And Then There Were Eight

LET the record show that the right side of the bracket is, in fact, six kinds of crap. In the Round of 16, the left side of the bracket gave us four games in which all eight teams played well and the games ran the gamut from good to ‘OMFG!’ Over on the right side, however, basically all eight teams were varying degrees of rubbish and the games ranged from dreadful to a good cure for insomnia.

And it was destined to be that way from the outset, of course, given the draw. Soccer loves it’s draws, after all, both on and off the field. The entire narrative of the tourney winds up being based upon the random bouncing of ping pong balls – an act which, for some reason, we’re approving of. I personally think lotteries are nonsense. It’s part of why I cannot take the Champions League as serious as others. There have been countless examples of teams advancing deep into that tournament while not being particularly good, simply by drawing teams who happen to be worse.

One of the main reasons that the right side of the draw sucks is that all four of the top seeds who were expected to be occupying top line places on the right side – Spain, Argentina, Germany, Poland – were varying degrees of contemptible in this tournament. Two of those teams’ shortcomings were predictable. In hindsight, perhaps all four should have been. But this sort of thing happens pretty much every tournament, although maybe not to this sort of extreme. You wind up with this knockout match-ups where you think, “huh?” There is no sort of draw or set-up which is ultimately going to result in eight match-ups which are all great. There will be one-off upsets, overachievers going about overachieving, lackluster performances, teams out of form and whatnot. There are always going to be some games which are duds, and there isn’t any way to prevent that. Everyone on the right side of that draw played themselves into a position to then play terrible Round of 16 games.

It just sort of sucked that there were so many lousy games on one side of the bracket. And even though the two games on Monday – Brazil’s 2:0 win over Mexico and Belgium’s 3:2 win over Japan – were both good matches (and, in the case of the latter, one of the most exciting World Cup games we’ve seen in years), what I think was bothersome to me, over the course of Monday and Tuesday’s four Round of 16 matches, was the fact that so many of the worst traits of the sport wound up being on display. Now, the Belgium-Japan game was so good that the unpleasant tastes in the mouth from the other games gets blunted a bit, but that taste still hasn’t quite gone away.

• For starters, I’m sick and tired of Neymar’s antics. He’s a wonderful player, arguably among the most gifted in the sport, but I’m not interested in watching him show off, nor am I interested in watching him roll around on the floor acting like he’s been shot.
And I’m saying this as someone who is willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Neymar’s on the floor a lot because he gets fouled a lot, and that fact is also annoying. I want to see great players make plays. I don’t want to see great players constantly getting cut down.
And I also understand the point of embellishing plays. You’re trying to gain a competitive advantage, and one of the ways in which you do that in soccer is to fool the referee into making decisions he shouldn’t. This happens in pretty much every sport. It’s hard for me, as an NBA fan, to bitch about guys diving in soccer when I put up with watching 82 games of James Harden flopping like a fish and flailing about. The upside of the dive and the embellishment comes if you convince a referee to award a penalty, or a free kick, or a card to an opponent. You’ve earned an advantage. You’re trying to win the game and there is little downside to trying it. Oh, occasionally, they’ll give you a yellow card for ‘simulation,’ but that’s always been a spotty call at best.
Quite honestly, Neymar probably should have gotten a yellow card for his bad acting vs. the Mexicans on Monday – a card which would have seem him suspended for tomorrow’s Quarterfinal against the Belgians. The Mexicans had already come out and said that Neymar’s a diver in the press before the game, and him flopping and floundering about just further annoyed them, but in that sense, Neymar had won, because he’s got them all mad at him and, it could be argued, further off their game.
But it is unsightly, and it gets tiresome, and about the most memorable thing from the first four Brazil matches in this tournament are Neymar’s theatrics. Those stand out far more than any of Coutinho’s goals or Willian’s savvy forward play. That’s not what people want to see.
Neymar wound up scoring the first in Brazil’s 2:0 win, a game in which El Tri’s approach was the right one – push the pace early, be aggressive in the press, take the game to the Brazilian defense and try to get an early goal, after which they could then settle into more of the defensive, counterattacking side that was so effective against the Germans. Mexico were the better team in the first 25 minutes, but the goal didn’t come. And such a high-energy strategy was bound to have a shorter half life than the norm in the 95° heat. Mexico wilted and labored through the second half of the match.
This makes seven consecutive World Cups where El Tri have been ousted in the Round of 16 – a sign of a pretty consistently high standard of play over that time, but also a source of understandable frustration. By El Tri standards, this Round of 16 exit was fairly pedestrian. Be it through wonder goals, iffy penalties, or humbling and inglorious defeats to hated rivals, Mexico usually find a way to make their exit memorable.
And I would imagine this is the end for head coach Juan-Carlos Osorio whom, in truth, was probably never going to be able to get out of the shadow of that horrible pantsing at the hands of the Chileans, a touchdown-sized defeat in 2016’s Copa América Centenario. Even though Mexico have been, in my mind, quite good ever since, I don’t think it could ever be good enough. Were he to walk away from El Tri and find himself at the helm of USA FC, I for one wouldn’t mind. He did a pretty good job, on balance, for Mexico, his history in the sport is rooted in America, and I don’t really mind that he’s something of a tinkerer, because god knows we have plenty of time here to try and figure out what our best XI is and how we want USA FC to play.

• Sweden are this year’s “what are they doing in the Quarters?” team after their 1:0 win over Switzerland – who would be the “what are they doing in the Quarters?” team if the result had been reversed.
Both of these teams seemed to regard the ball as if it’s some sort of rapid possum that you don’t want to get near. Both are well-organized sides which can be offensively challenged. It was appropriate that the margin of victory came from a fairly innocuous shot which deflected in, given that neither team seemed capable of actually putting a shot on target. The finishing from both sides was dreadful.
It was ultimately the Swiss who took possession of the rabid possum for longer periods of time, and the Swiss actually have a number of excellent passers on their team in the likes of Shaqiri and Xhaka and Rodriguez, but it doesn’t do much good to have great passers if you don’t have anyone to pass it to. There are 8.4 million people in Switzerland and you’d think that you could find one who could play center forward. I feel like the Swiss have been looking for a striker for about 10 years now.
I think a lot of us were thinking before hand that this game was going to be a dog, and it lived up to that billing. That said, we have to give the Swedes some credit here. I suppose the Zlatan-free Swedes are less exciting, but Zlatan was leading the line for them two years ago in France when they seemed, to my eye, to be about the worst team in the Euros. It’s easy to say they have punched above their weight all of this time, but the fact is that they knocked out the Dutch in qualifying, they knocked out the Italians in the playoffs, they really should have killed off the Germans, and they beat the tar out of Mexico, so it’s not that much of an upset that they’ve reached the Quarterfinals. There is almost always one of these teams who advances this far in the event, a team that’s pragmatic and dependent upon cohesiveness and being stout defensively for their success. It makes them a tough out, and even if it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing of styles, the success is undeniable.

• Tuesday night would have been a great night for some football if the Colombians had actually wanted to play some. Without James in the line-up, they played as if they didn’t think they could actually win the game. Instead, their strategy seemed to be to play nine behind the ball, act all macho and try to be intimidating, kick the English repeatedly, whine at the referee about everything, and generally act like shitweasels.
Shitweaselry is a two-way street, of course, and the English were dumb enough to flop and flail and overly embellish and engage in similar sorts of behaviours in response, which made it one helluva match for American referee Mark Geiger to try and sort out.
And trust me, I’m no Geiger fan by any means, but I’m always amused when you hear people whine and bitch after the fact, like the Colombians did, because they make it a point to say they lost because of “the American referee.” It’s important to get that “American” bit in there as a point of emphasis. This is the same sort of bullshit which came from some Brazilians in 1998 when “the idiot American referee” (their words, not mine) gave a penalty to Norway in stoppage time which gave the Norwegians a 2:1 win over Brazil. (Never mind the fact that, you know, he got the call right.) Guess what? There are plenty of shitty officials in South America as well, with the Ecuadorian who presided over this fiasco being the worst of all time. There are shitty officials all over the world. If anything, the Colombians should have been thankful Geiger didn’t send any of them off for their perpetual acts of petulance.
So this game was absolute garbage to watch, since the Colombians didn’t really seem to want to actually play any football while the English attempted to do so and failed at it. It was about the 70’ mark that the Colombians decided, down a goal and verging on going home, that maybe they should actually start playing a little bit and, lo and behold, they were actually pretty good at it. They proceeded to boss the game for the next 20 minutes, deservedly equalizing in stoppage time, and then looked like they’d get a winner in the first period of extra time against an England side which seemed shellshocked at having blown a 1-goal lead.
And I was annoyed with Colombians in this game because I wanted to see them play the expansive, geometric, swift style which has always served them well. I really didn’t have any sort of rooting interest, although I sort of figured that, given all of the bluster and bombast and ludicrous overconfidence spewing forth out of the U.K. about how the stars had aligned for England to have an easy path to the final, the English would then find a way to blow it. And, of course, after conceding at 90+3’ on a corner, and limping their way shakily through the first bit of extra time, the national nightmare that is England going to penalties reared its ugly head once more.
But maybe this is the new England after all, the side that doesn’t give any points to minnows like Tunisia and the side that has figured out that you don’t have to take a penalty kick with both of your hands around your own throat. Of course, now that England have slain the penalty shootout daemon, they just might have to invent a new way to screw up in their Quarterfinal with the Swedes. And I kid my English friends about their fandom, which is a comical combination of grotesque bombast with a healthy dose of nihilism. They all think England is going to win the World Cup while simultaneously believing they’ll also lose it in the most stupid of ways imaginable.

