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.

B- Work

Gorgeous

I’M GIVING myself a B- for my World Cup viewing performance this weekend, as I managed to watch about 5½ of the 7 games. I watched the first 35 minutes of Croatia-Nigeria before I fell asleep, and it was all I needed to see. Having dragged my ass in front of the TV at 3:00 a.m. for France v. Australia, and spent the entire first half wondering why I had bothered, I couldn’t find the enthusiasm required to get up at 5:00 a.m. today for Costa Rica-Serbia. From what I understand, I didn’t miss much. I was hoping to watch all seven, so I came up short on that front. A solid effort on my part, but I could have done better.

The five games that I did watch in full proved quite fascinating. Four of them featured teams who are considered to be among the favorites, and all four of them played badly, to varying degrees. It was also the first time that the VAR system came into play and, so far, it’s going okay. The two VAR-awarded penalties may have been somewhat soft, but by the letter of the law, both were ultimately ruled correctly. Given the gravity of an awarded penalty – a play which results in a goal about 75% of the time in a sport where scoring otherwise seems to be damned impossible – the more objectivity involved in that decision-making process, the better. I’m also liking the way the offsides are being called – or not being called, in fact, as FIFA’s directive to linesmen is to keep the flag down on close calls and let it play out. If there is a goal in the ensuing sequence of moves, they’ll go back and review it. This means fewer whistles and fewer stoppages in play, which is a good thing. And you don’t have to worry about those ensuing sequence of moves resulting in a goal, anyway, because soccer is a game that’s all about failure and disappointment:

A new fan learns the game’s harsh reality

And it’s impossible to ignore all of the penalties in Saturday’s games – five of them in four games. The penalty kick in soccer probably has more impact and effect on a game than any other play in any other sport – and, as we saw on Saturday, missing one can be disastrous. With so much tied to a single play, it’s very easy to focus and fixate all of your energies upon it, often attaching far more meaning to it than you probably should. Peru didn’t lose a game on Saturday because they missed a penalty. They lost because they missed 20-odd chances in the game – the penalty being the most golden of opportunities, of course, but not the only one they had. They lost because and defense fell asleep and conceded a Danish goal on a counterattack. They lost because, for some bizarre reason, their head coach left Paolo Guerrero – their captain, top scorer, and best player – out of the starting XI, a decision which was made to look even worse when Peru missed a penalty, since it would have been Guerrero taking the penalty if he’d been on the pitch. But missing that penalty will be all that anyone will want to talk about, it will be all that people will remember. Ask Peruvians about that loss in a few years and the first thing they’ll think of is a missed penalty. This is the nature of the game. Moments change matches, and moments become metaphors.

We have lift-off ...

• Christian Cueva single-handedly founding the Peruvian space agency by launching this spot kick into orbit summed up the joy turned to frustration of a nation that’s intent upon celebrating this World Cup like none other. Peruvians have waited 36 years for this, 36 long years. They bought enormous numbers of tickets and have turned out en masse in Russia for the event, only to be reminded, once again, that soccer is a cruel and stupid game. 
The Peruvians played so well. Atop their usual stout defense, they played an attacking game with athleticism and speed. They dominated the game whereas Denmark did very little of anything, but the ball just wouldn’t go in the goal. And then Cueva misses the penalty in a scoreless game and everyone starts to feel uneasy. And then they get caught upfield and Denmark springs a counter, and Denmark happens to have the best player on the pitch in Christian Eriksen – who was having a lousy game by his standards – and Eriksen slots a perfect pass on an odd rush and now Peru’s down a goal when they should probably be up two or three. This game sucks. And Peru’s throwing everything at them, chance after chance after chance but the goddamn ball won’t go in the goddamn goal!
Peru were the better team and they lost. That’s football. Sometimes, the better team doesn’t win. If you want life to be fair, don’t play this stupid game. Peru desperately needed to win this game in order to advance, as Denmark was their prime competition for the second spot. Then again, they do have a game against the French so there might be hope, since the French decided to make this stupid game even stupider by playing stupidly.

What on earth are you doing?

• Samuel Umtiti’s nitwitted attempt at volleyball gifted the Australians a penalty at 61’ of a 1:0 game, coming seven minutes after France were awarded, through VAR, a penalty which was so soft and fluffy that not even the French seemed to think it should have been given. The 22 players on the pitch were just sort of standing there after the VAR review, looking to one-another with confused shrugs. Sure, it was the right call by the letter of the law, but it just didn’t feel like it should have been called, and had the call not been changed and the penalty awarded, I’m not sure the French would have been bothered. Umtiti’s brazen act of lunacy, coming fresh off France gaining a lead they wholly didn’t deserve, felt karmically just, as it permitted the Aussies to even the score.
Paul Pogba eventually bundled one over the line to give France a 2:1 victory, and it’s hard for me to say they didn’t deserve the win. This is because Australia didn’t deserve anything, because they didn’t do anything. In fact, their whole goal was to do nothing. I certainly understand the tactic inferior teams take of parking the bus and then trying to hit the opposition on the break, but I don’t think they reached the French penalty area more than a half-dozen times throughout the entire game, and they also kept needlessly giving the ball away in dumb areas of the pitch – needless in the sense that it wasn’t like they were under duress, seeing as how the French couldn’t be bothered to actually press. Soccer is a game where you can actually succeed by trying to do nothing, of course, but that the Socceroos were unified, hell-bent and committed to doing nothing doesn’t earn them any plaudits from me. Frankly, they were garbage.
But so were the French, who are presently an incoherent mess. They have tonnes of offensive talent,  they speed and size and athleticism in spades, but no one wants to do anything when they don’t have the ball at their feet, and other than Pobga, they don’t have any good passers. For a team with so many good attackers, they create surprisingly few goals and scoring chances. Even so, they’d have probably scored four or five in this game simply by putting some pressure on the Aussies and making them cough up the ball even easier than they already were, but the French just couldn’t find it in them to do that. I’m not sure how much of the wayward act of wandering through the desert that poses for the French team comes down to head coach Didier Deschamps not having a coherent plan, and how much comes down to the players not wanting to listen to him.
Now, to be fair here, playing a team intent on doing nothing can be surprisingly difficult, because it’s not any fun at all. I suspect the French are likely to improve when they face some opponents who actually want to play. But if you’re the Danes or the Peruvians, why would you give them that chance?

Birdseye view of bad defense

• Steven Zuber’s equalizer gave the Swiss a point against Brazil, canceling out Coutinho’s brilliant first half goal. Zuber did give the defender in front of him a good shove on this play, and the Brazilians sort of half-heartedly complained once they saw the replay on the big screen in the stadium, but this was just bad defense. HE’S UNMARKED INSIDE THE SIX! Hey you, you two guys on the right side, how about you try marking someone? In most Brazil sides, the central defense is the soft underbelly, but this wasn’t some bruising center forward imposing his will. This was just a pathetic effort by Brazil to mark a basic set piece play.
Seleção played 20 good minutes to start, capped off with Coutinho’s beautiful curling shot from the left elbow to give them the lead, but then they stopped playing. For the majority of the next hour, the Swiss were the better team. And props to the Swiss for that, but Brazil should never not be the better team against a side as limited as the Swiss.
Now, this team is obviously better than the dross Brazil put out there in their last three major tournaments, but this “new look” Brazilian team, for all of it’s flair, is still overly dependent upon Neymar, who is coming back from a broken foot and still doesn’t look fully fit. It was hard to tell at times, of course, since he spent so much of the game on the floor, what with him being fouled 10 times. This was a really disappointing performance for Seleção. A good Brazil makes this tournament special. We want more from them than this.

