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“So it’s over – a few weeks every four years when you pretend you know something about football.”
Words cut to hear, at the end of the FIFA World Cup that took everything. My son spoke with his hand over his mouth, so I begged the referee (his mother) to send him off with a red card, but he was busy watching the video replay.
After losing control, I went down screaming in pain, ankle in one hand, eye socket in the other, sliding down the flat floor. This got me a red card for “blatant impersonation”, so I called the President of the United States to get it overturned. But he was busy taking calls from Bryson DeChambeau complaining about Mar-a-Lago’s rules at the British Open. Under Mar-a-Lago’s rules of golf, it’s the same for “the winner”. step on the grass next to your ball. Hell, it’s okay to throw your ball on the highway. Mar-a-Lago rules had already been used to steal the World Cupwhy not Open?
But the President could not receive my call. As the ultimate winner, I claimed there was a conspiracy against me. Don’t tell me I don’t know anything about football. Soccer unites the world in a tragic loss.
Riots after World Cup final – Argentina players try to punch and get red card at the death, American presidents limping trying to flex their muscles at the winner’s partyan explosion of conspiracy theories about the game being rigged – turned out to be entirely consistent with the philosophy embedded in the international professional game. In all competitions, no one was beaten by a better opponent. There was bribery or corruption or dark political fishing. This huge, compelling carnival of sports, as it drew to a close, became increasingly anti-sport.
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser,” was one of the famous lines from football coach Vince Lombardi. It’s a very American idea, and for five weeks of the World Cup this American status as a good loser entered the pinnacle event of the international game.
Australia was not immune, just a small example. When the Socceroos lost in the round of 32 to Egypt, it was hard to hear any praise being given to the opposition or any good graces, acknowledging that Egypt, a soccer-mad country of 120 million, just might have a better team than Australia. Instead, analysts attacked coach Tony Popovic for his selections, overly defensive tactics, and “ideas” lacking a killer instinct.
This reaction did not show Australia to be a small football nation. On the contrary, it showed us to be a smaller version of the big football nations.
When England fell to Argentina, Analysts attacked coach Thomas Tuchel for his choices, overprotective tactics, and “thoughts” lacking a killer instinct. When France fell to Spain, so too. When Argentina finally lost the referee, so did the same again: the selection of coaches, tactics, ideas, with the necessary addition of conspiracy theories. (Ironically, after four years of international conspiracy theory that the World Cup was rigged for Argentina to win, the new conspiracy theory is that it was rigged for them to lose. Conspiracy theories themselves are turning out to be big losers.)
Whether the sport is a multibillion-dollar industry, a forced national disease or a third-rate, underfunded winter code, the answer to failure is repetitive: blame yourself, hint at the off-field hooligans, and never, on any account, give the other team the credit it deserves for being better than you on the day.
Never accept that your team was forced to “defend too much” because the other team didn’t let you get the ball. Never accept that the best team won. Or, if you’re Argentina, turn your backs and never even acknowledge that the other team exists. Doing so risks making you a good loser: that is, a loser.
Under the promotion of America’s current cultural climate, the World Cup produced this amazing, compelling combination of the best and worst that the game has to offer: sublime skill and fearsome trickery; passion so unbearable that it found its final expression in violence; the beautiful purity of the 30-metre shot into the top corner against the backdrop of the grime and decay of the phone call between Donnie and Gianni. The higher the stakes, the stronger the connections.
If there had been a game after the final, on the trajectory the World Cup was on, it would have been settled by a shootout.
Perhaps that is where we are headed in 2030, unless FIFA can break the cycle it has created over the past half century.
We journalists are criticized for focusing too much on sports managers, but the World Cup shows how managers set the tone for the diseases that infect sports. It is only because of FIFA’s work for decades that the World Cup has become a good field for losing a lot: for accusations of cheating and corruption, for refusing to accept defeat, for everything that denies that a fair competition has taken place.
FIFA’s nudity and, under president Gianni Infantino, pride commercial activities – from ticket prices to “water breaks” to political favoritism – lay the foundation for complete dissatisfaction, doubting the results, suspicion that this was not a game, it was just another activity.
And yet… and yet…
Just as the world golf championship, the British Open, emerged from DeChambeau’s throw winner in Ryan Fox – the most loved and most loved person and the worthy golf champion of the year – the World Cup gave us Spain.
What had Spain done? They would overcome the embarrassment of their first match, when they failed to keep a goal against Cabo Verde. (Which ended up not being such a shame, with Cabo Verde’s most talented goalkeeper Vozinha being named in the official team of the tournament despite playing just four games.) Spain had overcome the misfortune of a poor draw that forced them to beat Portugal, Belgium and France before even reaching the final. Spain had developed a form of football that kept their opponents out of the air and was highly disciplined, and yet it was also hypnotic and, in its own way, pure.
Spain played the best football, and then they pushed the old fool. Football really was the winner in the end, despite everything FIFA could throw at us.
What a dizzying month. I may not know much about football, but I know when good people and good teams win.
Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