I could watch this 1000 times

• And I’ve saved the best for last here, and Belgium v. Japan was great. It was a great game. The second half of this match was probably the best 45 minutes of play I’ve seen in a World Cup in 20 years. The winning goal, where Belgium go about 90 yards in 10 seconds on the counter, is as stunning a team goal as you’re likely to ever see, a mix of speed, savvy, awareness, and just out-and-out hustle.
It’s easy when you look at the pedigree of the two teams in this game to immediately think, “what’s wrong with the Belgians?” But maybe it’s a case where Japan was, in fact, marvelous in this game. The full quote from Sartre adorning the top of this page reads, “in football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team.” We tend to forget, at times, that the opponent is, in fact, trying just as hard as you are. They have guys who can play, and guys who make plays. It’s not necessarily a condemnation of the winners that they almost lost. Sometimes, the losers play really well.
And Japan were terrific in this game. They played wonderful, courageous soccer. They didn’t just sit back after they jumped to a 2-goal lead because they knew very well their own shortcomings. Belgium changed the game when they inserted Chadli and Fellaini in the game, the former of whom found all kinds of space on the wing and started raising havoc while the latter took up his usual role as the most dominant aerial presence in the game. Once Belgium got it back to 2-2, a third Belgian goal began to feel inevitable – so Japan chose to attack, pushing he Belgians back and forcing several good saves out of Courtois, including one which led to the fateful corner.
And if you’re Japan here, what do you do on that corner? Do you play it safe and go into extra time, or do you hope to sneak a winner from the set piece? Hell, the Belgians still have more subs on the bench to throw at your tiring defense, they are going to spend the next 30 minutes launching balls into the box, and you can’t stop either or Fellaini or Lukaku in the air. (Even though he missed a tonne of chances, eventually, Lukaku’s going to make one of them if you keep letting him have them.) Maybe you can sneak a goal on a counter, or hold on for a half-hour and go to penalties, but you could also see the Belgians scoring two or even three in extra time. A 4:2 or even 5:2 final score seemed more likely, in fact, given how the game was going.
So Japan played to win, which I would have done as well. But the problem was the corner was straight to Courtois, at which point the Japanese had a problem:

There are six Blue Samurai behind the ball.
De Bruyne started this play on the endline, playing first man on the defense, while Meunier was marking the short corner. As soon as Courtois catches, they’re headed the other way along with Chadli, who was marking the outside man and who turns and sprints 85 yards. Also, interestingly enough, Lukaku was positioned at the half line for this break. Normally, you’d drop your big center forward into the penalty area to defend the corner. Lukaku does that very thing all the time. But he didn’t have to, in this case, because they have Fellaini in the game, and so Belgium chose to set him up high just in case the break was on.
My god, was the break ever on. It’s more like a jail break. It’s 5-on-4 and De Bruyne has 50 yards of open space in front of him. This was not going to end well for Japan:

We dare you to find a better counterattack!

Chadli finishes off a beautiful team play to give Belgium the win late in stoppage time. 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/lbUxZDzG0E

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 2, 2018

Lukaku’s movement and smarts on that play are incredible. He makes the whole play happen without ever touching the ball, first by running at the last defender and opening up space for the pass to Meunier on the right, and then dragging that last defender inside to set up the dummy for his teammate, Chadli, to finish the job.
That’s one of the most beautiful plays I’ve ever seen. If you’re going to get beat in the World Cup, get beat by something like that. Japan were a total mess of a side coming into this tournament, and had inched their way into the Round of 16 mostly through the foibles of others in Group H, but they made a lot of friends in this defeat.
This game had everything going for it. Great goals, a stunning comeback, a gonzo finish. It was fast, it was competitive, and yet it was also classy, a game absent a lot of the politicking with officials and sprawling all over the pitch. It all combined to make for a truly beautiful game of the beautiful game.

And then there were eight. This tournament continues to be compelling even when it slips off the rails and you have to sit through a bad game culminating in a penalty shootout – a lousy way to end a game, but nonetheless spectacular when it comes to tension and drama. The best World Cup I can recall watching, in terms of drama and storylines, was France 1998, but this one is right up there. Russia 2018 continues to delight.

The Ending of Eras

A work of goddamn art

THERE are no sacred cows here at In Play Lose. Losing is losing. If you suck, and you wind up going home, tough shit. Now, in the case of soccer, as opposed to other sports, losing can feel considerably more unjust. This has to do with the mechanics of the game. Rarely, in any other sport, can you say with much conviction that the better team lost. In soccer, however, that seems to happen all the time. One team has the better of the play and yet the damn ball won’t go in the goal and the other team takes advantage of a single good opportunity and wins 1:0 and it all feels like an unjust result. Or, even worse, you wind up tied and the game drags through 30 minutes of extra time and then it goes to penalties and the team which seemed to have been the worse wins the lottery. That’s how this game goes. If you want life to be fair, don’t play soccer or, even perhaps even more importantly, don’t watch soccer because, at times, it will drive you mad as hatters.

But while these types of games are frequent, the fact is that, far more often than not, the better team does, in fact, win and, more to the point, teams that lose find their way to put themselves in position to lose – they miss chances, they make mistakes and whatnot. And the margins are so damn minute that, over time, we tend to forget just how many times it is that those we deem “great” were, in fact, on the verge of failure. A large part of being “better” simply comes down to figuring out how, on a moment to moment basis, not to mess it all up. For every dominating 4:0 win which sticks in the memory, there are countless more 1:0 and 2:1 results which we eventually come to overlook.

And this complicates legacies – not only are long track records of success often dotted with near-misses and great escapes, but the reverse is also true. There are great players and great teams who, ultimately, never win anything. We wind up disparaging them for failure, even if those margins are razor thin and the results would’ve, could’ve, or even should’ve been different. And I’m mentioning this in the context of writing about the World Cup because what we’ve been watching in Russia is the end of an era for a generation of great players and the teams that they’ve played on. With each successive flameout of one of élite talents or teams, the immediate impulse is to look back on what they either have or have not wound up accomplishing at this level and on this stage, but what seems apparent to me is that the primary reason for this one last World Cup failure seems to be a propensity to dabble in the nostalgia of the past – that is to say, the belief that what you did which worked before is somehow going to magically work again X number of years later.

It’s perfectly reasonable and understandable, of course. You trust those who have done it before to be able to do it again, you go back to a tried-and-true tactic or style of play. But the game keeps changing and evolving over time, and you have to adapt and adjust. Two of the most influential nations in the game of soccer – the Netherlands and Italy – didn’t even make it to the World Cup this year, both of whom have understandably been in love with their ideas over the years. But everyone plays Dutch possession soccer now, everyone plays an Italian back three with wingbacks bombing forward. You have to shift shapes. What works one day won’t work for all of the days.