Boom

• Congratulations to El Tri for doing what every team who has played the Germans should have been doing for the past four years – run at them! What annoyed me four years ago about so many of Germany’s games was the fact that so few teams were willing to take that risk, allowing the Germans to conceal the fact that they were somewhat slow and square in the back. But one of the characteristics of these group openers that often shows up is that, given that you have six months’ time to plan for your first opponent, a good coach can figure out the best way to attack them.
As presently constructed, the Germans like to possess the ball and tend to use their overly-aggressive fullbacks to make deep runs, so Osorio came up with a great game plan – when the defense stands up the Germans, the immediate outlet is to a center forward just in front of the Germans’ two in the midfield, who then turns and faces and feeds whichever channel the German fullback has vacated, at which point the break is on and EVERYONE RUN LIKE HELL!
The Mexicans just killed Germany in transition. The deeper the Germans got into Mexican territory, the larger the open space the Mexicans had to run into on the break. The 1:0 final scoreline somewhat flattered the Germans, because the Mexicans messed up so many odd-man rushes over the course of 90 minutes. It got somewhat tense towards the end, as the Mexicans closed ranks and played to protect the lead, but any kind of result the Germans may have gotten would have been undeserved.
I’m hard-pressed to ever remember a German team that was such a mess. They looked slow, old, and unathletic. Their entire midfield collective was a net negative – Khedira was terrible, Muller was terrible, Özil was nonexistent but at least he knew to track back 70 yards and try to defend Lozano on the Mexican goal as opposed to Kimmich, the right back, who was … where exactly?
And while the outcome was still a surprise, it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. As mysterious and muddled and maddening as El Tri can sometimes be – they’d used 48 different line-ups in 48 previous games – they still have the sort of dynamic, intelligent forwards and athletic wings who could theoretically make life miserable for the Germans, if only you allow them to do so. I like to give El Tri some shit here on the blog from time to time, given that we’re rivals and all, but I’ve had far more faith in this version of El Tri than most. This is a good team who just put themselves in a great position to go far in this tourney. (Now watch them go out and go 0:0 with South Korea and mess it all up.)

The smiting shall continue until morale improves

• You know who else is good? Iceland. Can we stop it already with all of the plucky underdog narratives? If I hear one more time about how they are the smallest nation ever to participate in a World Cup, I’m going to reach through the TV and smack the announcer. If you honestly thought that Iceland getting a 1:1 draw against Argentina was a surprise, then you haven’t been paying attention for the past six years.
That’s because Iceland have been good for the past six years. They sowed the seeds for this when their U-21 team reached the UEFA final in 2011. Had they not been reduced to 10 men against Croatia for 80 minutes, and managed to scrounge an away goal in Zagreb in the return leg of the 2013 playoff, they’d have been in the World Cup four years ago and we’d have been hearing all of these plucky Iceland stories while they were playing in Brazil. Reaching the quarters at the 2016 Euros wasn’t a fluke, beating England wasn’t a fluke, winning their UEFA qualifying group for this World Cup wasn’t a fluke. THIS TEAM IS GOOD!
Like I was saying before about well-coached teams having ample time to prepare for an opponent, Iceland new exactly what they were going to do in this game. They were going to zone up, run at Messi in numbers, stay on their feet while defending to avoid needless fouls, and then play through Gylfi Sigurðsson on the counter. They got a bit narrow in the second half, with Argentina’s wingers pinching up, and that prevented them breaking, but other than when Messi had the ball and threatened with his left foot, Iceland weren’t actually all that uncomfortable while defending. They didn’t care if they conceded a corner, because they’re huge and dominant in the air. They knew what they were doing.
Not only should it not have been a surprise that Iceland were level with Argentina, but they probably should have been disappointed with the fact that they hadn’t put two or even three past Argentina in the first half. If anything, I think Iceland were how surprised at how easy it was to go forward.
But if you listen to the nimrods and dipshits at Fox Sports tell it, the idea they would possibly beat Argentina would the greatest upset in the history of sliced bread. This is what happens when you don’t pay attention. God, I hate those telecasts. Thank goodness for Telemundo.

But inevitably, the story of this game was the fact that, in the 63rd minute, Messi missed a penalty. He also couldn’t convert a free kick in the dying seconds. These things happen. In his career in his Argentina shirt, Messi converts 77% of his penalties, which is about an average number. But he’s missed a couple of big ones, of course, most recently the decider in the 2016 Copa América Centenario final against the Chileans. Both for club and country, he’s gone into slumps from time to time where he’s missed some. That happens.
Problem #1 with this, of course, is that no one on that team – be they a coach, a player, or whomever – would ever say, “so, hey, Leo, how about we let Kun Agüero take the penalties? He’s pretty good at them.” This is sort of like how, on frequent occasions in the NBA playoffs, LeBron was stepping up to shoot free throws on technical fouls, even though there were three 85-90% foul shooters on the floor. Good luck prying the ball away from him. This is what happens when your team is so dependent upon one guy. You’ll defer to him even when you know that you shouldn’t.
And Argentina completely defers to Messi in everything they do. The others just basically stand around and wait for him to do something. Messi’d get the ball on the right elbow, with three or even four Iceland defenders running at him, and he’d always have to circle back to shoot from a worse angle, or pass it back to a midfielder and reset the play, because everyone in a black shirt had become a statue. Move, damn it! Messi is one of the best passers in the world, for christsake. Give him a goddamn target!
The problem with Messi missing a penalty and generally having a subpar game (by his standards) is that it came one day after Christiano Ronaldo scored a hat trick against Spain and converted a penalty and a free kick and what have you. This revives the dumbest of all arguments in sports about which of the two is better. I couldn’t care less about this and find it tiresome. I think they’re both amazing and I enjoy them both as players.
But CR7 has one built in advantage in that argument, which is where he was born. CR7 was born in a small country with a good, but not great, footballing tradition. Every single thing he does for his country, therefore, is a feather in his cap. Messi happens to come from a nation that not only is rich in footballing tradition and used to win a lot of stuff, but it’s one where the people have grown impatient, if not intolerant, of the fact that they no longer win a lot of stuff. Argentina hasn’t won a major tournament in 25 years. They’ve not won a World Cup since 1986. They were losing stuff long before Messi, and given the dysfunctional state of the Argentine FA, they’ll likely be losing stuff after Messi.
Argentina doesn’t win anything and it’s always Messi’s fault. Somehow it’s Messi’s fault that they haven’t produced a decent playmaker in a decade, which means he has to drop back and spend the game setting up teammates who squander chances. It was Messi’s fault that they drew 1:1 with Iceland, and not the fault of his teammates, none of whom, with the exception of Kun Agüero, played worth a goddamn. It’s somehow Messi’s fault that the defense got spooked literally every time Iceland had the ball. It’s Messi’s fault that the goalkeeper is flapping and flailing like he’s swatting at bees.
It’s a team game, folks, and Argentina’s likely going to be going home earlier than they’d hope because the team surrounding Messi isn’t very good. And the LeBron comparison from before is apt, because even this year, when the Cleveland Cavaliers were crap, there were still people out there thinking he’d magically be able to beat the Warriors all by himself, some of whom are now killing him for the fact that he couldn’t. Argentina are in the Group of Death in this tournament. Messi can’t singlehandedly beat seven good teams in a row by himself. But somehow, when he doesn’t do that, it’ll be his fault. It’s completely, utterly dumb. It’s no surprise he frequently wants to quit playing for the national team, and has done so in the past. Who wants to put up with that crap?

