The Next Time

Ever read reports about a match and scratched your head, wondering if you’d been watching a different game? That’s exactly how I felt on Monday after the World Cup final.

I understood the comments from my online American friends, most of whom were new to football. The game wasn’t a classic. It was one for the purists. So I could understand their well-intentioned suggestions to improve the sport by relaxing the offside rule, penalising “flopping”, introducing timeouts and a half-time show…oh wait…they’ve already done those last two! More on that later!!!

But I do get it. It was a scrappy affair with no goals and, in Argentina’s case, not even a shot on target for two hours. Yes, to the uninitiated it was a snoozathon. I’d called it just ten minutes into the game.

“This is going to extra time and penalties,” I said, recognising the defensive walls being erected at either end.

I smiled inwardly at the irony that both American World Cup finals—this one and the one in ’94, when Roberto Baggio blasted his penalty over the crossbar to hand victory to Brazil—ended scoreless and were settled without a goal from open play. In the land where NFL scores are counted in the tens and NBA scores in the hundreds, a scoreless draw is about as un-American as it gets. Bah-Gawd!

Yes, I understood the uninitiated Americans. The people who made me wonder whether I’d been watching a different game were the professional pundits on TV, who dismissed it as one of the worst World Cup finals ever, singling out Argentina for their endless “shit-housery” and gamesmanship.

No, I’m pretty sure I watched the same game as they did.

I just came away with a completely different opinion.

Two years ago, at the climax of the European and South American championships, I posted:

“Surely, surely there has to be a playoff between the winners of the Euros (Spain) and Copa América (Argentina)! It’s crying out to be done. Because that Copa América final—Argentina v Colombia—was brilliant. Proper football, where you’re actually allowed to challenge for the ball! Body parts flying everywhere. Take note, Euros!”

As an aside, I really enjoyed those tournaments in 2024. You could argue I watched too many matches that summer. Despite temperatures being in the 90s, I wore multiple layers just to save time changing between games!!!

We had to wait two years for that playoff, but we finally got it on Sunday. And the match perfectly illustrated the difference I’d noticed between the two continents.

Europe: silkier, more technical. A gentle whisper of a defender’s breath on the delicate neck of a precious attacker and down he goes.

South America? More agricultural.

It’s always been that way, so it should have come as no surprise to the pundits. Maybe they’ve simply become too wrapped up in their blanket of European cotton wool.

Because I thought this was a terrific final. A battle of tactical wits, physical strength, defensive brilliance and sheer determination. There’s more than one way to win a football match, and Argentina’s way, while not always pretty, has certainly proved successful.

The strange thing is that, when they choose, Argentina are capable of producing some of the prettiest football imaginable. Just look at the last half-hour against England, when Messi suddenly turned on the flares. They tried to flick the switch again in the closing stages on Sunday, but by then it was too late.

And what about Messi? He’s become a real conundrum for me.

After watching him against Switzerland, I said he was no longer a factor and should be benched. He immediately made me look foolish by producing two assists against England. Yet in the final it was the non-factor Messi who turned up: the one who couldn’t impose himself on the game, contributed virtually nothing, and left his ten team-mates to battle against a slick, organised Spanish side.

As Argentina’s World Cup-winning coach in ‘22, Lionel Scaloni owes no explanations to anyone, least of all me. But if I had to put my finger on why Argentina lost, I’d say it came down to two coaching decisions: choosing negative football when they clearly possess the attacking talent to play positively, and continuing to build around a Messi who can now disappear for long stretches of the biggest games.

Spain, on the other hand, ghosted into this tournament as far as I was concerned.

Obviously they’re good—they’re the reigning European champions—but as potential World Cup winners they somehow slipped beneath my radar until that superb semi-final performance against France. Even then, I still had them as underdogs.

Perhaps I have a blind spot because I don’t watch enough La Liga. I could barely have named more than two of their starting eleven. Rodri, of course. I know he’s one of City’s key men and, yes, he won the Ballon d’Or a couple of years ago, but somehow I’d never quite appreciated just how good he is.

Then there’s Lamine Yamal. A wonderful young player with a glittering future ahead of him. But I’ve always baulked at the media turning teenagers into superstars before they’ve earned the title. I was exactly the same with Mbappé for years, although even I have to admit he’s now justified the hype—reluctantly, given his occasional attitude! Yamal isn’t there yet. He barely figured in this World Cup.

So, apart from Rodri and Yamal, this Spanish side almost sneaked up on me.

Perhaps that was their greatest strength. They weren’t a collection of superstar individuals. They were simply a superb team.

That showed in the final. Despite all the Argentinian malarkey, Spain held firm, kept their composure and stuck to their guns. When Ferran Torres smashed the winner into the roof of the net, I cheered as loudly as everyone else in the pub, the fans, and the uninitiated who just wanted it to be over!

I’d predicted penalties before kick-off…unless somebody made a mistake.

