t be a wimp. It’s the World Cup. Sleep is overrated. You can sleep in mid-July.