Whew, that was a lot of soccer to watch. Three more games tomorrow, including my nutty Belgians. I didn’t quite make it through the footballing marathon this weekend, but I did well enough to earn a passing grade. And at some point, I should probably sleep.

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.

Dealing with the Dubs

(Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

The Lose appreciates alternative points of view. Today, we are graced with another column from Official Tacoma Resident of In Play Lose, Evans Clinchy, whose work I’m a big fan of, and who has appeared previously on this blog. Evans is an esteemed writer of them basketballs and, today, offers this perspective on the leviathan that the Golden State Warriors have become. Evans warned me, when he submitted this article, “sorry to be hating on your team a bit,” except that it’s completely cool by me. One of the things I’m well aware of is that when you support a club that’s reached the top of the mountain, you’re going to have to take some hits, because some others are going to take their shots – which is what they should do. That’s exactly how it should be. We, as sports fans, should all be so lucky as to have the good fortune of reaching a point where out team carries the bullseye for, above all else, being successful. That’s actually what you want to have happen. It’s the best sort of problem to have.

IN the early-evening hours of Oct. 27, 2016, Kevin Durant stayed a few minutes late after practice. The Warriors had just landed in New Orleans, where Durant was scheduled to play his second-ever game in a Dubs uniform the following day. The team’s mandatory activities had wrapped up at 6:30 p.m., but KD stayed on the practice floor past 7, getting extra shots up while his teammates were gathering their stuff and leaving. KD was also, reportedly, yelling at himself all the while.

“They say you’re not hungry!” the Warriors’ superstar bellowed, according to several media outlets. “I’m out here! Put in work! Stay with it!”

This was a ridiculous media spectacle on multiple levels. First and foremost, talk about a pronoun with no antecedent – there was no “they” and there never had been. Not a soul on planet Earth was accusing Kevin Durant of not being hungry, of not wanting it, of not putting in work. KD was engaged in a shouting match with a straw man. On top of that, even if “they” existed, KD wasn’t proving anything to “them” with this practice gym display. There are few events in the world more commonplace than an NBA player taking the practice floor for a few minutes and putting up jump shots. This shooting session wasn’t newsworthy; it was a lame PR stunt.

Apparently it was an effective one, though. Everyone on the Warriors beat covered it. By shouting just a few words – “They say you’re not hungry!” – Durant had managed to turn a mundane evening at the gym into a headline.

This might seem like just a random vignette from a Warriors practice 20 months ago, but I keep thinking about that day because of the tone it set moving forward. That little shooting session was a perfect encapsulation of the current era we’re living through in NBA history. The takeaway was simple: Until further notice, the drama you witness will not be real drama. It will be manufactured. And honestly, when you get down to it, it’ll be pretty lame.

*****

The Warriors won the NBA Finals with ease in both 2017 and 2018. Their combined record during those two postseasons was a positively ludicrous 32-6. Of their eight postseason opponents, only this year’s Rockets were able to survive longer than five games. The Warriors had been beatable in the pre-Durant era, even losing to LeBron James’ Cavaliers in 2016; matching LeBron with KD instead of Harrison Barnes turned a once-fair fight into a comically lopsided one. KD’s numbers in nine Finals matchups with the Cavaliers are comic-bookish: 32.3 points, 9.3 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game on 54.3% shooting from the field, 45% from 3. This might come as a shock, but when you take an already historically great team and replace its weakest link with an MVP in his prime, it tends to work decently well. (Disclaimer: In NBA history, the sample size for this experiment is one.)

Durant’s arrival in Golden State was an all-time historical fluke. The 2016 Warriors were one of the most desirable free-agent destinations ever, and Durant was one of the most desirable players ever to hit the market. The two just happened to cross paths in the exact summer when a massive new TV contract brought hundreds of millions in new revenue to the NBA, resulting in a salary-cap spike that enabled the Warriors to offer Durant max money. The Warriors had to be willing to make a change, which they were because they’d blown a 3-1 lead against Cleveland in the Finals; Durant also had to want out because he’d just similarly choked from up 3-1 against the Warriors. We have never seen such an absurd confluence of timing and circumstance before in sports history, and I doubt we will again.

A lot of blame has been cast on Durant personally for making his decision. This may or may not be fair, depending on how you frame it. Durant – let’s give him a little credit here – surely knew that going to Golden State would create a juggernaut the likes of which we’ve never seen before. That he did it anyway doesn’t indicate some massive ethical failing on his part. It wasn’t something he “had no right” to do, nor was it something that would “ruin the league.” He simply had the option to choose his employer and he exercised that option. Those who defend Durant are totally justified in doing so. The only really valid counterargument is that KD’s choice was ... well, just kinda lame.

It’s lame because Kevin Durant used to be a compelling character. His quest for self-improvement used to be a story that anyone could appreciate. Durant was a star player practically out of the womb, but the early years of his career were characterized by a desperate need to transcend good and become great. In 2013, he opened up and told Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins that he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d accomplished. “I’ve been second my whole life,” he said. “The second-best player in high school, the second pick in the draft, second in the MVP voting. I came in second in the Finals. I’m tired of being second.” Durant was itching to reach new heights in his career, and it was easy to derive real joy from cheering him on. Beating LeBron was his holy grail, and his struggles to get there felt human and relatable.

For anyone who’s appreciated Durant for a long time, seeing him sign with the Warriors brought a crappy ending to a great story. It’s a basketball deus ex machina – Stephen Curry is basically the NBA’s version of the naval officer randomly stumbling onto the island at the end of Lord of the Flies. Durant didn’t do any favors for the Warriors’ narrative, either. Despite the 73 wins, Golden State seemed a tiny bit fallible before KD arrived. That legendary 2016 team lost in the Finals because Barnes shot an appalling 3-of-18 from the field in Games 6 and 7 combined; the Warriors solved their Barnes problem in the most unsubtle, brute-force way possible, swapping him out for a Hall of Famer. It’s like fixing a flat tire on your Volvo by junking the whole car and buying a Ferrari instead. Doesn’t exactly make you a great mechanic.

