Watch the greatest game on earth...until the Super 8s start
THE biggest festival of football in the world kicks off on Thursday without the greatest fans in the world there. Doesn’t seem right, does it? My guess is that the 2018 World Cup will move along just fine without the Irish, even if a few Muscovite tyres go unchanged or Saint Petersburg nuns have to cross the road unaided. Of course it’s a pity our boys in green aren’t over there, gearing up to put Neymar and Messi under pressure, or at least seeing Martin O’Neill put Tony O’Donoghue under pressure - or is it the other way round?
Anyway, Ireland’s absence from FIFA’s fundraiser shouldn’t (much) detract from the enjoyment of what the next four weeks has in store for lovers of the beautiful game. Incidentally, the World Cup Final itself falls on the Sunday of the first weekend of the GAA’s Super 8s, which will surely lead to some tough decisions for those of us partial to a bit of both codes, not to mind the national broadcaster who may well have to create a third channel to beam all the action to us ‘loive’ as the late Bill O’Herlihy would say.
Everyone who has ever watched the World Cup down the decades will have their own personal favourite players and moments - from Pele to Kempes and Rossi to Iniesta, and from Banks’ save, Maradona’s Hand of God, O’Leary’s penalty and Zidane’s brace in ’98. For this writer, the earliest memories and still stand-out moments came in the 1982 Finals in Spain, with the goals and celebrations of the Brazilian Falcao - against Italy in the second round - and then Italy’s Marco Tardelli - in the final against West Germany. There seemed - and still does - something both magical and maniacal in the way both wheeled away after scoring and ran towards the camera/ sideline, heads shaking, sweat flying, eyes bulging, that encapsulated what the World Cup means for players and captivated a small boy watching on a television screen a thousand miles away.
Four years later it was Maradona scoring that goal to Jimmy Magee’s soundtrack - different class... different
class... - and since then the moments and memories have kept coming. Italia ’90 arrived at the formative age of 15, and though I wasn’t from what you’d term ‘a soccer background’ it was impossible not to be swept along in the euphoria of it all: Jack’s lads, Sheedy’s strike against England in the Stadio Comunale Sant’Elia in Cagliari, Bonner’s save, O’Leary’s penalty, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci and the way he might look at you...
USA ’94 promised more of the same midday madness with John Alridge going all Andy McEntee on the sideline official in Orlando before bulleting in the greatest ‘fuck you’ header against the Mexicans as Ireland’s World Cup dream began to melt away in the boiling heat.
Alas, our next and last World Cup appearance will always be tied to who wasn’t in Japan and South Korea than who was there, and it says much about the shambles of Saipan that Roy Keane and his dog got more autobiographies out of it than the rest of the Ireland team put together.
Away from Ireland there has been Gazza’s tears and David Luiz’s tears, Frank Rijkaard’s spit at Rudi Voller and Zizou’s head-butt on Marco Materazzi, Roger Milla dancing at the corner flag and Rivaldo diving at the corner flag, German hits and England’s misses, big Ronaldo and little Ronaldo, champagne football from the Netherlands but still no Dutch gold, the ticker tape in Argentina to the vuvuzelas in South Africa, and all manner of goals and misses and heartbreak and joy every four years, every time culminating with one man lifting the Jules Rimet Trophy (now just the FIFA World Cup Trophy) into the air to the absolute joy of one nation.
The Russian edition won’t be without its problems, and it’s a grim reality that the biggest and worst news stories will probably spill out of the stands and the streets rather than what happens inside the whitewash, but that - at this stage - will be for another day and for FIFA to address, which given where the whole carnival is headed in 2022 doesn’t look like it will be a priority of the suits in Zurich any time soon.
In the meantime sit back, grab an official drink or snack food, and revel in Ronaldo, marvel in Messi, savour Saurez, gorge on Griezmann, wonder at Werner, or even salivate at Sterling and enjoy a month of the greatest game on earth...that’s until the Super 8s kicks in in mid-July!