MESSI’S MOMENT
Can the little maestro lift the World Cup?
FRANCE
The 1998 champions are consistently inconsistent. Losing finalists at Germany 2006, Les Bleus mustered a solitary point from three games en route to first-round elimination in South Africa amid a player mutiny against the expulsion from the camp of Nicolas Anelka following a bust-up with madcap coach Raymond Domenech.
Now coached by Didier Deschamps, few can deny France their place among the frontrunners. A celebrated lineup boasting Kylian Mbappé, Antoine Griezmann, N’Golo Kante (who drives a second-hand Mini Cooper S), Ousmane Dembele, Thomas Lemar and Paul Pogba (the 25-year-old who has had his own dietitian and physiotherapist from the age of 16) reads like an orchestra of football artistry. Yet these guys can be so out of sync that they couldn’t lash Luxembourg or bash Belarus during the qualifying campaign.
Their conundrum is that they almost always find a way not to combine their individual brilliance to a collective of conquerors. Frankly, you never know which French fries will come to the table. At their worst, group-stage elimination is their forte. At their best, France forage to the final (they were the losing finalists at Germany 2006 and on home soil at Euro 2016).
France crumbled under the weight of expectation in Euro 2016 when losing 1-0 to Portugal, sparking a national eye-waterfall. The only other time when there were more tears flowing like the Nile was when Germany stabbed Brazil in the heart 7-1.
Ever wondered why Griezmann has No 7 adorning his back? He grew up idolising David Beckham. It would be a thing of beauty if striker Olivier Giroud, who tells a tale of his brothers teasing him about ugly Alf the Alien, could repeat the scorpion kick that won him the Fifa Puskás goal of the year in 2017 when he played for Arsenal in the English Premier League.
MOROCCO
For 20 years the attendance register read “absent” with regard to Morocco. Enter Hervé Renard and the Atlas Lions regained their roar.
For someone who was embarrassingly fired as coach of Cambridge in England’s League Two, Renard has proved himself to be a man with the Midas touch and a miracle worker of swift turnarounds.
Having helped Zambia to an Africa Cup of Nations crown in 2012, the Frenchman achieved the same feat to great acclaim with the golden generation of Ivory Coast three years later.
Much of how Morocco play will depend on playmaker Hakim Ziyech. A merchant of 60 goals and 60 assists in five seasons of service at Ajax Amsterdam, the 25-year-old has a bevy of suitors, including Champions League semifinalists AS Roma.
During Morocco’s fifth appearance at the World Cup, Renard will want to raise the 2026 World Cup host hopefuls higher than the last 16 cul-de-sac that was their fate in 1986.
It is a dream that could be undermined by the fact that Munir Mohand Mohamedi, Renard’s last line of defence, stood between the sticks only once for his Spanish club all season. Can you spell rusty?
That word is not applicable to Khalid Boutaïb, scorer of an awesome threesome against Gabon during the qualifiers. Their trump card?
Their Group B opponents, Spain, Portugal and Iran, had better guard against the tactical solidity and tenacity that are the trademarks of a Renard-coached team.
EGYPT
Egypt without Mohamed Salah are akin to the desert without the pyramids — flat!
All of the Pharaohs’ hopes rest on the shoulders of the striker who had a sensational maiden season for Liverpool.
That was until the biggest thug in football, Sergio Ramos, intervened with a filthy foul that limited Salah’s presence in the Champions League final against Real Madrid to 33 minutes. Some said this was the turning point of the match.
In a race against time to recover from the shoulder-ligament injury he suffered last month in the Kiev final, Salah’s situation is touch and go for the encounter against Uruguay in Yekaterinburg on Friday. Russia and Saudi Arabia complete Group A.
Coach Héctor Cúper is gnawing at his nails in anxiety and seems resigned to doing without the most dangerous weapon in his arsenal, insisting: “We hope we won’t be affected. We try to be the same team. We can’t be dependent on one player. He’s important, but if he’s not fit in time we will be ready with another player . . . This is football, these things can happen to any player. We could need to substitute him, but we hope that won’t be the case.”
For all their dominance in Africa, with their seven Africa Cup of Nations championship titles making them the most successful team on the continent by a long mile, it is a shocking statistic that Egypt are making only their third showing at the World Cup, 28 years since their last in 1990.
PORTUGAL
This has been the greatest one-man team of all time.
Before I was even a faint idea in my father’s head, Portugal drew their inspiration from a certain Eusébio, the Black Panther now resident in the gallery of greatest players ever. He truly was one of the first world-class Africa-born players. His departure from the scene at the World Cup in 1966, following Portugal’s elimination by eventual champions England, is one of the enduring, and tragic images, of world football. Especially after his four goals in the quarterfinal to help his team overcome a 3-0 deficit against North Korea and win 5-3.
When I could tell the difference between my shoulder and elbow, one Luís Figo was the mainstay of Portugal. In my midlife, it is Cristiano Ronaldo who is the heartbeat, the one figure who drags Portugal forward, kicking and screaming.
The five-time Fifa Ballon d’Or winner captained Portugal to the Euro 2016 title in France two years ago. He looked like manager Fernando Santos’s assistant when he shouted instructions from the bench after a first-half substitution in the final owing to injury.
This is a team of real heart and craft and Ronaldo is the alpha and omega of Portugal, a focal point around whom the team function.
His supporting cast are nowhere near the status of world beaters, bar Éder, the substitute whose solitary strike won the European Championship. But Gelson Martins, Bernardo Silva and André Silva, to name but three, are a supporting cast who have amassed better experience. Roughneck marshal of the rearguard Pepe is worse for wear in what is certainly his last major competition (he turned 35 in February).
Their limits aside, Portugal will be fancied as one of the two teams to emerge top of the group.
NIGERIA and ARGENTINA
These two are joined at the World Cup hip. It is either Argentina as the magnet that attracts Nigeria — the first African team to book their berth to Russia — or it is the other way around.
Maybe the secret of their mutual attraction is in the seven same letters in their names.
So closely bound are they that the two-time World Cup-winning South American giants and the three-time Africa Cup of Nations winners have been drawn in the same group for the fifth time.
In their four previous encounters (US ’94, Korea-Japan 2002, South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014) the team, led this time by the Flea, Lionel Messi, have emerged victorious, with seven goals to three.
No discussion about Argentina ends without a comparison between Diego Maradona and the man who inherited his No 10 jersey, Messi.
There have been many stars who have been dubbed the next Maradona, the diminutive, powerful maestro who skippered his country to the 1986 success. Ariel Ortega, Pablo Aimar, Juan Roman Riquelme, Marcelo Gallardo, Javier Saviola and Andres D’Alessandro were special in their own way, but they were always pretenders to the throne.
The only one who has not failed under enormous pressure to live up to the expectation is the one born in Rosario, raised at Newell’s Old Boys and matured at Barcelona to become the owner of five Fifa Ballon d’Or gongs.
As much as he is rated as the real McCoy to assume Maradona’s mantle, Messi will never be truly celebrated in Buenos Aires and beyond until he delivers the holy grail for The Albiceleste.
He came within a whisker in Brazil but had to settle for playing bridesmaid to Germany. Oh, the agony of being so close and yet so far. There is a measure of achievement about football, some kind of an unwritten rule that you haven’t made the transition from good to great if you haven’t hoisted high the World Cup.
Good luck to coach Gernot Rohr and captain John Obi Mikel in getting Nigeria to stop Messi and Ángel Di María from scoring. Or better still, here’s hoping the German mentor can mastermind Nigeria’s first World Cup victory over opposite number Jorge Sampaoli’s men.