The Warriors pre-Durant were terrifyingly good, no doubt, but there was still a vulnerability there. If you caught them on the right night, when the shots weren’t falling or the chemistry was a little off, you could get the best of them. Now, that vulnerability is a lot tougher to find. Even when the 2018 Warriors were bad, they were still good. They struggled in Game 3 of this year’s Finals because Curry shot 3-of-16, including 1-of-10 from distance; it ended up not mattering because Durant just nuked everyone and the Warriors won anyway. This is what’s infuriating about the Warriors – you are supposed to lose when your star player shoots 3-of-16. The post-KD Warriors often don’t; they have most ludicrously wide margin for error in NBA history. Taking a nucleus of three superstars and adding a fourth one wasn’t a strategy – it was a cheat code.

You try to have empathy for both sides. For the Warriors and their fans, this moment feels earned – they spent decades watching helpless teams built by incompetent front offices, and their turn atop the NBA is more than overdue. But for everyone else ... man. It’s not hard to see how this era can offend their sensibilities. To anyone outside the Bay Area bubble, a team this good feels like an affront to what the game is supposed to be about. Why even watch a sport when it feels like there’s so little at stake? “It’s their refusal to run the risk of losing,” Bethlehem Shoals quipped in GQ, “to truly put themselves to the test, that people find so galling.” It’s true. Historically, we’ve watched sports for the uncertainty, the “anything can happen”-ness they can offer us. What do you do when suddenly, very few outcomes seem possible anymore?

*****

Wait, back up. That wasn’t a rhetorical question. What do you do? If you’re in Cleveland, Houston, Boston or Toronto, how do you handle this period of Warriors dominance? What do you do if you’re a rung below that, desperately hoping for glory days in a place like Milwaukee or New Orleans or Portland?

We already know Klay Thompson’s answer. The Warriors’ All-Star made headlines on the eve of the Finals when he bluntly replied that “It’s not our fault” and that “the rest of the NBA’s got to get better.” He’s right about the first part, as the Warriors have done nothing wrong, but how realistic is he, really, about the second? “Just get better” is a pipe dream when you’re as far away from the Warriors’ level as everyone else. The Rockets became their best selves this year and took a shot at Golden State but missed, and Chris Paul won’t come back next year any younger. The others just aren’t as talented. Kyle Korver can’t transform himself into a 7-foot behemoth wrecking everyone in his path like Kevin Durant. Pascal Siakam can’t become a two-way Swiss Army knife with a Mozart-level basketball IQ like Draymond Green. Even Kyrie Irving, a superstar in his own right, can’t suddenly learn to shoot like Steph. These are fundamental truths. “Just get better” is far easier said than done. All of these teams will try, but it undeniably feels like they’re fighting a losing battle.

Make no mistake – the battle is still compelling. No team, no matter how dominant, should drive you away from the NBA altogether. The league is, and remains, too damn good for that. It is possible, though, that the Warriors will bring about a temporary shift – the league will be compelling, just in a different way. We’ll watch less for the championship destination and more to enjoy the journey. A quick glance at the TV ratings suggests that that’s indeed what’s happening. Finals viewership dipped a little bit in 2018, with the number of Dubs/Cavs viewers moving from just over 20 million in previous years to just over 18 million now, but the regular season is still going strong. Overall NBA viewership was up 8% this year. All of this is fine – there’s no requirement that we care about teams winning titles first and foremost. Sometimes you can lose sight of the forest, get distracted by a few trees and realize, damn, these are some really dope trees.

The NBA can never be ruined. This is the same league that brought us Bryan Colangelo’s wife being caught with five burner Twitter accounts, Eric Bledsoe tweeting “I Dont wanna be here” from Phoenix and lying that he meant “at the hair salon,” and J.R. Smith getting suspended for throwing a bowl of soup at his own assistant coach. (Important detail: The soup was chicken tortilla.) If you’re not finding entertainment value in today’s NBA, that’s on you.

So if anyone tells you Kevin Durant and the Warriors are monsters and league-ruiners, don’t listen. They’re not that. They’re not even bad dudes, really. But it may be time to admit that, compared to the rest of this crazy-as-hell NBA, they’re a little bit dull, and there’s more interesting drama to watch unfold elsewhere. The rest of the league is out here. They’ll put in work. For better or for worse (usually worse), they’ll stick with it.

Gaze Into My Crystal Ball

Hmm, I should probably get a new one of these ...

SPORTING Nirvana arrives tomorrow for The Lose. I’ll probably be posting frequently here, if not every day, because I love the World Cup and think it’s the best. This is the greatest athletic competition on earth. This is great sport, great drama, great theatre, great pageantry, the ramifications of which often transcend the sport itself. World Cup results have sent people jumping off buildings, have brought down governments – but also, occasionally, bring a little harmony and joy as well.

I already wrote my short-attention span preview the other day, which a few sort of off-the-cuff predictions based entirely on my hopes of winning some money in Vegas on this tournament. Now that I’ve actually put some thought into it, and done some research, I’m prepared to be even more catastrophically incorrect in my pre-tourney assessments. The Lose isn’t afraid of being both absurdly wrong and also being right with the frequency of a broken clock. It’s time for the In Play Lose World Cup predictions – 32 guaranteed, sure fire, certain to be right except when they are not predictions about the event. Take this to the bank, but don’t cash the cheque because it’s no damn good, and remember kids, gambling is a sin. Also, if the teams involved here do some of the things I predict they’ll do, you can bet that I’ll be writing about it.