• Highlights from today’s Spain-Russia game:



With every passing game of this World Cup, I found myself liking this Spain team less and less. I picked them to win this World Cup at the start, and stuck with that prediction even after they stupidly fired their head coach. I believed that firing wouldn’t ultimately make much of a difference, and in the end, I don’t think that it did – because they weren’t that good to begin with, and it should have been obvious all along.
Spain rose to prominence playing tiki-taka, a short passing possession game based on the principles of Johan Cruijff’s Total Football from the 1970s. The overview which best describes the basis of Total Football was that any player on the field could take up any position on the field in an instant, and that movement, and the uncertainty it created, perpetually kept the opposition off-balance. The genius of tiki-taka stemmed from the idea that you could play defense with offense. You could simply suffocate the opposition, who just couldn’t get the ball back enough. Spain would score a goal and the game would be as good as over. But again, the key to the whole thing was movement, some of it unorthodox movements, be it a fullback barreling down the flank, or a center forward springing forth 30 yards to show for a pass. The ball, and the players, were constantly in motion, changing the point of attack, changing the passing angles. Trying to play Spain was a continuous act of attempting to hit a moving target.
But if guys don’t move, the whole thing doesn’t work, and Spain doesn’t move any more. I’ve enjoyed Spain a lot in the past decade, but watching them today was downright painful. Oh, sure, they had plenty of possession, but all of it was empty calories.
Spain completed 1,029 passes during the course of 120 minutes in their Round of 16 match against Russia, and probably 1,000 of them were pointless. Isco alone completed 132 passes in this match, and 12 of them went forward. When Russia scored on a penalty at 41’ to even the game at 1-1, it was Russia’s first shot on target – and, up to that point, Spain hadn’t had a shot on target, either. The Russians wound up defending for almost the entire game but rarely, if ever, looked uncomfortable doing so.
Seriously, what was the bloody point of that? Side-to-side, backwards, side-to-side again, backwards again. It was all ponderous and labored, absent of ideas and easy to defend. And so many of the culprits in Spain’s demise were the old guard, old standbys who’ve been playing for 8-10 years now. They all seemed out of ideas, simply reverting to patterns which have been drilled into their heads over a course of a decade which, clearly, no longer work. There is no tactical advantage that can ever truly trump being old and slow.
And that old way of playing doesn’t jibe with either their youngsters on the wings, who want to be a bit more direct, nor with Diego Costa at center forward, who may be something of a shithouse but who is also a helluva player, albeit a different type of forward than Spain are used to in terms of movement style. This is what happens in the international game. You don’t always have the ideal pieces at your disposal. I can’t even remember, among the 1,029 passes of this Russia game, a single one of them that was direct and decisive within Costa’s general area.
And what was interesting to me was that the one good chance Spain had in extra time came on, of all things, a counter attack. The Russians didn’t want the ball at all in this game, because having the ball meant having a chance to mess things up. Sure enough, they went forward and they mess things up, Spain springs a counter, the ball is played to Rodrigo on the right and he makes BBQ chicken of a defender and whoosh! there he goes, at speed, barreling down the wing and forcing a save from the Russian keeper – the only time in the whole game he seemed stressed. Sometimes, the best way to stretch a tight defense is to actually give them the ball and coax them to come forward. It’s something of a counterintuitive tactic, but then again, if nothing you’re doing is working, you may as well try something different.
But Spain weren’t that willing to do that, in part, because giving the other team the ball feels like a bad idea when your defense sucks. Playing defense with the offense doesn’t work if the offense doesn’t move. Any time you lose the ball, your back line looks like a target. And their cast of 30-somethings in the back all showed their age in this tournament. They struggled with Morocco, looked spooked any time Ronaldo ran at them, and even struggled with Iran.
Spain are not any good at the moment. They weren’t any good at the Euros, they weren’t any good in Brazil in 2014. There are so many good players coming out of Spain now that you look to this slow, aging team and wonder why anyone thought this was the best side they could put out, but at the same time, the young players didn’t play worth a damn, either. They didn’t deserve to win this match. They deserve no more nice things.

Defense for display purposes only

• When I saw Argentina set up against France with Messi playing as a false nine, my thought was, “huh?” The only logic that I could see to doing this was that by theoretically putting Messi in a more advanced position, rather than playing behind a center forward, it would work to get him onto the central defenders and away from Kante, who happens to be the best defensive midfielder in the world and who would probably shadow Messi the entire game and make his life completely miserable. But one of the problems with this was that Messi wasn’t going to spend the entire game in an advanced position. He was going to go anywhere he needed to go to get the ball, and with no one up front, the central defense of France would not be threatened. But the other problem, which seemed completely obvious to me, was that by not having a center forward as an outlet, as a guy who could hold up play and try to control some pace, the only outlets for pressure would involve playing the ball down the wings, which would naturally lead to stretching the field.
And stretching the field is the single worst thing you can do against the French. Seriously, don’t try to run with France. It’s a terrible idea. France want to play basketball on grass. They want to get the ball and run, they want Pogba on the ball at speed and in space leading the break, they want their forwards running off of Giroud, who is a great passer out of the post. They’re too fast, too big, and too skilled. One of the reasons it’s so hard for France to score a lot of the time is that their opponents are legitimately terrified of getting run out of the building and huddle up in their own end.
Argentina gets points for bravery, I suppose. The folly of trying to beat France at France’s game was evident right away, as Mbappe ran 70 yards with the ball and beat four defenders and got hauled down for a penalty. To Argentina’s credit, Messi cooked up three goals fir his teammates in this game – and it didn’t matter. You could have said to me France would score any number between 4-8 in this game and I’d have believed you. At no point did it ever seem like Argentina was winning this game, not even when they found themselves inexplicably ahead four minutes into the second half, at which point France simply amped up the tempo and the pressure and produced three goals in 25 minutes – the third of which being absolutely ridiculous, a 4-pass sequence covering 90 yards straight down the middle of the park during which no Argentine was ever within 10 yards of being able to make a play. Argentina’s defense has been a mess the entire tournament, but deciding to make it even less compact while getting into a track meet with the fastest team in the world seemed like suicide.
Argentina’s entire World Cup campaign was destined to fail from the outset, and this eccentric tactical approach of not playing a center forward, when your team has nothing but good forwards on its roster, is the final act of malpractice. Messi doesn’t have enough fingers to stick into all of the leaks springing from this dam. His brilliance has permitted his nation to go on living in denial about the horrible state of the domestic game for years now. (This piece from The Independent out of the U.K. is even more damning.) Given all of the madness going on behind the scenes in the camp – there have been stories of witch doctors, of the president of the country calling out of concern, of an on-going mutiny against the coach, of the players coaching themselves and picking out their own line-ups – and the lack of admiration and adoration he gets back home, you wonder why Messi would want to bother, and I suspect that he won’t. And if he’s done wearing the light blue stripes, his Argentina career is a most complicated of legacies. Argentina reached the finals of the last three major tournaments in which they played, after all, losing twice on penalties and once on a goal in the 119th minute. They were so close, so often, but at the same time, a team traditionally laden with attacking talent – all of which will now most certainly retire alongside Messi – could never be completely convincing in those campaigns. It could be argued those results were actually overachievements, but when you have one of the greatest players in history on your team, you’re not supposed to be overachieving. You’re supposed to be dominating, which Argentina never was.

• I enjoyed the fact that, on the same day Messi from ousted from what will likely be his final World Cup, Ronaldo was also ousted in what will likely be his. As I’ve said, the Messi v. Ronaldo debate is one of the dumbest in sports. I legitimately have no dog in this fight. I’ve never had any problem with either of them winning all of the things. (Though whenever Ronaldo’s won anything, some shithouse like Sergio Ramos or Pepe has won them along with him, which I don’t like.) I like both of them and always have.
Ronaldo had very little influence in Portugal’s final game, however, as they were done in by a couple of Cavani goals in Uruguay’s 2:1 win, the first of which being this thing of beauty:

 
Cavani started this play with a long cross-field pass to Suárez, setting up one of the longest give-and-gos in history. He then sneaks off the back shoulder of his teammate and around the back of the defense, who has no idea he’s there. Suárez gives him a perfect return pass. As much as he can be an asscan from time to time, Suárez is also one of the most complete center forwards in the world in terms of his hold-up play (despite his size), his creative movement, and his passing.
And as I’ve said in regards to Messi and also Ronaldo, we probably don’t give guys like Suárez enough credit for how good they are and how complete their games are. These guys can make all the plays. Take them out of the bubble that big clubs afford them and put them on a stage with lesser teammates, when they are forced to expand their roles, and they do whatever is necessary. They score goals, they pick out a pass, they become leaders and coaches on the field. They really do make all the plays.
But there is only so much you can do. Ronaldo managed to drag a limited Portugal side to a European final where, due to an injury, he had to sit and watch them win without him. Messi had two assists and set up three goals against the French, for goodness sakes. What else can he do? It is still a team game, and part of why Uruguay is still playing, while Argentina are going home, is that the Uruguayans play as a team, they do their jobs and play their roles and then turn it over to the duo of Suárez and Cavani to work some magic when needed.
Uruguay played like a legit contender in this game. They’re always defensively stout, and content with defending, but they also have offensive imagination as need be. They don’t necessarily want to play an overly open game, but as was evident in this surprisingly open game with Portugal, they can win that way if they have to. They’ve also done away with much of their previous dependence on rough play and the dark arts over the past decade, as being blessed with forwards the likes of Cavani and Suárez, and Diego Forlan before them, has led to a rethinking of the national team’s approach.
Which is a good thing, because I want to root for Uruguay. I’m pro-Uruguay. It’s secretly one of the most-awesome nations on this earth, they’re playing some great football now, and I decided to make my variation of their national dish for dinner last night:

Chivitos, anyone?

