World Cup retrospective

A few thoughts about a great event that couldn’t be ruined despite the best efforts of capitalism, FIFA, Donald Trump, and Argentina, to name some of the malevolent forces arrayed against it.

(1) Argentina had actually provided many of the most memorable moments of the tournament, mostly because of Leo Messi’s remarkable brilliance. Messi, who turned 39 during the tournament, doesn’t have the stamina to play top level club soccer any more, but in the context of the World Cup he could concentrate on running only when had to, and he worked his magic many times, to the point where the tournament became something of a love fest for the greatest player of all time. Unfortunately the rest of his team put a damper on all that via a truly disgraceful performance in the final game, that has been universally excoriated in the soccer media. (Here’s a typical example). Argentina played a gross cynical brand of soccer on Sunday, ruining the climax of what overall was a fantastic tournament. They basically decided very early on that they would play for penalties and thug it up as much as possible. The ref had a hard job but he should have started handing out cards a lot earlier. The stupid fucker who got sent off — Enzo Fernandez — left him absolutely no choice, after pointlessly picking up a yellow for dissent, and then five minutes later committing the kind of foul that required a second. Argentina then put on a disgusting display immediately after the game, punching a couple of Spanish players, including player of the tournament winner Rodri, before turning their backs on their opponents during the trophy presentation.

There’s a reason everybody in Latin America hates Argentina. Messi should have played for Spain (he was eligible to do so as he grew up in the country after being snatched up by Barcelona’s developmental machine). As it is Spain won five of eleven major tournaments over the course of Messi’s career. With him they might never have lost a game (hyperbole but just barely).

(2) One of the things about sports is that Hollywood endings are much rarer than in Hollywood. In that world, Messi would have scored three goals in a 3-2 victory, with the last coming on the final kick of the game (Heir apparent Lamine Yamal came within an inch of providing the latter bit of drama when his free kick at the very end of regulation was barely saved by Argentina’s keeper, who played spectacularly to keep a game that should have been a rout close). As it was Messi might as well not have been on the field yesterday, which is a much truer to life ending than the ones you get in the world’s various Hollywoods.

(3) Because he has to fuck up everything he touches — whatever genius came up with the moniker Shit Midas should get a few Nobel prizes in literature for that alone — Trump would not get off the stage while Spain was taking the traditional team trophy presentation photo. FIFA president and world class Trump fluffer Gianni Infantino ended up literally trying to pull the world’s oldest Make A Wish kid off the stage, unsuccessfully, although apparently the Spanish media removed Trump from the scene via appropriately Stalinist technological interventions.

(4) Everything I’ve read about it indicates that foreign fans were relieved to discover that most Americans, or at least most Americans who voluntarily interacted with foreign soccer fans, are not actually fascist pieces of shit, unlike Dear Leader, his minions, and the morons who voted him into office.

(5) Speaking of which, this World Cup provided tons of evidence of how soccer really is gaining ground as a major sport in America. It may well turn out that the three highest-rated sports broadcasts of the year other than the Super Bowl will be the USA-Belgium match, the England-Mexico match, and yesterday’s final. Even the semi-finals, which didn’t involve any of the host countries, drew higher ratings than any NBA or MLB or college football game from this past season. This was greatly helped by Telemundo’s massive audience, much of which turned out to speak little or no Spanish, as monolingual English speakers discovered the charms of Andres Cantor & Co.

(6) A huge boost to (5) would be the continuing development of the USMNT, which put in a fine performance, and is now legitimately a top 15-20 type team on the world stage. Of course there’s still a massive gap between that level and a genuine World Cup contender, but I’m old enough to remember when the USMNT was losing 4-0 to Bermuda in the 1970s. I don’t actually remember that, because despite being as fanatical a teenage sports fan as you could find in that decade, and having some natural interest in soccer because all of my family is from Spain and Mexico, I was actually unsure at that time if the US even had a national soccer team. That’s how obscure the sport was at the time. (The US didn’t qualify for the World Cup final tournament for forty years).

(7) A lawyer friend of mine from Atlanta who is well off but not exactly rich paid $6K for a ticket to the Argentina-England match in that city. He’s a huge Barca and Messi fan so he was rooting fanatically for Argentina, and ended up considering it money very well spent, although it was four times more than he had ever paid for a ticket to sporting event (Runner up was the Michigan football national championship game two and a half years ago). I understand the get-in price for yesterday’s game was more than that, and the median ticket price was around $10K. That is insane but this is the world we’re living in now, aka an out of control capitalism on steroids plutocracy.

(8) Speaking of which, somebody shoot the Super Bowl-style halftime show before it kills again.

(9) This is really a subject for another post, but it’s remarkable that such a low-scoring game as soccer ends up so rarely producing any upsets on the international stage. (The lack of goals should in theory produce some arbitrary results, as was illustrated by yesterday’s game, which Spain completely dominated from beginning to end, but still could have lost with an unlucky bounce here or there). Only six teams have won the World Cup since the 1960s, and only eight have won it ever. England now have the distinction of being the only team to win that hasn’t won it multiple times. Etc. That’s why something like Cape Verde’s near-upset of Argentina was ultimately the most memorable game of the entire tournament, despite, once again, the absence of the Hollywood ending. (Their draw of the eventual champion was also remarkable).

(10) It was really nice to have something to think about every day that very rarely involved Donald Trump, despite the inevitable (3) above.