1. The worst game of the tournament is very likely to also be the first one.
2. The first goalless draw of this tournament will be Sweden vs. South Korea.
3. The game during which I’ll likely fall asleep is Serbia vs. Switzerland. (I say this knowing full well that the Saturday quadruple header starts at 3:00 a.m. here on the West Coast, but I will be there for it. We don’t care about no stinkin’ time zones.)
4. The biggest blowout will be Belgium v. Panama.
5. At least one team in this tournament will lose a match because of some awful VAR decision.
6. At least two coaches will be fired before the group stage is even over. Hell, considering Spain fired one before it even started, that number may be even higher.
7. All five Asian teams are going to be bad.
8. Japan is the team most likely to take no points at all while scoring no goals at all.
9. Unlike in 2014, where the African teams generally played quite poorly, four of the five African teams will play well in this tournament. At least one will advance from the group. My guess is Senegal. If Mo Salah plays for Egypt, it could very easily be two.
10. England will be fun. Yes, I’m stunned to admit this.
11. That said, the full-on national crisis will envelop England about the time they win 1-0 over Tunisia on some lucky 86th minute goal that ricochets off a rock and past the Tunisian keeper.
12. My Group A storyline will be just how bad it is and how easy it is for Uruguay.
13. My Group B storyline is that Portugal will put themselves in some sort of peril of not advancing, and slither their way off the hook somehow.
14. My Group C storyline is that the French will have one game where they win 6-1 or something to tease and tantalize us, and then the rest of the time we’ll be wondering what’s wrong with them.
15. My Group D storyline will be that Argentina v. Croatia is the kind of game where the better team wins, and people will say, in retrospect, “yeah, I actually thought Croatia might be the better team going into it, but I didn’t want to admit it.”
16. My Group E storylines are that Brazil is gonna run all over people and it’ll be awesome, and am I crazy to like Costa Rica’s chances to get out here? I’m liking that more and more.
17. My Group F storyline is that Sweden will make Germany look bad, because they generally make everyone look bad, but still lose and we’ll wonder what’s wrong with the Germans after such a droll performance. (Hint: nothing.)
18. My Group G storyline is that Belgium and England are are both likely to be on 6 points after two games and it wouldn’t shock me if one of these teams looks at the bracket, tries to get a feel for whether they’d rather play Brazil or Germany in the Quarters, and basically throws a shoe in order to try and get a better draw. As such, I could see one of those teams winning 3-1 or something and messing up everyone’s impressions of the two teams.
19. My Group H storyline is that James is going to remind all of us that, contrary to his play for his clubs over the past four years, he’s really good at football.
20. Another guy in this tournament who I think might break out and remind people he’s really good at football is Kelechi Iheanacho of Nigeria.
21. At least one of these groups will completely go to shit, because it always happens that way. One of them goes mental and weird stuff happens. (Think Costa Rica winning their group in 2014.) It always happens, but it’s also impossible to figure out which one it will be.
22. Regardless of results, Iceland will have more fun than anyone else.
23. My sleeper team is Peru. I love me some Peru. Peru will make the 16s and will be a pain in the ass to eliminate.
24. The biggest bust of this tournament is an obvious one. I’ve been betting on Argentina to fail in the World Cup for almost 30 years now and it’s paid off handsomely. I’m not about to stop now. This team is going nowhere.
25. Mexico will be the best team with nothing to show for it because they’ll play really well against Germany, and again vs. Brazil in the 16s, and lose both games close.
26. The “what in the hell are they doing playing in the 16s?” game will be France v. Argentina.
27. England will outplay Germany in the Quarters and lose on penalties.
28. Belgium v. Brazil in the Quarters will be the game of the tournament.
29. France and Germany will reach the semis, with the former feeling like they blew it (which they almost certainly will have), and the latter being frustrated and getting tormented yet again by Spain keeping the ball for 70 minutes.
30. Romelu Lukaku of Belgium will be the top scorer. He may be the top scorer simply based on how many he puts past Panama.
31. Belgium will finish second. I know that I said that four years ago, but I really mean it this time.
32. Spain will win the World Cup, because who really needs a coach, anyway?

The Weird Cup

Oh look, a photo of two guys playing soccer which may or may not reflect my World Cup prediction

1982 was the first time that I followed the World Cup. And 1982 was nuts. It was nuts right from the get-go, as defending champion Argentina, and their 19-year-old wünderkind Diego Maradona, got beat 1-0 by the Belgians at the Camp Nou in Barcelona in the opening game of the tournament. This tourney came on the heels of the Falklands War, so Argentina was having a bad go of things at the time. Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri was requested to resign five days later, and a prevailing joke at the time was that whereas losing a war to the Brits merely staggered Argentina’s military government, it was losing to the Belgians that finally finished the junta off.

And the tournament just got weirder from there. It was an expanded event, having grown from 16 teams in 1978 to 24 in 1982, with the lion’s share of those eight new teams coming from the lesser confederations, meaning that nobody knew who they were, where they came from, or if they were any good or not. I suspect West Germany didn’t give Algeria a single thought before the Fennec Foxes beat them 2-1 in one of the tourney’s greatest upsets of all time – a result ultimately rendered moot when the West Germans beat the Austrians 1-0 in Gijón in a result that was, shall we say, convenient for both sides, since both of them knew, ahead of time, the result they needed to achieve in order to advance. The Algerian fans used a different word than convenient, to be sure, having watched their team be eliminated in a game where the Germans and Austrians basically walked about the field and practiced square passing and rolling long balls back to the keeper. It’s this rather dubious match which led to the final group games being simultaneously started, seeing as how the tournament format had come to be gamed and irretrievably damaged.

But the entire format of the tourney was a mess, including these weird 3-team second round groups, a dumb idea for a format which contributed to England ultimately being eliminated despite never losing any of their five games in the tournament. The goofy format was cooked up to try and funnel teams into an eventual Argentina v. Brazil/West Germany v. Spain set of semifinals – an idea which pretty much went out the window immediately when Argentina lost to the Belgians and the hosts contrived to lose to Northern Ireland, meaning you wound up with these boffo 2nd round groups – Argentina/Brazil/Italy, West Germany/England/Spain – and two other 2nd round groups which were an absolute snooze full of lesser sides who ambled their way into a chance to succeed. Nothing at all about this tournament seemed to actually go right.

España 1992 saw Hungary score 10 goals in a game, saw a Kuwaiti sheik run onto the field and threaten to pull his team off the pitch if a French goal wasn’t disallowed, saw the best Brazilian team of the last 48 years steadfastly refuse to play it safe when all it needed to advance to the semifinal was a draw and go out in a James Deansian blaze of glory with a 3-2 loss to the Italians. It featured what was probably the wildest game in the entire history of the tournament, the semifinal between France and West Germany which finished 1-1 in regulation, finished 3-3 after extra time as the French blew a 3-1 lead, and featured the first penalty shootout in World Cup history – a concept which was novel and exciting at the time, whereas now it’s become this dreadful sort of ending to a game that we all want to avoid. That game also featured the single-nastiest play I’ve ever seen on a pitch – and, also, the single worst piece of officiating I’ve ever seen, since Harold Schumacher wasn’t even called for a foul, much less sent off, much less booked for assault. Between that and essentially fixing their game with the Austrians, the West Germans proved to the be the most villainous of World Cup villains, a cynical and loathsome lot that I’m not sure even many Germans liked. When Italy put three past them in the second half of the final at the Bernabeu in Madrid, it felt as if a certain cosmic justice had been served.

The 1982 World Cup had all of that and I was hooked. It was completely cuckoo bananas and absolutely amazing. It had almost everything. One thing that it didn’t have, however, was the U.S. And 1986 was pretty awesome too: you had the Soviets running rampant, the Danes going nuts, neither the Soviets nor the Danes then bothering to defend anyone in the second round and conceding nine goals between them in their exits, Scotland doing Scotland things and failing to advance by failing to score a goal against Uruguay despite having a man advantage for 89 minutes, Morocco becoming the first African team to win a group, the Belgians annoying everyone on their way to the semis, Maradona cheating, Maradona being brilliant, Maradona being even more brilliant, and a cracking good 3-2 final between Argentina and a West German side that almost came off as likable. It was great stuff. Great competition, great theatre, incredible drama. But again, one thing that the 1986 World Cup in Mexico lacked was the U.S.

I’m mentioning this because a good number of soccer followers that I know here in America are young enough that they can’t even conceive of a World Cup without the U.S. – a prospect we are facing here in the summer of 2018. Yes, this actually used to happen. It used to happen a lot, in fact. And just because my home nation wasn’t involved, it didn’t mean it couldn’t be compelling. It is definitely worth tuning in for on your televisions.

