World cup musings (1)
Lethargy and grumbling on the bloated but perennially interesting tournament.
Tournament background: reservations, grumbles and early doubts
Like many people, I initially struggled to get excited about this World Cup. There are too many teams, admission prices are ludicrous, and much of the tournament is being staged in a country whose politics are run by a pathological liar and abuser, who would gladly turn the US into a dictatorship run by rich men with slicked back hair who populate sleezy country clubs.
I also prefer football tournaments to be played in actual football stadiums: grounds built for the sport, steeped in club history and weighted with the memories of supporters who have lived with them for generations.
Add to that the sheer volume of fixtures and teams, and the whole thing began to feel less like a tournament and more like an endurance test.
Where is the group of death, or the awkward banana skin waiting for a team past its pomp? They undoubtedly exist, but they are buried beneath a mountain of largely forgettable fixtures, many played in the early hours and in three-quarter-full gridiron grounds.
Watching every game — or at least as many as possible — used to be one of the great joys of a World Cup or European Championship. But who could realistically do that now, even in the right time zone, with better sleeping habits than me or a suspiciously flexible job?
Reasons to keep watching
Still, there have been benefits. For one thing, not being able to watch everything liberates you from some of the early-round bore-fests between cautious, shot-shy opponents.
I have also grown fond of the BBC’s ten-minute highlights: concise, useful, and mercifully free of tedious influencers flogging “healthy coffee” or car insurance scams, as tends to happen on YouTube. Better still, some of the lower-ranked countries have been genuinely entertaining.
Cape Verde’s heroics against Spain, Curaçao’s all-action and frankly lunatic up-and-at-’em approach against Germany, and Haiti’s thankfully unsuccessful but undeniably physical performance against Scotland have all added colour. There is something refreshing about watching players you have never seen — and may not even have heard of — perform in unpredictable ways.
As for the more fancied teams, no one has truly caught the eye yet. Germany and Sweden demolished weak opponents, Brazil looked jaded, and Spain, as ever, appeared to prefer passing to each other in polite circles to the vulgar business of actually scoring goals.
My favourite side so far has undoubtedly been Japan: rugged at the back, speedy on the break, and seemingly no longer cowed by European opponents such as the Netherlands. The Dutch’s own shortcomings will bring back uncomfortable memories for Evertonians of the turgid blues sides associated with Ronald Koeman several years ago.
My player of the first week has to be Haiti’s portly, grumpy goalkeeper, Johny Placide. Who sounds like a French popstar from the 1980’s.
His wonderfully peripatetic career has taken in Le Havre, Reims, Guingamp, England’s fashionable Oldham, a stint in Bulgaria and, latterly, Corsica with Bastia. Recent relegation with the latter, plus a bronze medal in the Caribbean Cup, was apparently more than enough preparation to keep the Scots at bay for most of the game.
The media tedium surrounding England, and Frances efforts to go one better than 2022 are still to come, as well as the tiresome hoo-ha around Ronaldo and Messi but on the plus side the unpredictability of the games and the mediocrity of the football means its hard to see a favourite to win emerging for a couple of weeks yet.