A beautiful game
TWENTY days into World Cup 2018 in Russia, and with 12 days to go before the final game, the world has been treated to spellbinding fireworks. So unexpected have some of the outcomes been so far that football experts are rating this World Cup among the most unpredictable – and nail-biting.
Few pundits could have predicted that some of the most highly rated and fancied teams such as Spain, Germany, Argentina and Portugal would not reach the quarter-finals. Spain and Germany, for instance, were among those tipped as eventual victors.
Minions such as Japan also almost caused upsets. On Monday, Belgium fought back from two goals down to seal a 3-2 win against Japan with the last kick of the game to make the quarter-finals. Belgium were the first side to recover from a two-goal deficit to win a World Cup knock-out match since Germany beat England 3-2 after extra time in Mexico in 1970.
This paper was published during the course of last night’s battle between England and Colombia, but that game, too, was expected to produce fireworks.
However, the drama was notched at the weekend when, in the space of a few hours on Saturday, the hopes and expectations of millions of football fans around the world were dashed when two of the generation’s greatest and most familiar sport icons – Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo – were ushered out of football’s World Cup with their respective sides.
In terms of pure box office losing these two marquee players is a setback, but their exit is testament to the glorious uncertainty of sport.
With their club sides, Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain, these two players, blessed with the best teams that money can buy, have dominated the world player of the year award for a decade. Arguably those club sides would defeat most national sides.
When it comes to national teams, though, it is all about what player resources your country can call on in a particular generation.
Messi, something of a restrained creative genius, a wizard with the ball at his feet, is different from the strutting, forceful whirlwind that is Ronaldo.
The contrasts between them, heightened by the traditional rivalry between their club sides, is the stuff marketers of the game dream about. But if two of the kings of the game are dead for the purposes of this tournament, long live kings Kylian and Edinson!
For in French teenager Kylian Mbappe and Uruguayan Edinson Cavani – ironically teammates at Paris St Germain – Russia 2018 has thrown up two alternate match-winners whose respective double strikes were of superlative quality.
They will probably not be the only players at the event who emerge as potentially the one performer who could just do enough to swing the whole thing for their side.
There are likely to be more surprise exits for fancied sides. The gap between so-called lesser sides and the teams expected to do well has narrowed. And coaching and tactical acumen, allied to skill, passion and industry on the field, will get rewards, even against big teams who may be able to count a World Cup or other major honours among their accolades.
And the fact that the first couple of knockout games have produced high-scoring duels is a plus for the game, producing end-to end action which is always better than cagey, conservative game plans.
The roller-coaster of the knock-out rounds is well and truly upon us.
Beautiful game indeed!