The World Cup Gets Weird

Who doesn’t love a good diving header?

THE BEST news so far about the World Cup is that we’ve now gotten through all of Match Day 1 in the group phase without a single goalless draw. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some bad games, of course. I tried to watch a replay of Sweden v. South Korea and jesus was that ever some terrible soccer. And while I understand the tactic that many of the minnows take of parking the bus and hoping a goal will miraculously appear on a counterattack somehow or, failing that, being content for the game to end 0:0, it doesn’t mean that I actually like to see teams playing that way, because it’s really boring. I want to see good players making good plays, not good players standing around in a semicircle trying to figure out how to somehow weave their way through 11 defenders. Such tactics are a necessary evil of the game. A lack of goalless draws means that, in general, such tactics are proving to be unsuccessful.

After Monday’s showing of force by the bigger guns, as the Belgians flexed and the English poured in the goals – except for the part where they didn’t, but we’ll get to that – I thought that Tuesday would be a boring day, but I was wrong. Instead, everyone showed up drunk. Strange plays, surprising results, guys losing their minds. All of it was weird.

The weirdest bit of all might be the fact that Russia is good. I still can’t fathom that the hosts, who were terrible in the run-up, are now as good as advanced to the second round after thrashing Egypt 3:1 on Tuesday. (It’s not official that they have advanced, but Saudi Arabia would need to make up 12 goals of spread in two games, and I’m not sure that team could score 12 goals even if their opponents didn’t bother to field goalkeepers.) Maybe everyone is taking their cue from the hosts, because the Russians are playing proactive, attacking football and have actually been fun to watch. Cynicism has been defeated, for the most part, during the first six days of this event.

Wait, where did you come from?

• Behold one of the strangest goals you’ll ever see. I’ve been watching this sport for more than 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like this before. But it’s a perfectly legal play. Lots of commentators wanted to criticize the way the officials handled it, simply because it’s so bizarre that there must be something wrong with it.
Here’s the situation: Senegal is leading Poland 1-0 and Senegal’s M’Baye Niang has to leave the field with an injury. He waves to indicate he’s ready to return, and the referee waves him back onto the pitch. This is standard procedure. And the referee is obliged to wave him on, because it’s not fair to make the team continue to play a man down any longer than necessary.
But it just so happens that the referee waves Niang back on at the exact moment that the Poles lose their minds. None of them are paying attention to him, and their midfielder inexplicably decides to try some ridiculous back pass to his goalkeeper from 65 yards away, which bounces aimlessly in no-man’s land and Niang is the first to the ball. There is no offsides on this sort of play, and Niang is onside, anyway. The defender is completely baffled by this sudden presence of an attacker, the keeper comes screaming out of the net because he has to, but neither Polish player can get there in time and Niang can just walk the ball into the goal.
It’s one of the weirdest goals I’ve ever seen, but it’s a completely legal play. Combine this with an own goal, and Poland might be feeling a bit star-crossed after losing 2:1 to Senegal. The truth is, though, that Poland were basically dreadful for most of this game, creating almost no good chances while being thoroughly outplayed. You can’t really complain about losing on a strange goal when the main reason it occurred is that you didn’t pay attention to the details.