As a Philadelphia friend of mine pointed out, how can you not root for a country whose national dish is a steak sandwich?

• I have nothing at all to say about Croatia beating Denmark on penalties. It was a terrible game, and Croatia were fortunate to survive and advance. I do suspect I’ll have quite a bit more to say about Croatia over the course of the next couple of weeks, however – as in two weeks from now, in fact, when I suspect they’ll be playing in a World Cup final.

In Fair Play Lose

Michy Batshuayi Wins the Golden Gif Award

THE LAST three days of the World Cup ran from the gamut, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. These games always take on a different sort of flavor, in that everything that every team is doing is predicated upon getting a specific result. In the case of something like France and Denmark, what this meant is that nobody gave a damn. Sure, the Danes could have decided to go for it and try to win the game and win the group, but the risk of opening themselves up and possibly losing, when they hadn’t clinched a spot in the 16s, was far greater than the benefit of winning. And since the French didn’t need any sort of a result, what you wind up getting is a game that will make you want those 90 minutes of your life back.

But when teams did, in fact, need to do something, you at least get to see some unusual tactical approaches. You see stuff like Iceland bombing forward and trying to boss Croatia – which they’re not well-versed in doing but needed to do, given they needed to win, preferably by more than one goal, in order to ensure safety. They failed at this, but not for lack of effort. Jesus, how many good chances did Iceland miss? Whereas in the past, we would be lauding Iceland for achieving the goal of even reaching the World Cup, I suspect they will go home feeling as if they have underachieved. They should have done more.

Match Day 3 is also fun because what you often find out is that teams with “nothing to play for” do, in fact, have something to play for. Very few teams actually give up if they’re eliminated while still having a game to play. Guys play for pride, they play to give their fans and themselves good memories. So you had teams like Costa Rica and Peru getting deserved results, you had Tunisia and Panama giving it a go and playing some entertaining football and having themselves some fun. And how can you not have some fun? You’re playing in the World Cup, for godsakes. So simply assuming a team that’s out of it is just going to roll over and play dead for you is foolhardy. The vanquished can still rise up and bite you.

Well, that was different

But the best thing of all about Match Day 3 occurs when it’s all to play for in a group, with the two games going on at the same time, and the goings on in one game are directly affecting the other. Insanity sets in as teams chase results and it all gets wildly entertaining. We got a taste of that on Monday, when Iran was inches away from eliminating Portugal after seeming to be dead to rites just a few minutes earlier. Tuesday and Wednesday were even more dramatic still, and then Thursday was … well, weird. If it involves Group H, it has to be weird, but it got weirder than I ever could have imagined.

That pretty much sums up this game

• When the draw was first announced, everyone pointed out that Group A was trash, but when I looked at Group H, I thought it to be just as bad, because at least Group A had a team in Uruguay who looked like they could actually do something in the tourney, whereas Group H consisted of an overrated Poland, a Colombia team which made a name for itself four years ago but hasn’t been all that good in the past couple of years, a Japan team where everyone was acting like they hated each other, and a Senegal team that was something of an unknown. Nothing about that group excited me, The group’s been weird from the get-go, and ended in something of a farcical fashion.
Colombia needed a 1:0 over Senegal to qualify for the Round of 16, while at the same time, Poland was going about defeating Japan by the same 1:0 score. This left both Senegal and Japan tied for second place on 4 points. Each team won one, lost one, and drew one, each team scored 4 goals, each team allowed 4 goals, and the result of the game between the two sides was a 2:2 draw. They were as even-steven as could be.
So … now what?
Some historical precedent here. This same situation happened in 1990, which, going into Match Day 3, was on the verge of being the biggest clusterfuck in World Cup history, as all four teams – England, Holland, Ireland, Egypt – were on 2 points with a goal difference of zero and with each team having scored one and conceded one. The Dutch and the Irish traded goals in the first half of their final match, while England was on their way to winning 1:0 over Egypt, and at some point in the second half, the two captains – Ruud Gullit and Mick McCarthy – decided to commence an impromptu meeting on the pitch, and they concurred that it made no point for either of the two teams to try and winning, since if the results held up, both of them would advance to the Round of 16. (In the 24-team tournament, the four best 3rd-place teams advanced, and a draw would clinch spots for both teams.) It was at which point the two sides basically stopped playing, which was pretty goddamn annoying, to be honest. (This led to a moment where the annoyed official asked McCarthy if his side was going to bother to play any football, and McCarthy, ever the quipster, said it was actually the best football they’d played all tournament.) So, with both teams tied on 3 points, 0 goal difference, and 2 goals scored, they had to draw lots … and the Dutch lost the draw, of course, because they always lose in the most amazing and unique of ways, and the Dutch then had to play the West Germans in the Round of 16 and lost, while the Irish played Romania and won. Everyone agrees this is a lousy way to break deadlocks.
Here in 2018, FIFA has added another level of tiebreaker before the drawing of lots becomes necessary: fair play records. This seems to me to be a stupid way to do it, given that such decisions are, by their nature, the result of a subjective decision by the referees. It feels like a completely random and arbitrary criteria. That said, FIFA is intent upon cleaning up the game, and the bulk of yellow- and red-card offenses – bad fouls, dissent, acts of petulance, and generally acting like a douchebag on the pitch – are the sorts of things we generally want to see less and less of. Using a fair play record as a tiebreaker has been incorporated into a number of different tournaments, but it has never come up. It was not something anyone really thought much about.
Until now, that is. With no way to differentiate between the two sides, the tiebreaker turned to fair play records, and Senegal’s side had amassed two more yellow cards than Japan, so out of the tourney Senegal go while the Blue Samurai advance to the next round.
And this is a dumb way to do this. It’s a really dumb way to do this. But, as dumb as it is, its still better than drawing lots. At least this tiebreaker in based upon something which occurs on the pitch, rather than some guy sticking his hand in a hat. You have to break the deadlock somehow. There isn’t time in the tourney to have a replay or a playoff game. It’s a dumb solution, but I’m hard pressed to think of a better one.
About the best I could come up with for two teams who tied for second is head-to-head result against the team that finished first (which, in this case, would have favored Japan as well), but I can’t really defend that idea. Much as they decide games on penalties, using fair play records is an imperfect outcome which nobody likes, but no one can come up with a better idea.
And how this played out on the pitch was absurd. The Japanese were down a goal and, once they found out that Colombia had scored and that they’d advance if the results held, the Blue Samurai just basically stopped playing – and, of course, since Poland was winning and the opposition weren’t trying to play, they didn’t see a reason to keep playing, either, meaning the last 15 minutes of this match were completely pointless. It’s farcical, of course, but contrary to dumb screeds like this one, there’s nothing particularly shameful about the Japanese doing this. They’re certainly not the first team to stop trying to attack when there is no reason to do so. Quite honestly, they’d be idiotic to do so.
The whole situation is strange, and it sucks for Senegal, who can rightly feel like the outcome is a bit harsh. But, at the same time, they knew the rules going into the tournament. They’d still be playing if their keeper hadn’t flapped aimlessly and given up a sloppy second to Japan which allowed them to salvage a draw, or had they not sloppily defended a Polish set piece in the final few minutes, or maybe, you know, if they had scored another damn goal! The lesson here is that, in a small sample size such as this, all the plays matter, and nothing can be taken for granted.

