FIFA WORLD CUP
In the group stage, some of the less-fancied teams make their mark with hard-fought victories or narrow defeats against some of the superpowers of the Great Game.
Hope springs eternal
IT is only once every four years that the whole world comes together in one mighty cheer that shatters all barriers and destroys all hate. It is the FIFA World Cup! The greatest spectacle on earth! It is the time of high drama, when tragedies, triumphs and farce are played out simultaneously in a stadium which for that period of time becomes the world stage, and the hero, the villain and the clown are, more often than not, the same player. It is the arena in which the mighty are humbled and the humble become heroes; where punishment for hubris is pitiless and fast, and where reward for courage and resilience is nothing short of immortality. To a fan, each and every World Cup is a separate experience, with its own set of heroes and martyrs, highs and lows. The emotions oscillate between extremes, floating in a cloud of ecstasy one moment and crashing down to the depths of despair the next.
In his lyrical book Soccer in Sun and Shadow, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has presented the essence of the game from the perspective of the fan or the spectator:
“… A fan is a person who resigns himself to things. A stadium, that cauldron of voices and flares, might not seem like an incubation for stoicism, and yet it very much promotes coolness in the face of adversity. The referee gets a lot of things wrong, the turf becomes slippery, the most accurate player of your team misses every now and then. A whole catalogue of imponderables, all kinds of surprises can happen in football to put a dent in our mood; no one goes expecting the sure thing…. The spectator tacitly accepts that the unimaginable is what they have come to witness and it won’t be pretty…. This is the way with football: It doesn’t happen, or half happens, or happens just in the way you don’t want it to happen, but constantly teeters on the edge of coming together just right.”
THE UNIMAGINABLE
If to expect the unexpected and to face the “unimaginable” is what watching football is all about, then the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia is turning out to be a fascinating affair. At the group stage itself the unthinkable happened. Defending champion and four-time winner Germany crashed out after losing to unheralded South Korea. The starstudded Germany, ranked number one in the world, looked like a shadow of its former invincible self. In the magnificent Kazan Arena, the team that had entered as one of the cup favourites made a humiliating exit, beaten 2-0 by a team ranked 57 in the world. Both goals came during injury time. The day belonged to an