Despite everything FIFA threw at it, football really was the winner
Idea
“So ends those few weeks every four years where you pretend to know something about football.”
These are the words to hear at the end of an absolutely gripping FIFA World Cup. My son talked with his hand over his mouth, so I appealed to the referee (his mother) to send him off, but she was busy watching the video replays.
When I lost the point, I fell to the ground, ankle in one hand, eye socket in the other, rolling downhill on flat ground, screaming in pain. This earned a red card for “blatant simulation” so I called the President of the United States to have this decision rescinded. But he was busy taking a call from Bryson DeChambeau whining at him to impose Mar-a-Lago rules at the British Open. According to Mar-a-Lago golf rules, a “winner” crush the grass around your ball. Heck, it’s okay to hit your ball back into the fairway. Mar-a-Lago rules were already used to rig the World CupSo why not Open?
However, the President could not answer my call. As the last loser, I claimed that I was framed. Don’t tell me I don’t know anything about football. Football unites the world through bitter defeat.
Chaotic scenes after World Cup final: Argentinian players tried to punch and received posthumous red cards Timid US presidents trying to spice up their winner celebrationThe explosion of conspiracy theories about game rigging turns out to be entirely consistent with the philosophy now entrenched in global professional sport. No one lost to a better opponent throughout the tournament. There had to be corruption, abuse or shady political fishing. This hugely engaging sports carnival became increasingly anti-sports as it progressed towards its end.
One of football coach Vince Lombardi’s famous quotes was “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” It’s a very American idea, and over the five weeks of the World Cup, Americans’ allergy to being a good loser has infused global sport’s pinnacle event.
Australia was not immune, just a small-scale example. When the Socceroos lost to Egypt in the round of 32, it was difficult to hear any credit or good compliment to the opposition, any recognition that Egypt, a football-mad nation of 120 million, might have a better team than Australia. Instead, commentators attacked coach Tony Popovic for his selections, excessive defensive tactics and “mentality” of lacking killer instinct.
This reaction did not show that Australia is a small football country. On the contrary, it showed that we are the smaller version of the big football nations.
When England fell to Argentina, Commentators attack coach Thomas Tuchel due to his choices, extreme defensive tactics, and “mentality” lacking killer instinct. The same thing happened when France fell to Spain. When Argentina finally lost the decider, the same thing happened again: the coach’s choices, tactics, mentality, plus the necessary conspiracy theories. (Interestingly, after four years of global conspiracy theory that the World Cup was rigged for Argentina to win, the new conspiracy theory was that it was rigged for Argentina to lose. The conspiracy theories themselves turned out to be sore losers.)
Whether the sport is a billion-dollar industrial complex, a national obsessive-compulsive disorder, or a third-tier, underfunded winter law, the response to defeat repeats itself: blame yourself, hint at off-field antics, and in no case give the other team due credit because they were better than you that day.
Never accept that your team is being forced to “over-defend” because the other team won’t let them get the ball. Never accept that the better team won. Or if you are Argentina, turn your back and never acknowledge the other team’s presence. Doing so may run the risk of making you a good loser, that is, a loser.
Under the extreme magnification of the current American cultural climate, the World Cup has produced a jarring, intriguing mix of the best and worst that sports have to offer: sublime feats and brutal tricks; a passion so unbearable that it found its final expression in violence; The sweet innocence of a 30-yard shot into the top corner, against the backdrop of filth and rotten phone conversations between Donnie and Gianni. The higher the stakes, the sharper the juxtaposition.
If there had been a match in the course of the World Cup after the final, it would have been resolved by gunfire.
Maybe that’s where we’ll be heading in 2030, unless FIFA can break the cycle it’s built over the past half-century.
We journalists are criticized for paying too much attention to sports administrators, but the World Cup shows how administrators are determining their attitude towards the diseases that infect the games. It is only thanks to FIFA’s decades of work that the World Cup has become such fertile ground for bitterness: accusations of cheating and corruption, refusals to accept defeat, denials that a fair competition took place, for everything else.
FIFA is naked and under president Gianni Infantino, be proud From ticket prices to “water breaks” to political privileges, transactionalism lays the groundwork for eventual dissatisfaction, casting doubt on the results, suspicion that this is not a game but just another transaction.
And yet… and yet…
Just as the British Open, the de facto world golf championship, emerged from the mud of DeChambeau and presented to us A winner in Ryan Fox – the most beloved, most simple and well-deserved champion golfer of the year – the World Cup gave us Spain.
What had Spain done? They had overcome the embarrassment of not being able to get past Cabo Verde in their first match. (This wasn’t such a shame when Cabo Verde’s superhuman goalkeeper Vozinha was named to the tournament’s official squad despite playing just four games.) Spain had overcome the terrible luck of an lopsided draw to have to beat Portugal, Belgium and France without even reaching the final. Spain had developed a brand of football that was coldly systematic but also hypnotic and, in a sense, completely naive, which baffled their opponents.
Spain played their best football and then they got the stupid old man out of their way. Despite everything FIFA could do, football won in the end.
What a stunning month. I may not know much about football, but I know when the good guys and the best team win.
Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