• It seemed appropriate that the most absurd game of the tournament would wind up involving the Belgians. The situation where it appears to be beneficial finishing second instead of first in Group G played out, and the two sides swapped out 18 starters and played one of the dullest, least-inspired, least-interesting matches since … well, since France and Denmark played to a 0:0 draw on Wednesday. It seemed oddly appropriate that this game was decided by Adnan Januzaj, who could have played for England but chose to play for Belgium, and whose actually very nice goal at 51’ gave Belgium a 1:0 victory, which has all sorts of English pundits and penmen and fans giddy about the fact that England actually lost:

Irrational English overconfidence, then and now

The English are happy because they’ve now avoided the half of the 16s bracket which features Brazil, who hammered Serbia 2:0 on Wednesday, and also the possibility of playing France or Argentina. To which I say, be careful what you wish for. Losing to Belgium means playing Colombia next, who are a helluva lot better than Japan. Granted, there is likely to be no James, who aggravated a calf injury today against Senegal, but teams would best not be worrying about whom they might meet and focus upon who they will meet. If they manage to fuck up and lose to Colombia, this team is going to get absolutely killed – and they will deserve it, given the collective arrogance rearing its ugly head surrounding this upcoming game with the Colombians. Do not overthink this. Do not make grandiose plans about the quarters and the semis. Beat the team in front of you, and then figure it out from there.
To that end, even though Belgium wouldn’t have cared if they lost, I’m not so sure they care that they won, either. If it comes to pass, the Belgians will go into a quarterfinal with Brazil thinking they can win – and given some of the shaky defending Seleção put forth while nursing a 1-goal lead over the Serbs, England probably should have been thinking that way, as well.
This game, along with the aforementioned France-Denmark game, are both ultimately something of a fluke owing to the way that the tournament was drawn up. When they make the original draw, they also map out the entire schedule for the tournament, so when England came out of the pot at G4, it meant that they were going to play Belgium in the very last game of the tournament, and when Panama and Tunisia came out of the hat as G2 and G3 – two considerably weaker sides – it also meant there was very little chance this game would mean much, since both teams were likely to have six points. This isn’t really something which should lead to any irrational changes in the schedule going forward. That the game fell where it did in the schedule was, ultimately, random chance.
That doesn’t mean the game didn’t suck, however. It did. It was trash. I was reminded, watching England mess up, of the infamous London Olympics badminton tournament where teams were discovered to be losing on purpose to set up better match-ups, with the only defense from the various federations being along the lines of “our athletes really are that bad,” which begs the question of what they were doing in the Olympics in the first place. England’s reserves performed in a generally incompetent fashion that would make me not feel too confident in my squad’s depth going forward. Having said that, their first XI has been dynamite, and while this game on Thursday between Belgium and England was trash, it is not outlandish, by any means, to think that the final on the 15th of July might wind up being a repechage involving these two teams ...

Where did everybody go?

• There was something life-affirming and soothing about watching the scenes from places like Los Angeles and Mexico City on Wednesday when, unbeknownst to everyone, it suddenly became “Hug a Korean” day. The sort of outpouring of joy where El Tri fans are parading with South Korean fans on their shoulders, or drinking tequila with the South Korean ambassador outside the embassy, or sending over cases of beer to their new Korean friends, is something that we could use more of in this lifetime. It’s why we watch sports, when you get right down to it. It’s beautiful and we need more of it.
And it was all so spontaneous and sudden. El Tri were getting hammered by the Swedes in Ekaterinburg, absolutely hammered, down 3:0 after giving up a series of horrible goals in the 2nd half – first a Swedish defender runs 50 yards unmarked and smashes one, then a penalty, then an own goal that would have been a penalty, as it bounced off a defender’s arm and in. It was a farce and it was hopeless, because at any point Germany would score against the South Koreans and Mexico would be going home. And the Mexican fans in the stadium in Ekaterinburg then suddenly start cheering in stoppage time, all of them on their phones following the other game. A huge cheer – South Korea had scored – and then a hush – the goal was under review … but it’s a good goal, and VAR clearly shows the play is onside, and then another eruption from the El Tri faithful, which confuses the hell out of the Mexican players on the pitch, all of whom have gotten their asses whooped.
Mexico have made a habit now of slipping through the back door when it comes to the World Cup, because the unthinkable happened in the other group game: the Germans didn’t win. The Germans are out. They are out after the first round for the first time since 1938 after being stunned 2:0 by the South Koreans on a pair of stoppage time goals. For anyone who seriously follows this game, the Germans coming up short is a shock to the system.
But also a delight because, let’s be honest here, people hate the Germans, and for obvious reasons: the Germans are always so damn good. But from the get-go, something wasn’t right about this team. They were so open against the Mexicans in the opener, so exposed and so vulnerable. It just didn’t make sense. But Mexico laid out the blueprint in that first game: if you stand them up, run at them and commit to playing on the break, the Germans are slow and unathletic, they are disorganized and they struggle to keep up.
The money line in Las Vegas on the Koreans for this game was +1300. This was a huge shocker and yet, in hindsight, it maybe shouldn’t have been. South Korea’s calling card in this game has always been a commitment to high tempo and, in Son Heung-min, they also happened to have the best player on the pitch.
Which is stunning to say about the Germans, but the fact is that other than Toni Kroos, this team just doesn’t have élite players any more. They were élite players once, but the core of this group were first playing together in South Africa in 2010. Eight years is a long time to keep a core together. It shouldn’t be a surprise that four of the past five World Cup champions have then failed to get out of the group stages in the next event four years later. There’s a tendency to value loyalty and experience above all, thinking that it can overcome youth and athleticism. It can, but only to a point. Most teams that win World Cups consist of players in their prime, but four years pass and a great number of them are no longer in their prime. The Germans who combined technique and moxie with athleticism in 2010 and 2014 were so slow, so disjointed, and so immobile this time around. All of those great German traits of commitment and resolve and teamwork simply didn’t matter any more. The Koreans ran all over the Germans. Quite honestly, the final scoreline could have been worse.
And once the losing starts, of course, you hear about the in-fighting and the bickering in the back rooms. This always happens when you’re losing. These were not happy campers. It was pretty obvious by the wholesale changes for each game that Joachim Löw had no idea who his best XI were. He was inclined to trust the old guard, the vets who’d won him titles in the past, even though it was pretty obvious that all of them had lost a step. Muller was horrible, Özil was horrible, Khedira could barely move and the central defense resembled a turnstile. Manuel Neuer got his job back in goal, even though he’s barely played in nine months, and there he was wandering aimlessly 70 yards from his goal and getting dispossessed for the Koreans’ second goal, an incredibly dumb play made by a guy who can no longer get away with making those sorts of plays.
The Germans lost to South Korea and the better team won. I can’t believe I just said that, but the better team won. South Korea did not ride their luck. They deserved to win this game. It feels weird to say that, it feels off somehow. Certainly, no one is going to shed any tears for them, nor should they. What was originally a strangely likable German team back in 2010, a young and fun bunch who oozed potential and reached it four years later, was clearly just a shell of itself and Löw had no more buttons to push. After the first Swedish goal against Mexico, I flipped over to this game, and I kept thinking to myself that the Germans would score at any moment, because that’s what they do, just as they’d done to Sweden over the weekend. But the goals didn’t come. The ideas weren’t there. They were resorting to taking optimistic shots which had no chance. They were not finishing the good chances that the likes of Klose and Muller had been handed, on a platter, for years. It was such a sad performance, in the end, one that was unbecoming of a champion. I’d have thought that the Germans would go out because Spain or France or, yes, England would have to rise up to the challenge and play a great game. I never could’ve imagined a German team that seemed, in the end, so meek, so old and so frail.