Which, by the way, was something that you couldn’t do in 1982. ESPN carried that opener between Argentina and Belgium, ABC showed the Italy-West Germany final, and other than that, well, my World Cup viewing that season consisted of watching the special World Cup editions of the show Soccer Made in Germany, a PBS program, which culled the highlights of the games into conveniently-sized packages. The sport was completely off the radar in this country at the time, and seemed destined to stay that way so long as U.S. Soccer were going about scheduling key World Cup qualifiers against Mexico at the L.A. Coliseum, caring far more about the gate receipts from the 85,000 Mexican fans in attendance than how the team actually did – a propensity for money-grubbing and brazen self-interest which has continued in U.S. Soccer to this very day. The sport was at such a pathetic place in this country that the World Cup qualifier I attended in 1989, a 1-1 draw with Trinidad & Tobago, took place in a community college football stadium in Torrance, California, on a pitch which had been damaged in the days leading up to it by a pickup truck doing donuts. I don’t even remember who I went to the game with. I just remember that the game was bad. USA FC were pants. They were absolute rubbish and the entire affair was amateurish, if not outright shambolic. I’m still amazed that team qualified for a World Cup. (The magic moments come at the 36:57 and the 1:38:48 marks of that video.)

In the bigger picture, it’s a good thing that people are mad about the U.S. not making the World Cup in 2018. Back in the 1980s, literally no one cared. (I have no idea on what page of the L.A. Times the game story for that T&T Torrance debacle was found, but it sure as hell wasn’t on Page 1.) And we’ve had a few of these tell-all stories come out here recently, one from ESPN and another from The Ringer, in which everyone interviewed who was part of the program goes about pointing fingers without anyone just coming out and saying what the fundamental problem was, which is that everyone involved was arrogant as fuck, far too quick to pat themselves on the back and trumpet modest successes, yet still wanting to be able to slip back into “we’re still a developing soccer nation” mode when it was convenient, such as when they flopped on their faces and embarrassed themselves like they did against Argentina in the Copa América semifinal or against Mexico in that Confed Cup playoff. (But I’ve been over this before.) Now, obviously, no one being interviewed for those sorts of journalistic exposés is going to come right out and say, “yeah, we were arrogant as fuck.” The hope is that, behind the scenes, someone involved in the program is willing to admit that fact while doing a proper postmortem, but I’ve seen nothing amid the muddled, mixed messages coming out of U.S. Soccer to instill me with much optimism. But hey, at least they’re playing the kids now, and the kids are making all the sorts of mistakes in friendlies we want to see them making. It’s strange to watch USA FC field a team of young, athletic, talented kids who play hard. I didn’t know we did that in this country. Gosh, some of them might have even been useful in the qualifiers a year ago.

Being introspective about your shortcomings is something that should be done in the context of missing the World Cup – and part of that involves watching the event itself and reminding yourself of how good it is. And I suspect that Russia 2018 will be a good event, in the end, in spite of the fact that so many teams which, on paper at least, should be there will not be: no Italy, no Holland, no Chile, no U.S., almost none of the teams from Africa that we thought were any good. You could assemble a pretty terrifying first XI from the countries who didn’t earn a ticket to Russia:

Now, it’s their own damn fault, of course. The table doesn’t lie, and for all of those guys above and the teams that I mentioned, the table says, “you suck, and you don’t get to play next summer.” But as I’m watching the Belgians go about putting god knows how many goals past Panama in their first round game, I’m going to be thinking to myself, “what in the hell is that team doing in this tournament?” As bad as Panama could be, Saudi Arabia will likely be worse, and they’ll be front and center playing the Russians in the opening match of the tournament, and which point millions and millions of people around the world will scratch their collective heads and go, “huh?”

There is a decided lack of enthusiasm for this summer’s World Cup, one which stems, at the core, from the fact that FIFA is so corrupt and so beyond repair that, on the day that they awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia, they also awarded the 2022 World Cup Qatar in what was an act of brazen bribery. Those involved in FIFA were so self-involved and so determined to enrich themselves that they as much as killed their own golden goose with the awarding of that 2022 tournament, and are stubbornly going forth with the idea and going so far as to move it to winter time – a pretty good idea, given that playing soccer in the 115° temps of June is unideal – while completely disrupting the mechanics of the global game in the process. It’s such a dumb idea that it could only be carried out though sheer self-absorption and full-on commitment to graft.

And sure, we know these people are sleazebags and always have been. FIFA’s never been squeaky clean, and its structure as much as ensures that it never will be. It’s never been a group which was afraid of cozying up to a strongman – this organization did allow its showcase event to be overseen by a military junta, after all. But just because you’re corrupt, it doesn’t mean you can’t also be proactive and, on occasion, be visionary. It was a no-brainer to hold the World Cup in 1994 in the U.S. People didn’t think it at the time, but the end result was the most successful tournament in the sport’s history in terms of attendance and income. It was a no-brainer to go to Asia in 2002 and Africa in 2010. All three of those World Cups that I mentioned sought to grow the game, both in terms of markets where it was being underserved, if not floundering, and also in terms of potential talent pools for the future, since talent is ultimately what you’re selling. But the original proposals for 2022, featuring temporary stadia that would be fully air conditioned while still outdoors, were absolute fairy tales. To entrust this event to a 115° climate, to somehow buy notions that a place the size of Connecticut could welcome 3,000,000 visitors, and to knowingly look away from the fact that the place’s barbaric labor laws would result in countless worker deaths, constitutes a selling of what was left of their souls.

In doing something which screams out, “we are actively accepting bribes and we like it,” everything connected to FIFA, be it past or present or future, is assumed to be compromised beyond reproach. Even if you think that Russia made sense as a host nation (which I did, given its size and also its sizable footballing tradition), simply being associated with this mess of a double bidding process leaves you tainted by proxy, deservedly or not. Throw in some logistical issues – it’s a huge country, after all, even if you’re only using a sliver of it for this tournament – the persistent problems with racism that don’t jibe with a global audience, and the disturbing propensities towards hooliganism that reared it’s ugly head in Marseille during the Euros in 2014, and no one seems terribly excited to want to be there. The Confed Cup in 2015 drew shockingly few foreign visitors – mostly Chileans, but hardly anyone else. You’d think that Iceland would be huge into this, given that, during the 2014 Euros, as much as 10% of the population of the country was in France during the tournament, but even in their maiden voyage to the World Cup, expectations are that only about half as many Icelandic fans will turn up in the seats of the stadia for the games. Everything feels off for this tournament. Everything feels weird.

And this should be cause for concern to FIFA, because the international game is less popular than ever before. With the full-on integration of the world’s talent pool, combined with the massive brand appeal of the world’s largest clubs, club football is where it’s at. And with good reason – you have the greatest players in the world all playing together, and witnessing it is seeing the actual game itself being played at its highest level. UEFA is already trying to do something different this upcoming fall, experimenting with an international league in order to generate some more interest in the international game. The FAs need that sort of interest to continue in order to sustain themselves, but when you see USA FC barely able to fill a 10,000-seat stadium for a friendly, and the likelihood that a pre-season match between Liverpool and Manchester United is going to draw 110,000 in Ann Arbor, you know where the bigger interests truly lay.