My, didn’t this game ever change in a hurry

• Carlos Sanchez just needed to let the ball go. Let it go. So you give up a goal. There are 87 minutes left in the game. Just let it go.
Which, to be fair, is somewhat counterintuitive. Being behind a goal, in a game where it can be really damn hard to score a goal, seems like a disaster. But deliberately handling the ball to stop a goal is a red-card offense, and also a penalty kick, so not only are you most likely giving up a goal, but you’re also down to 10 men.
There is, in fact, a time and place to do this sort of thing. Recall the Quarter Finals in 2010 in South Africa when, at the very end of a tied game, Luis Suárez did that for Uruguay against Ghana. But he had literally no choice in that instance. He has to do that. If he doesn’t do it, Ghana win it at the death, it’s game over and Uruguay goes home. As it turned out, Ghana missed the penalty, and Uruguay went on to win and advance. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
But three minutes into your first game of the World Cup is not desperate times. Sure, the Colombian defense made a hash out of the play and Japan was going to score. Fine. Let them score. Play the next play.
But instead, Sanchez blocks the shot with his arm and gets red-carded, Japan converts the penalty, Los Cafeteros are both down a goal and down to 10 men, and then they get to spend the next 87 minutes chasing the game and trying to get a result, because whereas if this happened to your club team in some meaningless mid-season game, at which point you’d just chalk it up as a loss and move on, you don’t have time for that in the World Cup. You need all the points you can get and you need them now. This dumb play not only cost Colombia dearly in the game, but the result threatens to derail their entire World Cup campaign.
Colombia actually did well to draw level in the first half, but they ran out of gas and Japan ultimately found a winner late on. And it’s amazing what being a man up for 87 minutes will do for team morale. Japan have been completely dysfunctional in the run-up to the World Cup. They just fired their coach two months ago, they’ve played terrible and looked terrible and not even the most strident Blue Samurai fans believed this team was going to do anything at all. But here they are essentially gifted with three points, which is about 2-3 more than anyone thought they’d get in the entire tournament.
So the Colombians made a mess, and the Poles made a mess, and now the two Group H favorites are basically playing a loser-out game up next. Good luck with that.

Bang

• Can we please stop grading on a curve? If a team sets out to do nothing – and I mean it is their actual game plan to do nothing – and then they accomplish that, don’t give them any plaudits, because the most likely reason they’re doing that is because they’re trash. I had to listen to so much of this crap from the announcers during the Panama game with Belgium on Monday. “Oh look? Panama almost did something! Isn’t that great?” Just stop it. They weren’t any good. You can’t convince me otherwise.
The Belgians goofed off in the first half, wound up scoreless and then decided to do some Belgian things after the intermission, starting with Mertens hitting this slick volley from the angle, followed by De Bruyne making a sublime diagonal pass to a diving Lukaku for a second goal. I still have no idea what the hell Roberto Mártinez is trying to do with his formation for that team, as he’s got forwards playing wing back and neither of them can defend, and he’s also got De Bruyne playing as a six, which doesn’t make any sense, either, seeing how he’s the best passer in the entire Premier League and needs to be in the attacking third to maximize that skill. It still doesn’t make sense, but so long as you have so many guys capable of doing the spectacular, it might not actually matter.

Whee!

• Of all the dumb things that England did during the Euros in 2016, almost certainly the dumbest was having Harry Kane take corners. Kane is one of the great scorers on the planet and he does no good standing in the corner 35 yards from the goal. Both of England’s goals in their 2:1 win over Tunisia on Monday were set pieces where Kane’s involvement weren’t the primary action. Instead, he’s a part of a bunch formation on both and basically slips a screen amid the distraction of the primary play, working his way into open space. That sense of timing and instinct is not really coachable. When you have it, don’t waste it.
England did their best to mess this game up, conceding a stupid penalty at 35’ which enabled Tunisia to level after completely dominating the game up to the point. England could have been up three or four or even five if not for the clownshoes finishing by the likes of Lindgard and Sterling. The penalty – which was a bad play by Walker in which he looked like he had no idea what he was doing, no idea where the ball was, and he caught a Tunisian player with an elbow – gave a few people a reason to bitch and moan about the officiating, since they thought it was a soft penalty, but tough shit. Play through it. Play better. Stop missing golden chances.
And, to England’s credit, they got the late winner and a deserved result. The supposed golden generation which brought you so many disappointments like finishing last in their group in 2014 and choking away a win over the U.S. in 2010 have mercifully been rendered irrelevant and confined to the dustbin of history. England are now actually fun. I can’t believe that I’m saying that. They’re very attack-minded, they have speed and youth and actual talent, for a change. They’re fun to watch and I’m starting to think could do pretty well in this tournament.
How well they do, of course, will likely come down to the result of their game with the Belgians – a game which I’m certain is going to involve some chicanery, because at that point, the entire road map for the knockout stages will be laid out for both teams, and as it stands right now, the winner of the group could be playing Brazil or Germany in the Quarters, while the runner-up could be playing Mexico or Serbia or Switzerland. Hmm, who would you rather play? It could make for a really strange game where both teams are trying to mess it up somehow without making it look like they’re trying to mess it up. I could see the Belgians just run over and clatter into an English guy in the box in order to concede a penalty, only to then see the English penalty go flying into the heavens. It could be comedy gold.