• The other meek, old and frail “dynasts” – and I use that term out of respect for their 100-year legacy, rather than what they’ve actually accomplished recently – managed to survive where the Germans failed simply because they have someone who can do this:

This is some goddamn artistry and needs to be properly appreciated.pic.twitter.com/xVVtnlfDiD

— Roderick MacNeil (@rodmacneil) June 27, 2018

The biggest difference between Argentina and Germany, at this point, is the fact that Argentina have Messi and Germany doesn’t. That goal was spectacular. The way he controls the ball like that, on the dead run, is truly special and should be cherished. As bad have Argentina have been, they can still turn to a guy who can do something like this to jump start them in a time of need.
Messi may have gotten the ball rolling, but Argentina wound up having to leave it late. Argentina are still a mess, and they played like a mess after the Nigerian equalizer – and it was a penalty, so I don’t want to hear all of my Argentine fan friends whining. It was a penalty. Stop it already. Don’t give me this bullshit about how it wasn’t a penalty in the other games so it shouldn’t be one now. It should have been one all along. It was a stupid play by Mascherano, who had a rotten game for Argentina – understandable, I suppose, given all of the rumors swirling about that he was actually now a de facto player/coach, with Sampaoli reduced to being a figurehead no one was paying attention to. I will use the fact Mascherano was trying to coach on the pitch as an excuse for why he was abject.
Once the game drew level, Argentina reverted to being chickens with their heads cut off, running around aimlessly in defense and showing no coherence whatsoever. The Nigerians had already thrown Argentina a lifeline by beating Iceland, and here the Nigerians were doing it again with a series of poor finishes when they had chances to bury Argentina.
Argentina ultimately won this game because they stopped making sense. They threw so many men forward that Nigeria couldn’t get out of its own end. The winning goal was from a center back in the 85th minute – what was he doing in the center of the box? Who cares? It worked! Argentina’s formation looked like a 2-2-6 at that point, with everyone forward even after they’d scored the go-ahead goal. It was an act of impromptu strategy necessitated by the circumstance. It made no sense at all. In that sense, it was brilliant.
So Argentina lives to see another day, they can show up for work happy and everyone can pretend they like each other for a few more days. Given how they like to play, and given how France likes to play, I have no idea how they’re going to stop the forwards for Les Blues from just running absolutely rampant on them, but once you get to the knockouts, the World Cup is all about making stuff up on the fly. Whatever works, you do it. If you have the best player on the pitch, you have a chance to win – and with Messi, Argentina always have the best player on the pitch. I’d be stunned if Argentina progressed any further in this tournament, but paradoxically, I also wouldn’t be surprised at all.

On to the Round of 16! This tournament has been sensational so far. Let’s hope we don’t devolve into these boring tactical battles which wind up being settled on penalties and making everyone unhappy. We all deserve better outcomes than that. Let’s all hope that we get them.

VAR-iance

Photo of the tournament

DESPERATION soccer is the best. There comes a point where you have to try to get a result and all tactics and defensive rigidity and whatnot go flying out the window, the game gets stretched and it becomes this madcap, end-to-end scramble. When that happens in a soccer game, it becomes the best sporting spectacle there is. And when, in the World Cup, it’s going on in two games simultaneously, it makes for the most wildly entertaining of viewing.

Monday was looney tunes. I had two windows open on Telemundo simultaneously, watching both the Morocco-Spain and Portugal-Iran games at the same time. And both the games were absolutely nuts: goal scoring chances galore, tackles flying in, wild controversies that VAR couldn’t sort out – or, should I say, that referees on the field were unwilling to sort out, but we’ll get to that in a minute – controversies and mood swings and wild twists and turns. It was an absolute roller coaster. It was thrilling entertainment, even though both games wound up in draws.

It was madness, and it was thrilling – and all of it was awash in controversy. Spain gets an equalizer in a 2:2 draw with Morocco thanks to VAR – a goal incorrectly ruled out for offsides that was correctly overturned – but then VAR gives a nitwitted penalty to the Iranians in stoppage time which allows them to level at 1:1 with Portugal and, all of a sudden, Iran has a lifeline and bomb forward in the final 3 minutes and nearly get the winner which would have won them the group and kicked Portugal out. Portugal had a right to bitch about that call – but Portugal didn’t have a right to bitch about the fact that Ronaldo probably should have been sent off at 81’ for his elbow on an Iranian defender. By the letter of the law, it should have been a red. It was mitigated because the Iranian flopped like a fish, but there was this amazing two-minute period where the referee was checking the replay and I was thinking to myself, “holy shit, Ronaldo’s going to get sent off,” and Ronaldo has this frightened look on his face as he was waiting for his fate …

But Ronaldo only got a yellow card, and over in the other game going on simultaneously, Gerard Pique somehow was allowed to remain on the pitch despite a two-footed challenge straight out of prison rules football. The problem with replay in situations such as this is that human beings need to make the calls, and human beings are still reticent to do things like throw a superstar like Ronaldo or Pique out of a game. NBA fans bitch all the time about how superstars get the calls – while, of course, also lamenting that they don’t have a star of their own on their team to get those calls for themselves – but superstars getting the calls is sort of human nature. The former baseball umpire Ron Luciano spoke to this human nature in his autobiography: if a Hall of Fame batter like Rod Carew gets to a 3-2 count, fouls off eight straight pitches and then takes a close pitch on the edge of the zone, you’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s earned it over the course of his career. Referees want the best players to decide the game and don’t want to overly influence the games themselves – a noble idea with the problem being, of course, that not making calls influences the games too much as well.

The problem with VAR is that we all keep winding up talking about it, whether or not it worked the way it was supposed to. VAR overturning a call and getting it right reminds you of just how much stuff actually gets called wrong during the course of a game, the sort of bullshit like disallowed goals for offsides which nearly happened to Spain in the dying moments. VAR still getting a call wrong makes you wonder what the point is. There were four penalties awarded on Monday, and all of them were varying degrees of weak. Attempting to wade into the grey areas of the game just make the waters even murkier than before. Maybe Morocco’s Nordin Amrabat was right when he said that VAR is bullshit, but now that we’ve introduced this technology, we can’t exactly go back and stuff the djinni in a bottle:

The swings in these games were crazy. As I’m watching this Paraguayan referee thinking about what to do with Ronaldo, Morocco’s up 2-1 and running all over Spain, who can’t stop anybody at the moment, and the very real possibility arises that Morocco can get a third and Iran could play 15 or so minutes against a 10-man Portugal, and if Iran can find two goals and Morocco gets a third then Spain would be out! And then Spain scores to blow that up, but Iran is gifted a penalty and Portugal is nervy and Iran miss a god honest chance to win the game and win the group, but it goes for naught. It was all over the place. It was crazy and brilliant and I loved every minute of it. This is the kind of drama that we want to partake in. It might yet get crazier further still in the coming days.

Some random thoughts here from the weekend, which I didn’t get to write about. Last week, I went into lamenting how the defenses were being resolute and the offenses lacked an edge, and then there were 34 goals in nine games, which undoubtedly ruined more than a few journos’ articles, in the process:

*Prays the two Group F games are 0-0 so his piece about dearth of World Cup goals in tomorrow's Observer doesn't look really silly.*

— Jonathan Wilson (@jonawils) June 23, 2018

It was, in fact, a triumph of the proactive over the pragmatic. At some point, you need to go forward and take some risks and try to win the bloody game. Two teams came from a goal down to win 2:1 in stoppage time. Nigeria did nothing against Iceland in the first half, failing to get a shot off, and then produced 16 in the second half and deservedly notched a 2:0 win. We’ve still not had a 0:0 draw and all of the sudden, the goals are coming from everywhere.

Super Eagles

• As a fan, what I want, above all else, is meaningful games. Dead rubbers are a drag. No one cared about the Egypt-Saudi Arabia game today – which is only worth mentioning because Egypt started a 45-year-old goalkeeper, who actually stopped a penalty and struck a blow for old guys everywhere. But otherwise, no one cares. We want to care. We want all the games to matter, and what took place during the weekend ensured there would be only two dead rubbers among the 16 games of Match Day 3. It’s good for the fans and it’s how we want it.
And I say that as someone who was hoping Iceland would beat Nigeria and as much as eliminate the Argentines, because they have been complete garbage, and who was hoping the Swedes wouldn’t screw up against the Germans, since the Germans were as good as dead with any result other than a win. But now we’ve got great games in store involving those two teams, and many others, over the next three days and it’s all to play for. And in the bigger picture, that’s better.
There are all sorts of outlandish scenarios still in play along the same lines of what we saw in Group B today. South Korea is still alive – wait, what, really? They can’t beat Germany, can they? … then again, have you seen the Germans defend anyone lately? (If so, let us know, because I certainly haven’t.) Australia is still alive, it’s a mess in Group H, the various tiebreakers in Groups D and F could send your head spinning. This is great! I love this! Welcome to the chaos. I want this to get as weird as possible. I want to see frenetic, end-to-end action in the 97th minute as some team is chasing some necessary 3-goal win. Let it all be a glorious mess.

