In the opening match between the Netherlands and Spain at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, there was a moment when Manchester United fans suddenly started to believe. Spain had taken the lead through a penalty before Daley Blind, who would join Manchester United after the tournament, floated a gorgeous diagonal ball from the left of the halfway line. Robin van Persie trotted towards goal and appeared to hang in the air like a Superman marionette for eternity before heading it past Iker Casillas. Then he ran the length of the pitch to high-five Dutch maestro and manager Louis van Gaal, who has never been one to shy away from emotion. The entire sequence lasted exactly ten seconds, but it felt like forever and promised a bright future for both the Oranje and the Red Devils.Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.The Oranje would reach the semi-final after thumping Spain 5-1, where they were unlucky to lose to Argentina on penalties before beating Brazil 3-0 to win the third-place play-off.Van Gaal has often been treated as one of the men who helped invent modern football. Between 1997 and 2000, when he managed Barcelona, he oversaw what The Guardian dubbed “Coaching’s greatest seminar”, a set-up that included José Mourinho and Ronald Koeman as assistant managers and a midfield of Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique. Mourinho is now back at Real Madrid after a whirlwind European tour where his unique Red Dwarf personality crashed and burned clubs across Europe. Pep Guardiola has just stepped down as Man City manager after a decade of sportswashing-funded domination. Luis Enrique won back-to-back Champions Leagues with PSG. And Ronald Koeman is now the manager of the Netherlands national team, who thumped Sweden 5-1 and delivered the most definitive Oranje performance since Van Gaal’s thumping of Spain.Sweden are, of course, not Spain, and this Dutch side isn’t as talented as the 2014 one, but there is a degree of cohesion that Scandinavians couldn’t live without. Add the fact that they have perhaps the best defence in the World Cup, and perhaps we are looking at one of the genuine contenders.Speaking of genuine contenders, Germany are doing what they usually do after beating Ivory Coast, having trailed 1-0. Deniz Undav, a former factory worker, turned up as the next product from the German assembly line of proven World Cup performers by coming off the bench and scoring twice, including in the 94th minute.
This is the first time Germany have qualified from the group stage since 2014.In the Harry Potter universe, the Room of Requirement is a magical place that can become whatever you desire. On Day 10, Curaçao’s keeper Eloy Room did whatever was required to keep Ecuador out, and that included 15 saves, some of them from point-blank range. Room has now set the record for the most saves in a 90-minute World Cup match, though he remains one short of Tim “Secretary of Defence” Howard’s overall record of 16 saves for the US against Belgium in 2014. Howard, to be fair, played for 120 minutes.The performance was so good that even the King and Queen of the Netherlands came into the dressing room to join the celebrations. Curaçao, of course, is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.Anyone who has ever watched anime will tell you that Japan seriously underperforms on the world stage in various games. At least that’s what repeated viewings of “Ippo, Prince of Tennis and Hungry Heart: Wild Striker have taught me, where all characters appear capable of remarkable feats that they often fail to replicate on the international stage.
But perhaps the anime legend has carried on, as the Blue Samurai thrashed Tunisia 4-0 and, in the process, recorded the biggest win by an Asian side in World Cup history. Their passing was slick, and casual fans would be quite surprised to know that they are missing four star players: Kaoru Mitoma, Takumi Minamino, Wataru Endo and Takefusa Kubo.The team have beaten Brazil and England, and the only reason their World Cup journey might end in the Round of 32 is that, depending on whether they finish first, second or third, their route could still throw up Brazil, Morocco or France. Asia’s best team, of course, can go toe to toe with anyone, particularly if Ryuk is on their side.
Match Day 11: Will Spain finally find the goal?
Now that Match Day 10 is done and dusted, we turn to today’s matches, where three giants will try to drag their World Cup campaigns out of the fog. Spain face Saudi Arabia, hoping to offer something livelier than the soporific geometry lesson they served up against Cape Verde, a game with so much tiki-taka one could hear the clock ticking between passes. The European champions have passed the ball 2,500 times and taken 49 shots since they last scored, a remarkable achievement in footballing pointlessness and strangely on-brand for a country that once sent Columbus looking for India, ended up in the Caribbean, and then got credited for discovering America. The Spanish, it appears, still know how to travel beautifully without reaching their destination.
Vozinha, the Cape Verdean goalkeeper who blanked La Roja, will have his mother watching from the stands after visa issues kept her away last time around, as Cape Verde hope to continue their fairytale against another South American giant. The team, representing a tiny group of 10 volcanic islands, have already won the hearts and minds of fans across the world, with a squad cobbled together with a little help from LinkedIn. Belgium, on the other hand, are facing the most “politically oppressed team” in the tournament in Iran, whose preparation has been hampered by having to play a World Cup in a country whose government is at war or not (depending on what time you are reading this) and with more stringent visa conditions than an H-1B Indian visa holder writing code in Silicon Valley.For the Belgians, the main question is whether to start with Romelu Lukaku or bring him on later as they manage his workload the way the BCCI decides Jasprit Bumrah’s foreign tour schedule.
OFF-THE-FIELD: Football’s tryst with toxic patriarchy
June 21 is Father’s Day, and that means it’s the perfect day for the world to do what it does best: mock an expectant father for wanting to be with his wife when she’s about to give birth. Roy Keane, when he was assistant manager of the Republic of Ireland, was asked if Robbie Keane, Ireland’s leading goalscorer, would play after the birth of his son. Keane, who inspired Roy Kent’s misanthropic character in Ted Lasso, replied that he ought to be fine unless he was “breastfeeding”.The comment was reminiscent of football’s toxic relationship with fatherhood. After all Sir Alex Ferguson, football’s greatest manager sold his own son and lost his cool after David Beckham missed practice to take care of his sick children.
We got a glimpse of it again after to miss a knockout game to be with his pregnant wife for the birth of their child invited some vicious invectives.Several older footballers and journalists have chimed in, with presenter France Pierron’s comment perhaps drawing the most outrage.She said on French national television: “This outrages me. You are lucky enough to appear at a World Cup. There are hundreds of footballers who would kill to be in your place. It’s a unique moment, a childhood dream come true. And you’re going to walk away from that to be at the birth of your child? I’m sorry, the father serves no purpose. He is an extra. He just holds your hand and takes a photo. You’re going to take a 10-hour flight, exhaust yourself, go through the wringer emotionally… how can you return to play after that? The baby will always be there.”That the comment came from a woman makes it even more pernicious, because the internet’s outrage machine has a very 1960s vibe of the father having already done his job by being a sperm donor, and motherhood being largely something for women to deal with. Thankfully, the world has moved on, and it’s time for many members of the commentariat to do so as well.Dani Rojas said football is life. Bill Shankly assured us that it’s far more important than life and death. We all love these lines, but we ought to remember that the birth of a child happens only once. There’s no VAR, stoppage time or second leg. If Jeremy Doku chooses to be there, he has not betrayed football. He has understood life better than the people shouting at him from the studio.
