Morning all, a quick Saturday round-up for you.
Let’s start with Cape Verde, and although the tournament is now over for the Blue Sharks, what a story they’ve told. Unbeaten against Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia in the group stage, they pushed holders Argentina to extra-time last night, twice equalising after going behind, and ultimately went out by virtue of an unfortunate own goal.
Lionel Messi put Argentina ahead but Deroy Duarte fired home a well-worked equaliser, which is how the 90 minutes finished. Lisandro Martinez made it 2-1, before Sidny Lopes Cabral produced one of the goals of the tournament so far to draw Cape Verde level. Unfortunately, an own goal from a corner saw Argentina squeeze through, but they needed a big save from Emi Martinez right at the death to prevent this one going to a penalty shoot-out.
I think everyone loves an underdog story, and with all due respect to Cape Verde, that’s exactly what they brought to this tournament. To have faced the opposition they have, played so well, qualified for the knock-out rounds, and pushed a team like Argentina all the way is surely way beyond what anyone predicted for them. Internally, perhaps they had more belief than those making their pre-tournament predictions, but they showed why football remains such a special game.
It’s also why, when I continue to object to things like Gianni Infantino’s mandatory ad-breaks dressed up as player welfare, it’s because I love football and he is doing his best to damage it for non-sporting reasons. We have a World Cup in North America with games broken into four quarters, which would have been the sole preserve of not particularly clever satire not too long ago, and instead it is the reality of this World Cup.
For balance, you could say that FIFA making this an expanded tournament has allowed a team like Cape Verde to play on this stage, and enjoy the incredible experiences they’ve had, which is fair enough. But in the end we come back to the discussion about how much is being asked of players these days, and whether more games is less about providing an opportunity for ‘smaller’ nations, and much more about increased monetisation. The same goes for the expanded Champions League, for example.
Still, take nothing away from Cape Verde, they’ve been absolutely brilliant, and they deserve all their flowers this morning. Their manager, Bubista, spoke afterwards and said:
“We are sad because we are leaving the competition and also because we got so close, so close, but I think they must be proud of their performance and of representing our country. It shows the team has a soul. We did our best and we did it with bravery. Never did we fail to stay true to our identity, which is why I am so proud of what my players did.”
Earlier, Australia’s World Cup came to an end when they went out on penalties to Egypt, and the decision of their manager Tony Popovic to take off goalkeeper Patrick Beach and replace him with former Gunner Mat Ryan will be in the spotlight. I guess it’s something they’d decided on pre-game, perhaps based on experience or behind the scenes practice when it comes to penalties, but when you make an unconventional decision like that it’s got to work – and it didn’t.
Australia missed their first spot kick, Egypt were consistent, and a late miss from 18 year old Lucas Herrington allowed Hossam Abdelmaguid the opportunity to send Egypt through. I love the confidence of a young player to step up in that moment, but I did wonder if there were more experienced heads who could have taken that responsibility. Still, even the very best miss penalties, especially with the pressure of a shoot-out at the World Cup, and hopefully there’s far more appreciation of Herrington’s willingness to take on that burden than any kind of recrimination for a young lad at the start of his career.
The other game last night saw Colombia go through with a 1-0 win over Ghana, Jhon Arias scoring the only goal of the game in the 14th minute. So, the Round of 16 fixtures are now settled, the games ahead of us are as follows:
- Canada v Morocco
- Paraguay v France
- Brazil v Norway
- Mexico v England
- Portugal v Spain
- USA v Belgium
- Argentina v Egypt
- Switzerland v Colombia
Teams with italics have Arsenal players involved. By the way, because I wasn’t here yesterday, and Lewis filled in admirably (particularly around Declan Rice being in ‘terrible pain’ 🫠), I didn’t have a chance to talk about how Croatia were denied a late equaliser against Portugal.
I can’t be alone in thinking this is one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in all my years of watching football. For one, I don’t trust that the technology, a chip inside the ball, is good enough to detect that the ball might have barely brushed a few strands of a player’s hair. Maybe it’s verging into the realms of conspiracy to think that FIFA would prefer Portugal to play Spain rather than Croatia, but FIFA is also run by an evil, soulless carbuncle and I would put nothing past him or his highly unethical organisation.
Beyond that though, what are we doing here? People who talk about the decision being correct by the letter of the law may be right, but at what point do we completely turn our back on what remains of the spirit of the game. When the laws of football were written, they could not have conceived of the notion that the ball would have a microchip in it that would register the tiniest of contact to a team of video officials watching in a room of monitors and microphones. Not to mention the offside law itself was to prevent players from just standing around ‘goal hanging’, not that a team be denied a dramatic, important goal because we’re now measuring hair follicles. Let’s get real.
With VAR already moving the professional game further away from the one we all play (or used to at least), this is another step in a direction that makes the game less ours as fans. Perhaps I’m being a bit sentimental about a sport that has been corrupted in all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons, but I honestly thought that was some of the biggest bullshit ever and I think Croatia were robbed.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. Hope you all have a great Saturday, till tomorrow.