• Having just said all of that, oh Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, jesus, what were you doing? Given that a draw would have put them in a situation where advancement at Germany’s expense would involve nothing more than a leisurely 0:0 draw of a stroll through the park with the Mexicans on Match Day 3, and given that you’re 1:1 with the Germans and they’re reduced to 10 men, you hold all the cards here. Even if you play to win and can’t score, you pin the Germans deep. You can even just play it out and run out the clock. The Germans are chasing the game and they’re down a man, for godsakes. You can’t mess this up.
Sweden messed it up:

That’s the passing chart after the Germans were reduced to 10 men. The Swedes couldn’t make up their minds what to do, and so they basically did nothing. At one point, they messed up a 5-on-2 break, and later on, in the dying seconds, instead of just killing the game, they took a wimpy shot on goal which led to the German break, which led to the Swedish foul, which led to the Toni Kroos free kick:

Now Sweden’s got it all to do against the Mexicans, and El Tri has to take it seriously as well, because both teams now need a result and both teams know the Germans will almost certainly beat the Koreans even though they’re missing both starting center backs – but, given how bad both have been, and how much the Germans improved once Boateng got sent off, this might not be a bad thing after all. You just can’t be giving stuff away. The Swedes gave a game away. Iceland gave a game away and so did the Serbs. Some eccentric goalkeeping in their 2:2 draw might cost either Japan or Senegal a spot in the Round of 16. Mexico giving up a 95th minute goal to South Korea might come back to haunt them – although, granted, the strike by Son was pretty sweet:

 
Oh, and one other thing about Germany v. Sweden. The player who committed the foul, Jimmy Durmaz, is of Syrian descent and was subjected to some rather nasty abuse online along the lines of that he isn’t truly a Swede. This sort of ignorant bullshit really pisses me off, and this sort of abuse led to the Swedish team feeling compelled to make this statement the next day:

Toulouse attacker Jimmy Durmaz was subjected to racist abuse on social media last night after his foul led to Toni Kroos' winning free-kick goal over Sweden. Today, he responded, backed by the whole squad: "F*** racism." pic.twitter.com/vAjhUQ4vg2

— Get French Football News (@GFFN) June 24, 2018

Amen. Fuck racism. And fuck all of the twats who gave Durmaz a hard time. Go find something else to do. Soccer doesn’t need you.

• And since we’re sort of moving along in a political direction here, it’s probably not wise of FIFA to step into the quagmire of Balkan politics – seeing as how that has always worked out so well for every other international agency that’s attempted to do so – but they probably felt like they needed to after Switzerland’s Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri decided to give the Serbian fans the bird. Not the one-fingered American variety, mind you, but the symbol of the double eagle that adorns the Albanian flag:

For those of you who don’t know the back story, both Xhaka and Shaqiri are immigrants to Switzerland from Kosovo, both of them ethnic Albanians. (Xhaka’s backstory is here and, obviously, it’s personal.) From reports I’ve heard and read about the game, the Serb fans were giving it to the Kosovans wearing Swiss colors rather extensively during the game, and both of them felt obliged to troll after they each scored in Switzerland’s 2:1 comeback win over the Serbs. Now FIFA is opening an inquest into whether or not this is an inflammatory political gesture, and the Serbs are understandably mad about it, and welcome to the quagmire. When I saw these two teams drawn together, I knew this could turn into a mess, since it seems as if every game that involves a lot of players or teams from that particular region of the world turns into a mess. And you can see why. It was an ugly, awful, horrible series of conflicts that led to the breaking up of Yugoslavia, those memories are still fresh and the wounds too deep. You’d like for sport to be just about sport. Wishful thinking, I know. But politics and soccer have always intertwined, and there are times where sport simply cannot be just about sport, as much as you want it to.

Belgium’s Michy Batshuayi with the worst miss of the tournament

• Every time I saw Panama concede another goal to England, who put six past them and probably could have scored more, I was reminded of the fact that Panama somehow finished above the United States in CONCACAF qualifying, and it made me angry.

• I saw someone online make the point that having a team as bad as Panama in the World Cup was proof that CONCACAF has too many spots in the World Cup. Does that make having a team as bad as Poland in the World Cup proof that UEFA has too many spots? Poland were terrible. Panama is on no points and a difference of -8, but given the garbage that I saw from the Poles, had they had to play England and Belgium, I’m not sure they would have fared much better. I was skeptical of them to begin with, thinking that top seed and top 8 FIFA ranking was smoke and mirrors, but they were awful on Sunday against Colombia. Poland are in the same boat as a few other teams in this tournament in that they have one legit top-class player, Lewandowski, who happens to be a forward, and forwards still need someone to get them the ball, which proved a challenge for Poland and also for the likes to Mo Salah’s Egypt and Son’s South Korea, while a one-horse team like Denmark whose star, Christian Eriksen, is a playmaker can influence the game in other ways.

This pass serves as a reminder that James is really good at football

• For the spectator, this has been the best World Cup that I can ever remember. It’s been wildly entertaining, compelling, dramatic and tense, and it could get even crazier in the next three days. Good. Let’s have that happen. The crazier, the better.

Frauds and Other Foibles

Silky

“Why didn’t you bet the house? We’d have two houses now.”

– Official Spouse of In Play Lose

SIX games in the past two days, four of them ending with a 1:0 scoreline. It feels like 1:0 is the new 0:0. The progressive ways in which VAR are being implemented have added to the goal count, of course, given that there have been a few instances where non-calls have been overturned and penalties awarded, but the offenses seem to have bogged down. Every team that gets a lead seems perfectly happy to try and shut the game down, and those chasing the game seem to lack a cutting edge. I’ve said previously that I believe, 1-32, this field is quite weak, and this is where that fact seems to be rearing its ugly head. Now, a one-off scoreline is not necessarily indicative of that game’s quality. There can be fabulous and compelling 0:0 games and 1:0 games and whatnot. But as a general trend, defensive organization seems to be taking more and more control of this tournament.

Pepe can’t stop, won’t stop flopping

• There are always teams that play well in the World Cup and get nothing out of it. Peru and Morocco both fit that bill this year. It could be argued that, in each of their cases, they were the better team in both of their matches and wound up taking a total of zero points. That’s football. It happens sometimes.
Morocco were subjected to the 90 minutes in the dentist’s chair that is a game against Portugal, who just might be the most annoying team in the world to play at the moment. (That’s a compliment.) Rather than leaving it late to melt down, like they did against Iran, Morocco instead decided to melt down early on, giving up a goal at 4’ on a corner to some unheralded forward named Cristiano Ronaldo. Kid has talent, he might be good some day. After that regrettable defensive error, Morocco then had to chase the game for 86 minutes and got nothing out of it, even though they were by far the better team and the Portuguese did less than zero for the remainder of the match. Regardless of how they looked moving the ball and pressing, no points and no goals is not good enough.
I can’t really say that I was impressed with Portugal in this game, but that’s precisely the point – I’m rarely, if ever, impressed by Portugal, but they’ve become the European master of the ugly win. They’re this zombi team that you just can’t kill. Their games are ugly and awful, and I took a $10 flyer on them in Vegas for a reason.
Peru, meanwhile, threw everything at France after going down a goal and still can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Peru have been great. They’ve tried to play fun, up-tempo proactive football, the red sash is one of the best jerseys ever, and their fans have been one of the hits of the event. But no points and no goals means no mas. It’s too bad, because they’ve been a breath of fresh air.
As for the French, well, blech. I’ll give them credit for being stout defensively, I suppose, and I guess you could step back and look at the big picture and point out that they’ve won two games while playing like trash whereas a number of teams who’ve had designs on this winning this thing have won very few games while playing like trash. But that doesn’t change the fact that the French have been trash. You’d think that a team with a stout defense, with speed on the wings and great finishers up front, would just revel in a game where they got a one-goal lead. You’d expect them to just murder their opponents on the break. But the French couldn’t get out of second gear and wound up pinned in their own end by the Peruvians for much of the second half and clinging to life. What is this nonsense? After that ridiculous LeBron style special in which he announced he was staying at Atleti, Griezmann apparently decided to take his talents to South Beach on vacation, since he’s done next to nothing in two games. At least Giroud gives their aimless offense a center forward to aim at, but the French need to pick up the pace and do the work.