My main reason for being fond of international football is that club football’s time-tested strategy for problem-solving is just to go out and throw money at the problem. You can’t do that in international football. You have to make do with what you have, you have to adapt to the personnel available to you. This couldn’t have been made more clear than in a recent friendly between Spain and Argentina where La Albiceleste got thrashed 6-1. Even with Messi not playing in that game, Argentina still have about eight good forwards they can throw out there, but as I’ve said before, Messi has to be more of a midfield playmaker on that team, a position which otherwise goes wanting for Argentina at the moment, and as was on display against Spain, the defense is even weaker than the midfield, and the goalkeeping might be worse further still. Okay, now what? Their head coach, Jorge Sampaoli, has a distinct system of play he wants to use, but I suspect playing in a 0-0-3-8 formation isn’t it, and he doesn’t seem to have the kind of athletes in his squad he needs to do what he wants. Well, you have little more than a week to figure it out, because Argentina has by far the toughest opening group of the eight and they haven’t looked anywhere close to being a World Cup favorite.

See, I got going in that last paragraph and now I’m enthusiastic. I can tell everyone how I think this World Cup is going to be weird and strange and probably something of a downer, but I’ll watch every minute of it, and write too many words about it, and there will almost certainly be some compelling, intense matches and individual moments both of brilliance for me to praise and folly for me to mock. To varying degrees, we can overlook all of the off-field stuff if the football is good. The 1990 tournament in Italy ultimately went off pretty well, but it’s still not thought of very highly in hindsight, because the games were absolutely terrible. The games were generally terrible in Japan and Korea in 2002, owing to moving the schedule forward several weeks on account of weather and rendering many rosters either dog tired or injury laden, but for us here in the U.S., of course, 2002 was fantastic because our team played terrific and reached the quarterfinals and got Torsten Fringsed out of a possible semifinal spot. Barring something incredibly catastrophic or appalling happening, how we come to view the event depends on the on-field product.

And I’m going to attempt to be optimistic on that front, even though I’m not so sure that I should. I felt that, Nos. 1-32, the 2014 field was as strong and deep as any in the 32-team era, but I look at the 2018 field, Nos. 1-32, and I think it’s clearly the worst. My goodness, how did some of these teams get into the tournament? There is going to be some pretty dreadful games in the first round. (There always are.) That said, I do have some vested interest here, as I foolishly wagered on the World Cup during my last trip to Las Vegas, and while it’s absent some of the bigger names amid both the upper and middle-classes, the tournament still has plenty of potential for surprises, and there are some at the top end who, if they get their shit together, can be really dynamic and exciting. So I’m going to assume here that the games themselves will be good to watch until proven otherwise … which may last all of one game, but we’ll see.

And since I’m here, I may as well write-up my short attention span preview of the World Cup, because I’ve managed to talk myself into being enthusiastic during the 3,300 words of this blog post, so the hell with it, why stop now?

Group A just might be one of the worst groups ever assembled for a World Cup, in part because Russia are probably the weakest host side of all-time. Then again, the last comparably weak team that played host – the U.S. in 1994 – rode that good home cooking all the way to the 2nd round, and the Russians have traditionally had a terrific home field advantage. How bad this group will be depends upon whether or not Mo Salah can get healthy for Egypt. If Salah’s on the pitch, the Pharoahs have a legit chance of qualifying for the 2nd round. If not, they’re probably toast. I cannot see anyone other than Uruguay winning this group, given their high-end talent and their uncanny ability to get results, although I do not expect the latter to be that necessary in their first three games, as the former should suffice.

Group B is where I start to care because I got a really good price in Vegas on Spain back in November, before they unleashed the ruthless killing machine on Argentina this spring and announced that the post-2014 rebuild was over. With players like Isco and Ascencio, they now have young athletes to pair with their typically savvy ball possession game. I’m liking that 9/1 I got more and more by the day. Portugal were my long shot, a $10 bet at 22/1, simply because they proved in the Euros in 2016 that they know how to win stuff. Everyone needs a long shot bet, and who was I gonna take? England? Pfft.

Well played, Scottish Humour. Well played.

Portugal always interests me simply because unlike at Real Madrid, where Ronaldo can show up for 10 minutes and strut, when it comes to Portugal, he has to actually lead, he has to make plays for others and be fully engaged. The football wasn’t always great in France in 2016, but the Portuguese have some steel and some moxie. The other two teams in this group are interesting and you don’t really know what you’re going to get. Iran typically has the best talent in Asia but rarely gets the results, as the team always seems to be mired in some sort of political mess or another. (Get used to hearing that.) Morocco, meanwhile, took the Algerian tactic of recruiting any and everyone they could find playing the game on the European continent who could be eligible for a passport and giving it to them. There are 17 of their players who grew up on the continent – all of whom, of course, grew up in club and academy development systems, which means this team has more sophistication than previous Moroccan sides, many of whom still did pretty well in their own right. They looked pretty damn impressive when I watched them smack down the Côte d’Ivoire in their CAF qualifying group, but then again, the Côte d’Ivoire had hired the Belgian bumbler Marc Wilmots as a coach, who brought along his penchant for doing less with more, and I’m not sure how much of it was incompetence on the part of Elephants. Interesting team though, and having them in the same group as Spain and Portugal certainly provides a little extra regional spice.

It’s funny to me that so much attention is being given to Group C front-runner France’s potential future coach, be it Zinedine Zidane or Arsene Wenger or whatnot. This is because pretty much everyone I read associated with the French game is of the belief that one way or another, current head coach Didier Deschamps is going to find a way to take what is one of the most talented teams in the tournament and screw it up somehow. I’ve also got a bet on the French, even though I’ve been underwhelmed by their performances the past couple of years. I would like to think this is the tournament where Paul Pogba really busts out, but so long as Deschamps is going to do stupid things like have him playing as a Number 6, like he was doing in the Euros, I’m not so sure. In any event, they’re not going to have any trouble in what is, on balance, a pretty bad group. No one other than Christian Eriksen particularly scares me about the Danes. We all owe Peru a debt of gratitude, because it was them beating Brazil in the 2016 Copa América that got Dunga fired from the Seleção, and he took his terrible football with him, for which we’re all better off. I like me some Peru, they play hard and they’re tenacious, and their ploy of having Peruvian fighter jets buzz the New Zealand hotel during their 2-legged playoff was the stuff of trolling lore, and having captain Paolo Guerrero back from suspension bodes well. My general rule of thumb is that in a game between a mediocre European team and mediocre South American team on neutral grounds, go with the South Americans, so I suspect Peru will get the second spot. I’ve said nothing in this paragraph about Australia and there’s a reason for that.

