Venus and Mars — and Messi — are all right
An enthralling month of contrasts closes this weekend and quite likely just the way it began: a massive crowd for the women’s game in western Canada, and Lionel Messi raising a trophy on another continent.
Nothing new in the latter, but this Copa America title up for grabs Saturday would actually fill one of the few gaps left on the Argentine’s impressive scorecard — a senior trophy, something the Albiceleste hasn’t claimed in a generation.
Saturday’s final in the world’s oldest soccer tournament has Messi arriving at a peak. After an alternately exciting and infuriating Copa, the match in Santiago of hosts Chile and favoured Argentina amounts to a finish hoped for by neutrals from the start, helped along by the drawmasters and a couple of referee’s decisions, favoured on the odds board, poked in the backside by Gonzalo Jara and finally confirmed by the imperious form of Messi four weeks after he captained Barcelona to the Champions League title, way back on the same day Canada opened the Women’s World Cup.
What has ensued since, with the two tournaments rolling along parallel tracks, has been a rare treat, a playground eclipse of Venus and Mars — record crowds and TV audiences for the women’s game’s apex event, as ever given the “transformational” adjective that adds to the baggage these players are saddled with on these occasions; and at South America’s regional finals, arts daring and dark.
This World Cup, the first in our country, has delivered a satisfying and keenly contested competition full of skill and perspiration and the usual triumph and heartbreak, and in a hipster sports bar on Dundas last Saturday the show received the most matter-of-fact of affirmations: a full house of pro-Canadian supporters following along with no questions or comparisons asked or indeed even necessary, and in the end, crying in their beer with Canada’s ouster.
No two figures lay bare the divide between the two games than defenders Laura Bassett of England and the Chilean Jara. Bassett’s owngoal in stoppage time was beyond cruel, sending the English home just when they were on the front foot against defending champion Japan and looking, if only they could calibrate their sights, quite capable of a championship meeting with the U.S. Instead they went out on their shields, applauding the crowd as they left, and no one pointed so much as a finger at Bassett. That’s fair play. That’s the women’s game.
England’s rise to this sudden contender status, meantime, underscored a reality that Canada has to come to grips with, after our exit to England in the quarter-final round exposed again the halting nature of player development here — the world of women’s football is turning, rapidly, while we stand still.
As for Jara, oh, where to start? His conning of the referee in getting Uruguay’s Edinson Cavani sent off from a testy and taut Copa quarterfinal was cheating of the most shameful stripe. The taunting, and finally, incredibly, his exploratory finger up Cavani’s backside to coax a reflexive nod, Jara going down as if shot and the unsighted official flashing a red card to the violated, amounted to the most provocative exhibition on such a stage since Materazzi goaded Zidane into the head-butt heard round the world nine years ago.
A retrospective two-game ban and universal condemnation for Jara is small consolation in Montevideo’s precincts, where ensuing charges of refereeing favouritism for the hosts have been loudest, but it will affect the final’s cast: Jara’s replacement Jose (Pepe) Rojas is so slow, he’s “late for his own meme,” according to one Internet barb making the rounds and getting front-page treatment in Chile.
Then again, it seems to make little difference given the look of Messi, wearing the captain’s armband and doubly intent on making, first, opponents look silly, and, second, history. By now, there ought to be a stat tallying bamboozlements each time out, as during a 6-1 semifinal rout of Paraguay he routinely skipped through and slalomed around double, triple, and quadruple-teaming attention until, on the coup de grace goal of the semifinal, there were no fewer than six Paraguayans surrounding him, flatfooted and mesmerized, as he dove to toe the ball to Gonzalo Higuain.
As much viper as charmer, there would be justice in having him finally connect the dots with Maradona, who in his playing twilight helped Argentina to its last senior international title at the 1993 Copa — the Messianic last man standing, leading into Sunday’s U.S.-Japan distaff championship: For a weekend, at least, Venus and Mars in perfect alignment.