Mundial trumps Trump

The essence of the ongoing World Cup is perhaps best conveyed by a quadruple ‘S’ – surprises, superstars, squeakers and scandal.

Argentina’s epic 3-2 cliffhangers in the last two rounds carrying them into today’s quarter-finals epitomise the first three elements of surprise, superstars and squeakers as well as anything (even if not unique with Belgium also overturning a 2-0 deficit in the closing minutes against Senegal but how many people here were even watching that match?). The surprise was such lightweights as newcomers Cape Verde and Egypt with only two points from 92 years in the World Cup giving Argentina any trouble at all – Cape Verde, the bigger surprise with only 530,000 inhabitants as against Egypt’s 90 million, departed the World Cup unbeaten during 90 minutes in four matche (as did Egypt), despite three of them being against World Cup champions. But superstar Lionel Messi to the rescue – an opportunistic goal and two corners against Cape Verde (even if the first was repelled and Lisandro Martínez deserves more of the credit) while adding to two of his World Cup records of most goals scored and most penalties fluffed against Egypt (Tottenham’s Cristian ‘Cuti’ Romero also scored in both matches).

The presence of the defending champions is a necessary condition for continuing to enjoy the World Cup – another is a clean contest, gratuitously jeopardised by US President Donald Trump. Just when the Viking Erling Haaland had knocked out pentachampions Brazil with two stunning goals in the first Sunday match, word started spreading that ‘The Donald’ had bullied obsequious FIFA president Gianni Infantino into nixing a red card for the home team’s top scorer – an obscene subordination of the beautiful game to power politics. Suddenly a nightmare scenario opened up – with Brazil already gone, rules being bent left, right and centre so that Mauricio Pochettino’s United States team despatches a struggling Belgium, altitude is given a helping hand by a crowd-pleasing referee to frustrate England in Mexico City (which came halfway close to happening), a French referee serving as proxy for Kylian Mbappé takes care of Argentina and Trump moves close to fulfilling his wet dream of handing the cup to US champions, winning millions of midterm votes in the process.

A dream punctured by Belgium’s 4-1 demolition of the host team the following evening, for which Trump should only have himself to blame. Sportsmen at the end of the day, Pochettino’s squad went out to play bemused and demoralised by falling under a global cloud of criticism over their MAGAlomaniac President’s determination to cheat at football (even worse than cheating at cards). Trump has a genius for being counterproductive – having helped centre-left governments in Canada and Australia to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory last year by backing their conservative opposition way ahead in the opinion polls in the most obnoxious terms, The Donald has now done it again. Thanks are owed to one of the tournament’s less exciting teams, Belgium, for wiping clean the stains on the ball threatening to blot out further enjoyment of this thrilling contest and proving once and for all that the World Cup does not belong to Trump or Infantino.

Time for the continental number-crunching characterising this series of columns now that two further rounds have been completed. The group phase had already shrunk the World Cup to a tricontinental Afro-Euro-American contest – of the 32 countries still in the contest, 13 were European, nine African and eight American (including the three hosts and five of the six South American participants) with only Japan and Australia from the rest of the world, both of whom failed to advance any further. Asia therefore closes out this World Cup with just two wins, eight draws and 15 defeats along with a highly negative goal count (22-57) while Oceania managed one win, three draws and three losses, scoring seven goals and receiving 13. Football east of Suez thus remains pretty feeble.

The first round of elimination halved those 32 countries, of whom the three hosts, seven Europeans, four South Americans and two Africans advanced to the next stage. Fully nine of the 10 original African competitors advanced beyond the group phase with only Tunisia a disastrous failure yet only the aforementioned Egypt and Morocco moved further with only the latter reaching the quarter-finals at Canada’s expense. Not that Africa is as far behind the two traditional heavyweight regions as their disappointing results might suggest – Senegal should have beaten Belgium, Congo and the Ivory Coast were on top of England and Norway for most of their matches and Cape Verde came close to giving Argentina its biggest shock ever. An increasing number of African players are in European leagues, thus adding equal training to superior strength and speed. Perhaps it is significant that the above matches were all decided towards the end (Senegal in particular seemed to run out of steam) – their biological clocks are still geared to initial success rather than closing out.

The attrition was not so drastic for European countries in this second round but they still lost almost half the 13 starting out. Nevertheless, only one of the half dozen lost outright to another continent (Bosnia against the United States, the match with the red card shown the red card by Trump) – three (Austria, Croatia and Sweden) were defeated by other European countries while the two heavyweights Germany and the Netherlands lost in the lottery of penalties. Since every other country in their Groups E and Group F was eliminated, those groups ceased to exist at the first hurdle – all the other 10 group leaders advanced to the last 16 along with five of the runners-up while Paraguay was the only one of the eight best thirds from the group phase to survive, memorably outlasting Germany.

The biggest success story in the second round was the Americas with all three hosts advancing and none losing with the exception of Ecuador at the hands of another Latin American country (Mexico) yet the quarter-finals find only Argentina from the hemisphere. Conversely, all seven European countries in the third round reached the quarter-finals with the exception of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal at the wrong end of the Iberian derby on the same continent. Groups A, D and K now also exit the tournament.

Space is starting to run out for further statistics but while a more comprehensive analysis of goals will hopefully appear in next week’s column, at least a quick line on the superstars mentioned at the beginning – Messi, of course, tops the list with eight, closely followed by Mbappé and Haaland with seven and Harry Kane with six while just 50 of the 1,248 players have scored exactly half of the 280 goals through to the quarter-finals. But it is not just the number but also the quality and timing of these often game-changing superstar goals which count.

This column’s series on previous World Cups and their hosts will have to be reduced to a token paragraph. Trump’s attempted manipulation recalls the Asian 2002 World Cup (the first with more than one host, Japan and South Korea) where infamous refereeing enabled the latter to bypass Spain and Italy to reach the final weekend – they stopped short of red card cancellation, however, for which the only precedent is Garrincha in Chile in 1962 helping Brazil to retain their title. If Germany won the World Cup in Italy in 1990, Italy won the World Cup in Germany in 2006 – Messi’s first. But we will pick up this story again with the 2010 World Cup whose first match was also Mexico versus South Africa.