Group D, aah Group D, give me some of that. This is the Group of Death. This is some fantastic stuff. As mentioned before, I have no idea what Argentina is going to do. They usually just muddle their way through first rounds, anyway, often looking terrible in the process. Croatia has high-end talent in Modrić, Rakitić, Kovačić and Mandžukić, but they’ve also had this propensity in the past for completely losing their minds when things stop going their way and resorting to seeing which one of them can get thrown out of the game the fastest. I’ve always loved me some Super Eagles, of course, and while this year’s Nigeria are shorter on experience, they’re never short on talent and, for once, seem to be shorter on political discord and longer on harmony, which bodes well for their chances. As for the 4th team in the group, SLEEP ON ICELAND AT YOUR PERIL. I said that two years ago and am still being proven correct. Besides being the feel-good story of the tournament (and, by the way Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl has the best job ever), Iceland are a pain in the ass to play against. How well they do will likely depend on the health of Gylfi Sigurðsson, but they’ve shown the ability to adapt and adjust. They won their UEFA qualifying group ahead of Croatia, and have now morphed from just being defensively rigid into also being able to play possession football as needed, and they’re still ruthless on the set pieces. I have no idea how this group is going to shake out.

I suspect there will be some tension in Group E when Serbia take on a Swiss team which has recently been laden with a number of immigrant kids from the Balkans who took refuge during the assorted wars of the 1990s. The Serbs have some young players on this rise, but this roster for Russia is sort of meh, and they got here by winning what turned out to be the weakest of the European groups. The Swiss, meanwhile, were unable to do what they did in 2014, which was to game the FIFA World Ranking system enough to land a top seed that they were wholly undeserving of. (And if you don’t believe me, go back to the video in 2014 of them getting slaughtered by the French.) But they’re going to duke it out for second, because this group is all about the rebirth of Brazil, and Jesus, this team has got a lot of talent and now looks as if they’ll have a healthy Neymar in the fold, to boot. Tite has brought the fun back to the Seleção since taking over for Dunga at the helm. Brazil absolutely steamrolled CONMEBOL in qualifying, and they have a legit élite player, plying his trade at an élite club, at pretty much every position on the pitch. The fourth team in this group are Costa Rica, who were quarterfinalists in 2014 and probably going to live off their laurels. They’re an older team now, a well-organized and experienced team, but that run in 2014 was due in large part to Keylor Navas standing on his head in between the sticks, which is a big ask. They might be able to get some points in this group, but I’m not sure they can get enough.

I expect the Germans to do plenty of German things in Group F, and by that I mean they’ll probably win a lot of games and not look all that great doing it. We tend to remember the 7-1 thrashing of Brazil in 2014 and forget that, among their other games that year, they also had three 1-goal wins, with none of those games being very impressive, a 2-2 draw with Ghana that they probably should have lost, and a World Cup final they would have lost if Gonzalo Higuaín could’ve hit the side of a barn. This isn’t to say the Germans were undeserving of being champions in 2014. Obviously, they had one magnificent night in Belo Horizonte which showed how great they can be, but more often, they were just good enough – which is, in fact, the sign of a great team to be able to eke out so many wins, but it also speaks to the margins being closer than you might think. The core of that team is still intact, of course – Neuer, Hummels, Boateng, Müller, Özil, Kroos, etc. etc. etc. – but just when you think they’re about to get old and slow, they throw a B team out there and win the Confed Cup with it and remind you that they grow players on trees. I actually think El Tri are gonna be good and the Germany-Mexico game in Moscow on June 17 could be the best first round game of the tournament. El Tri are deep, experienced, and they have playmakers all over the pitch. This is going to be a good one. South Korea were awful four years ago, and my only watch of them since was in a dreadful AFC game against Uzbekistan where the Uzbeks threw away a possible World Cup spot, and the fact that I’m talking about Uzbeks should tell you what I thought of the South Koreans, which wasn’t much. As for Sweden, I’ve seen them quite a bit in the past few years, both with Zlatan and without, and I’m shocked they are even in this tournament. I have to say that other than about 10 good minutes in their playoff game in Italy, during which time they deservedly scored, I’ve seen literally nothing in any of those matches that impresses me. I guess there is something to be said for their resourcefulness. I’ll give them that. That does count for something.

In Group G, the first XI for Belgium is absolutely terrifying. If I had to bet on the tournament’s top scorer, I’d pick Romelu Lukaku because he’s got three legit Number 10s in Hazard and DeBruyne and Mertens feeding him the ball. Roberto Martinez-coached teams always seem to have this propensity for believing that defending is optional, but Mousa Dembélé and a healthy Vincent Kompany should shore that up. I also got 9/1 on the Belgians in Vegas. I’m loving those odds. I actually think England are going to pretty good. For once, they aren’t relying upon has-beens living off their laurels. England are actually young, quick, have a stud goal scorer up front in Harry Kane, and if they can actually figure out who the hell is going to play in the center of the park, I could easily see them reaching the quarters and getting ousted on penalties by the Germans. I already said what I think about Panama, and I suspect Tunisia will be in the same boat, but whereas I think the Belgians are just going to run all over those two teams, it’s usually the England way to play terrible against one of the minnows and send the entire nation down a swirling, sucking eddy of despair.

This year’s How The Hell Are They A #1 Seed team is Poland in Group H. Poland are a good team – solid keepers, a stiff defense, a terrific goal scorer in Lewandowski paired with an excellent strike partner in Milik – but I think I’d still be more inclined to favor James and the more dynamic Colombians to win this group. They were terrific in Brazil four years ago, looked good in finishing third in Copa América in 2016, and while they weren’t great in CONMEBOL qualifying for the World Cup, CONMEBOL is so rigorous and stressful that it has a way of making a lot of teams look bad. Senegal could also be exciting and competitive it what looks to be a pretty even group, although be honest, I’m not terribly interested in Japan, especially not after writing 5,500 words of this blog post.

Predictions? Hmm. In 2010, I wished that I’d been wagering, since I got the Spain-Netherlands final right, 3/4 of the semis right, most of the quarters right, and would have made bank betting on the U.S. to win their group. So obviously, I’m never, ever wrong about this stuff … *checks previous predictions* … eh, okay, so, never mind. So take this to the bank, but do not cash the check. The winner of the July 6 quarterfinal between Brazil and Belgium will be in the final, beating France in the semis. Having dispatched of England on penalties in the quarters, because it could end no other way, the Germans will then lose to Spain in the semis. So give me a Spain-Belgium final, and the winner is me at that point, since it’ll give me a reason to go to Vegas and cash my winning ticket.

And it’s worth watching, because there is always the potential for something great to occur, something magical and brilliant, something completely confounding and utterly nutters. And the top-end talent that will be on display in this event can, on their day, deliver something absolutely exquisite. So don’t be a bunch of sourpuss homers, my American friends, and my disappointed Dutch friends and family, and my passionate Italian readers – one of whom recently wrote to me, “Dear Mr. Lose, yes you are correct Italy is crap,” which is my favorite fan mail of all time. Yeah, our teams are crap right now, but we can get better. And as weird as the vibe has been surrounding this tournament in the run-up, it’s probably going to be worth watching, even from afar.