This was not a penalty

• If Peru and Morocco win the Tough Luck award, then Denmark wins the Lucky Stiff award for managing to amass four points while being thoroughly outplayed by first Peru and then the Aussies – the Aussies, for goodness sakes! Denmark have been crap, for the most part, but here they are on the verge of advancing.
The Danes’ strategy appears to be “Christian Eriksen make stuff up and don’t give anything away,” but they aren’t even doing that very well, as they’ve conceded two penalties in as many games – although the second of those, which allowed the Aussies to equalize, was an absolutely terrible call. This was VAR at it’s worst. And I’ve wound up being a VAR apologist here in discussions online, even though I’m generally opposed to replay – not because I’m opposed to the principle of getting the calls right, but because I find replay, in most sports, to be poorly applied.
VAR is never going to be perfect, because officiating in soccer is never going to be perfect. It’s a huge pitch, guys are moving really fast, and everyone is also trying to influence and fool the officials as well, which happens in every sport. (Watched a Houston Rockets game lately?) There are always going to be grey areas, and VAR won’t always help with that. I’d rather we find a way to rid ourselves of the endless arguments about if a guy is or isn’t offside, and VAR’s working on that front in this tournament. But whether hand balls are deliberate or not, whether it’s a foul in the box or not, is never going to be crystal clear, and looking at things in super slo-mo is more likely to confuse the matter, instead of less.
But I was reminded, amid an insufferable argument about whether Messi or Ronaldo is better and the conversation strayed towards Diego Maradona, that a good number of people think of him as a cheat, thanks to The Hand of God. Certainly, among my thousands of good friends in Ireland, they think of Thierry Henry as a cheat, thanks to The Hand of Gaul. And guess what? Had there been VAR in 1986 or 2009, neither of those would have happened. In both cases, it’s guys who were just trying to make a play and the officials missed the call, because officials do that from time to time. Every single foul is play where someone could have gotten away with it, but didn’t.
Ultimately, my feeling is that if we are finding a way to cut out some of the more egregious mistakes, the game will be the better for it. And I admit that I have a low bar for VAR. I wasn’t all that thrilled when I heard they’d use it for this tournament, simply because it hadn’t been tested properly, and the tests had been murky at best. My beloved football club, Norwich City, had a game using VAR during one of the cup competitions, and it wound up being somewhat farcical, with a whole bunch of penalties not being given and a whole bunch of yellow cards being brandished for simulation, when in fact the plays were really somewhere in between. We know what is and isn’t a foul, for the most part, but we’re never going to be sure, I think, when it isn’t or isn’t going to be called.
Ultimately, I’d like them simply to not screw up a game completely and cost a team a win. That hasn’t happened yet, in my opinion. Of the top of my head, I can’t say that any team got a result they didn’t deserve because of VAR. Oh sure, this penalty today going against the Danes was lame, but so were the Danes, for that matter. They flattered to deceive in this 1:1 draw and, if anything, Australia should feel like this match was two points lost.

Just like they drew it up

• I really didn’t understand the lack of urgency from a couple of teams. The Saudis enjoyed a nice, leisurely stroll around the park for 90 minutes in their 1:0 loss to Uruguay, having gifted a goal 25 or so minutes in to Suárez when their keeper flapped at a corner and then proceeded to amble about for the rest of the game, doing nothing against a team that was perfectly content to let them do nothing. I couldn’t understand what the point was of plodding along at such a ponderous pace. You need a goal! You need at least a point! Do something, for god sakes! There comes a point where you have to throw caution to the wind here. Maybe it doesn’t work, maybe you get hammered 5:0 again. So what? You’re going home if you lose. 1:0 is just as bad as 10:0 in that instance. And the Saudis at least possessed the ball a little better, at least, although they could hardly have been worse than they were against the Russians. Everyone on their side did the obligatory falling to the floor in dismay at the end of the match, an action which, given how slowly they played and disinterested they seemed, almost came off as being rehearsed.
And I was extremely puzzled by Iran, who lost 1:0 to Spain in a game which was actually pretty damn exciting in the second half. Iran decided to park the bus in the first half. Well, no, that’s not really true. They parked a bus, a semi, several SUVs, an aircraft, and I think they may have even had a six-mule team in there as well. They got to half level, only to be done in by a fluky goal, an attempted clearance that bounced off Diego Costa’s shin and dribbled into the net.
But a funny thing happened in the second half of this game. Iran had to attack in the second half and, lo and behold, they were pretty good at it – and, more to the point, Spain weren’t very good in the back. Iran had 3-4 golden chances to tie the game, including a goal called back for offsides. That Iran, who who had a 23-game unbeaten streak going, can go forward shouldn’t be a surprise. They’ve got guys on their roster who scored plenty of goals this past season in the Eredivisie and the Greek League – not the top level, of course, but not far from it. Point is, there is attacking talent there, and Spain weren’t exactly stout in the back in their 3:3 draw with Portugal.
So why park the bus? What’s the point? Going into Match Day 2, Iran were leading the group and, with a win in this game, would advance. SO PLAY TO WIN! Maybe it doesn’t work, maybe Spain catch you out and put some past you. Fine. If that happens, and you win the last game vs. Portugal, you’ve advanced! Why leave it late if you can take matters into your own hands now?
Teams at this level win a lot on reputation. The Brazilians have won World Cups where their opponents just refuse to attack them. I was baffled four years ago, by how few teams were willing to run at the Germans when the Germans were very clearly struggling in the back. Take some risks! Don’t be afraid. If you just let the better teams have the ball the whole time, you’re simply asking for them to show off their quality.
One of the problems with parking the bus is that it actually doesn’t work very often. If you play not to lose, you usually do. And Iran looked so good going forward in the second half, and Spain seemed so shaky, that you wonder why it was they didn’t wait until they were behind to start doing it.

And you wonder why Messi hates this team

• Picking Croatia to beat Argentina was my bet the house, bet the farm, bet the farm animals game of the tournament. I’ve been saying for weeks now that Croatia was going to beat Argentina. I said it in my preview the other day. (One of the few things that I have gotten right so far.) This seemed like a no-brainer to me. My reasoning was that Croatia has top-class players at many key positions but most especially in the midfield, where Modric and Rakitic can take over and control the game, while Argentina has been, for the past couple of years, hot garbage. They’ve been hot garbage pretty much since the moment they choked against Chile in the Copa América final in 2016 – the second year in a row they did that, by the way, and coming on the heels of squandering a World Cup final in Brazil in 2014. Argentina barely qualified for this tournament in the first place, needing a hat trick from Messi in the final game in Quito in order to survive – and even that came after they’d gifted Ecuador a goal in the first minute of the game. They were a mess in qualifying, they’ve looked like a mess in the friendlies leading up to the World Cup, and at no point have they looked, sounded, or acted as if they have a coherent plan.
Argentina were a turkey waiting to be carved, and they went so far as to hand over the electric knife to the Croatians after Caballero gave away one of the dumbest goals I’ve ever seen:

And if you’re Argentina, why are you bothering to play out of the back in the first place? Is this or isn’t this part of the vaunted system that Jorge Sampaoli wanted to play? Whatever it is, throw it away. Argentina can’t do it. Quite honestly, Argentina can’t really do anything very well. Sampaoli has managed to make all of these really top-class Argentine players like Messi and Kun Agüero and Higuain and Otamendi, etc., etc., look like a bunch of bewildered Sunday bushers in a pub league.
What was a wild, weird and fun game in the first half – it was somehow 0:0 and somehow both teams still had 11 men on the pitch, neither of which seemed that likely – turned into a joke after Caballero gifted Croatia a goal. The Argentines completely capitulated and resorted just to kicking guys out of frustration and, when that didn’t work, just stood around and watched Croatia rub salt in the wound.
No one knows what they’re doing, where they’re going, or what they’re supposed to be. In both of these games, any time either Iceland or Croatia get the ball into the Argentine half, it’s complete panic time, it’s chaos and mayhem and last-ditch defending. The goalkeeper is not good, the back line is unsettled, the midfield doesn’t work, the wingers keep running into the middle and gumming up the works. It’s a preposterous mess and the entire plan seems to be to just get Messi the ball and wait for him to do something messianic – which didn’t really work against a team that was hell-bent on keeping him from getting the ball. Messi had only 20 touches in the first half, which is ludicrous. He eventually wound up meandering out to the flank just to try and get the ball, but even then, his heart wasn’t in it any more.
Amazingly, Argentina aren’t out of it yet, although they need a whole lot of help in order to advance, and even if they do, god knows how they’ll get anywhere after that. People forget that their success in Brazil in 2014 was perilous. They reached the final that year through winning 1:0 against the Swiss in OT, 1:0 against the Belgians when they scored early and parked the bus, and on penalties against the Dutch after a dreadful 0:0 draw. They weren’t great in that tournament. They were simply good enough. But being good enough means, first and foremost, defending like hell and played like they cared.
Argentina’s performance in this 3:0 defeat today was atrocious. We all want Messi to leave some sort of great legacy for his country, but it’s impossible to do so on a team with no midfield, no defenders, a journeyman goalkeeper, and a bunch of supposedly great attacking players who won’t move, won’t pass to anyone but Messi, and are standing around waiting for him to do something. This team, as constructed, has always been a fraud, but a lot of people didn’t want to believe it.