July 3 – Quarter-finals kick off Frday with two match-ups that feature the battle of the giants from South America and Europe. Hosts Brazil face increasingly favourited Colombia, while France and Germany square off in what could be an old-school Euro classic.
The Uruguayan polemicist and football fanatic Eduardo Galeano once wrote: “Tell me how you play, and I will tell you who you are.”
So now as the World Cup, in the country made for football and made by football, draws to a close it is worth asking what this World Cup has told us about football and about us. That such a question can be raised about what is essentially 22 men in shorts kicking a ball around shows us how football is seen in Latin America.
At this rate will an African nation win the World Cup by the end of THIS century?
Pele regularly demonstrates why he was an infinitely better footballer than pundit, but his famous line that an African team would triumph by the year 2000 is quoted more than any of his other theories.
Watching the exciting Cameroon and Nigeria in the 1990s raised hopes that defensive frailties may one day be improved upon,
“Everyone loves a conspiracy.” The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
With more than 200 million copies of his novels in print, it turns out the Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown had a point. There is something thrilling to be found in the hidden truth that only the beholder can see.
In football it has many guises: from the ‘in-the-know’ reporter or supporter who purveys gossip about a club’s transfer activity,
July 1 – The final day of the last 16 matches pits Argentina against Switzerland and Belgium against the USA. The winners will meet in the quarter final on Saturday in Brasilia.
Twenty-eight years ago I moved to Chicago a month or two before the 1986 World Cup started. A report I wrote then underlines how far soccer has come in the land of the gridiron and the baseball diamond in the intervening nearly three decades.
“Just my luck,” I wrote. “While the rest of the football-mad globe is getting punch-drunk on a ball-by-ball account of the trail to glory, Windy City is more concerned with the size of Bears quarterback Jim McMahon’s close-season midriff.”
June 30 – The might of Africa takes on the old world Europeans with Nigeria facing France, and Algeria breaking new ground for North Africa in the last 16 of a World Cup against Germany.
June 29 – CONCACAF vs UEFA. Mexico are growing in stature, the Dutch are growing in renewed promise. Costa Rica have grown up while Greece have the look of having grown old, and sage in the process. All up for grabs in the battle for places in the quarter finals.
June 27 – The peculiar feeling of a rest day has settled around the world before the World Cup gets down to last 16 business, the calm before the storm begins again. The opening two knockout matches are all Latin American affairs featuring two of the most exciting teams in the World Cup so far, Colombia and Chile. Brazil are playing as well. As are a toothless-looking Uruguay.
It was a simple message from the President of their Confederation, Jeffrey Webb, but it said it all:
Very proud of @CONCACAF teams and their quality of play at #WorldCup. Let’s keep going #WeAreCONCACAF
This incredible World Cup of action is likely to end with a South American narrative. It is their tournament, it is their backyard. It is Brazil and Argentina I expect to be there at the end.
June 26 – The last of the group games complete with the conclusion of Groups G and H. The US vs Germany clash is holding most attention, while Ronaldo will have to produce something extra special to prevent ceding bragging rights this World Cup to Messi. An exciting Algeria will be looking to overcome a dour-looking Russia.
June 26 – From hero to zero to hero. Suarez provides reasons to be pious as Colombian keeper Mondragon provides inspiration for the older generation.
Dear Holland,
I’m sorry, but it’s over between us.
Along with millions of other school kids, I became besotted with you 40 years and a week ago – on 19 June 1974, the day of the Cruyff turn. It was a difficult time: Sir Alf Ramsey’s World Cup-winning team had broken up and England hadn’t made it to the 1974 tournament in West Germany. What is worse, Scotland had. Into this emotional void strode coach Rinus Michels’s team of strutting demigods headed by Johan Cruyff,
“The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them.” Job 1:16, King James Bible
It is very unlikely that, 4,000-odd years ago when Job is said to have walked this earth, there was any such a thing as insurance. Even if there was, and even if the old boy had kept up with his premiums, his sheep and his servants might still not have been covered anyway.
June 25 – Groups E and F play to conclusion with Nigeria needing to avoid defeat against Argentina to be Africa’s first, and potentially only, representative in the last 16. Though Iran will be looking to do the same for Asia. The Swiss need a good win over Honduras to beat Ecuador into the next round, assuming the South American can overcome a high flying French team.