Paolo Maldini, Italy’s legendary defender, once said: “The perfect game? A 0-0 draw because neither side had made a mistake.”

Except that in the end, nobody made a mistake in this game.

Spain didn’t win because Argentina suddenly gifted them a goal. They won because they kept asking the question. They stuck rigidly to their game plan, patiently chipped away at Argentina’s defensive wall and, when the tiniest crack finally appeared, Ferran Torres blasted the ball through it.

How must that young man have felt in that moment?

Every schoolboy dreams of scoring the winning goal in a World Cup final.

When I played on the patch of dirt behind our house, with jumpers for goalposts, I was Denis Law scoring the winner for Scotland in a World Cup final.

Somewhere in Spain, when Ferran Torres was el niño, he had exactly the same dream.

The difference was that his was rather more realistic than mine.

“You have to,” said my friend.

“I can’t. I won’t have anything to do with that nonsense!”

“But you can’t claim to be a journalist if you don’t blog about everything—even the parts you don’t like.”

“I’ve never claimed to be a journalist!” I replied, turning on my heels and abandoning the bar before I could be subjected to Grandma-donna and the rest of the half-time show.

So, I have nothing to say about that. Except that all this commercialization, the inflated prices, the imposition of four quarters and the abomination of a half-time show are a blight on the beautiful game, one I hope and pray is never repeated. Wayne Rooney, speaking live on the UK broadcast during the interval, spoke for all of us when, asked for his opinion, he simply said: “I thought it was crap!”

Returning to the bar after my self-imposed solitude outside, I asked my friend how the show had been.

“Not as bad as you might have thought,” he said. “The Muppets were good.”

I laughed the laugh of someone who thought they were the victim of a wind-up. He wasn’t serious. It never crossed my mind that the Muppets had actually been in the show.

A few moments later I was chatting to a German friend, a man who stood on the terraces in the Bundesliga and, like me, a true football fan who really gets the game.

“How was the show?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes.

“The Muppets,” he replied.

Wait…what?

It wasn’t a wind-up!!!

I found myself wondering whether there was a moment in time when the soul of football—American football, that is—was sacrificed to the gods of commerce. Do Americans of my age remember a Super Bowl when the game itself was enough? When the commercials warranted barely a footnote, commercial breaks masquerading as timeouts weren’t a thing, and the half-time entertainment consisted of a marching band?

Perhaps these are just the musing of a sentimental old fool, like King Canute vainly trying to hold back the tide of progress. It may already be too late for American football, but I hope and pray my football is one-and-done with this nonsense, and that the game itself ultimately prevails.

The game. Yes, thank God for the game—and its fans.

Because if you can peer through the veil of commercialization, the tournament itself was a triumph, every bit as good as the others I’ve been fortunate enough to attend.

Of course, it was special for me because, this time, Scotland qualified. What a thrill it was finally to join the Tartan Army at a World Cup, even if our team ultimately met its customary fate.

I was skeptical of the 48-team format, but I think the joy it brought to some of the smaller nations—Cape Verde and Curaçao among them—more than justified the chaos of the extra Round of 32.

Perhaps surprisingly, I now find myself warming to the idea of a 64-team tournament next time. It wouldn’t add any more matches (assuming only two teams qualify from each group), but it would allow even more countries to experience the joy of a World Cup.

I know some outstanding football was played. But even now, scrolling back through the fixtures, there were so many matches that, if I’m honest, most of them have merged into one and very few truly stand out.

Individual moments remain memorable largely because they’ve been replayed so often: Balogun’s red card for the USA; Sidny Cabral’s stunning strike for Cape Verde against Argentina; Gvardiol’s goal for Croatia against Portugal, controversially ruled out by VAR after the ball brushed what seemed to be little more than a wisp of hair; and so many more.

Annoyingly, the only match that truly sticks in my memory is England’s victory over Mexico at the Azteca. Some will say Mexico just aren’t that good, and that England, with all their talent, should have beaten them comfortably. But given the circumstances and the conditions, England produced an incredible performance, especially defensively during that last half-hour when the Mexicans were battering at the door.

Of course, Thomas Tuchel’s tactics were found wanting when England tried to defend their lead in the semi-final against Argentina.

The game. The fans. And the friends—new ones made in the bars and hotels of Boston and Kansas, and old ones in my local haunts here in Indiana. They too made this a special World Cup. To them, I apologise for my overly passionate ramblings. The World Cup is my happy place, where we forget the politics and the things that divide us, and celebrate the fact that, for a couple of hours at least, we’re all the same.

I signed off this blog last time thinking that, after the adventures of three World Cups on three continents, it was done. I doubted I’d find the same excitement on my own doorstep in the USA. But it turns out the game itself, and the conversations with fans and friends, stir the same passions regardless of where I am.

So the blog continues.

I don’t expect many people to read it—not least because I make no effort to promote it. But on darker days, when the wind howls and the spirits sink, these writings take me back to my happy place.

Till the next time!