What have we learned

 

Here are the top ten things we have learned very recently at clerkmanifesto!

10. The general titles and introductions in clerkmanifesto lately are just a thin disguise for more World Cup content.

9. It is too much work to watch four World Cup games a day and read and watch all its attendant commentary and yet write about anything other than The World Cup (see item "10").

8. While the "Ten item list" is a classic motif, it generally requires too many distinct points, causing most of these said lists to have a couple of filler items.

7. See "Number 8".

6. Round one of The World Cup demonstrated so far that the vaunted "greatest midfields in the world" (Spain, Portugal) are like absolutely nothing compared to "The greatest stars in the world" (Messi, Mbappe, Harry Kane, Haaland).

5. Brilliant and dedicated teamwork is essential and profoundly respected, but really so far only for the less talented, over-achieving teams (New Zealand, Cabo Verde, Congo).

4. It's possible for us to become insanely excited about tie games.

3. This actually should have probably been a five item list. It turns out that it is hard to learn anything when you just watch a lot of soccer.

2. For all this incredible amount we've learned (see items 10 through 3, but probably disregard items "10", "9", "8", "7", and "3") it is only round one that we've seen, and there is still room to defy what we've just witnessed: Messi could now show his age with Argentina then bogging down around him. Lamine Yamal could light fire and lead Spain to their expected brilliance, Ronaldo could weirdly start scoring goals like a man half his age, which, alas, according to form so far would be 26, Belgium could put in adored talisman Axel Witsel, Neymar could rise from the dead, maybe equipped with bionics?, and Mbappe could, er, Mbappe could, no, I can't say it. I think that Mbappe, and I am no great fan, might, at The World Cup, be inevitable.

1. The winner of round one was the highest and the lowest. Oh, and people tuning into clerkmanifesto thinking "Gosh, I hope he talks about soccer instead of shelving, or library management, or his weird France vacation which seems awfully long already! Who's registering library cards for him?

 

Old man performs trick with hat!

 

I would be delighted if today's post was about a clever busker, an old man on the streets of my city doing clever variations on classic tophat magician tricks. Maybe one can even toss in a euro coin to his hat in appreciation, and as it goes in it disappears, giving the magician a tragic air, as even when the crowd appreciates him it all goes wrong.

But no.

One of the weirdest twists to this city is how as the Summer tourism has heated up towards a kind of wild festive pitch, and a loose party seems to be carrying on day and night, especially by the sea, there are actually fewer buskers! The street musicians have not ALL gone quiet, but there are fewer of them even as the available audience for them has doubled. Even the begging seems to have gone down a notch. I can't figure it out.

"So," You wonder, "If it's not about an old street magician today, what is it about? Please tell me you're not going to be working in talking about the World Cup again!"

Ooops.

You cracked it.

You were probably just kidding about hoping it wasn't about The World Cup though, right? Because where are you going to learn about The World Cup if not on Clerkmanifesto? I mean, outside of all available media everywhere? Which, who in their right mind tunes into media now that it has ceased to be as accurate as...

clerkmanifesto.

So who is this old man from the title then? 

Lionel Messi, on the verge of turning 39, scored a hattrick in The World Cup! 

As we say in France, ohh la la!

We really do say that.

And it was a wonderful hattrick as well, defying the years. Two of the goals were brilliant shots from distance, and the third was a bit more of an opportunistic tap in off of the goalie's inefficient save from a previous shot. A narrow offsides and one terrific save is all that kept it from being five Messi goals!

 Plus, for bonuses, Messi stamped on some guy's calf, for which he could have gotten a red card, preventing him from getting any goals! But so far it isn't that kind of a World Cup, so a hattrick it was.

But that's just reportage. What does it all mean?

What tiny little thing further did we learn from day five or whatever day it is of this gigantically long World Cup?

Sorry, nothing much. 

Things were mostly to form today, including the greatest and most famous players in the world ostentatiously grabbing goals left and right. But watching the seven goals between Messi, Mpappe, and Haaland, though indeed very much to form and expectation, was also, I mean, spectacular. There is no reason to get so caught up in suprises that we don't appreciate expected wonders at least as much as watching underdogs overachieve. 

It all works.

What next?

As we go to press the last of the first games for everyone will have played out (I have just started watching Portugal v. Congo!). We get a look at the truly ancient Ronaldo and another goal scoring giant in Harry Kane of England. From there we start the second games and get a little more perspective. Were great performances a result of facing weak teams? Were poor ones the result of playing good ones and now the rust is shaken off?

No one knows. But now the guesses will start getting better.

The temporality of the world cup

 

In the millions of predictions of the World Cup that I studied in order to be prepared to walk you through it all here, it is astonishing how wildly off the rails all those predictions have turned out to be already, and we have barely begun! 

It is not just that one of the top favorites of the tournament, Spain, merely tied Cabo Verde who is ranked 64th, but also, in a less heralded upset, New Zealand eeked out a tie with Iran, which to the lay person might not seem impressive, but New Zealand were ranked 85th in the world! They had the lowest ranking in the tournament while Iran was pretty well regarded at 20. Indeed, the big story of the World Cup so far has been the draws. As I write more than half the already numerous games have ended in a tie score. Considering the great dig against this new cup format was that it weakens the pool of competitve teams and creates too many mismatches, that's pretty hilarious.

So what does it all mean?

Nothing much.

Yet.

As I have said before, this low elimination group stage is not really for key events, it's for all of us to kind of get the feel for the whole thing and to size everyone up. It's for creating little miracles for the "we're just elated to be here" teams and for the solid teams to get it together and hopefully work out their kinks, not mess up their seeds, and to prepare themselves.

Sure, so far these games have told us the USA will go farther than anyone thought, that Germany is now a key favorite, and that Spain, while talented, is toothless. Turkiye and Ecuador were overrated! New Zealand is better than anyone thought. The Netherlands have the worst coach. Goalies are the difference between miracle ties and slaughters. Morocco's success wasn't accidental, Brazil despite the fancy coach aren't there yet, and Belgium's reluctance to play Axel Witsel cost them the opening win. Oh, and Sweden's front line is absolutely devastating.

But these are all just appetizers. Not even appetizers, they are amuse bouches! These look like truth right now but they are all written in sand. The tide will come in and wash them away. Or the tide will etch them deeper. Or maybe it wash them away, come back, and put them there again, though perhaps slightly altered.

My prediction?

Sorry, not my thing as I find them oddly wrong even when they are right. But I do have advice, even if it be mostly to myself:

Sure, go ahead and enjoy an upset, however it comes, even in a draw.

And delight in Cinderella stories.

But keep an eye out for good soccer, and enjoy that even more.

World Cup is under way!

 

Having devoted myself to the World Cup, and to keeping you informed about it, my big take away so far is... oh my god, this is going to be a lot of games.

I have managed to watch almost four games and one set of full highlights over the course of the first three days of the tournament, and here is what I haven't seen yet:

1. Any team who has a serious chance of winning the tournament.

2. Any famous player who would genuinely be considered one of the best in the world.

But I don't mind any of it. I am all in. And while I might have had some complaints about the less than sparkling quality of the soccer at first, all of the sudden the USA came on, and, of all teams they looked terrific. I have never in my entire life seen the US team look good. I hardly knew what to think. Do I root for them?

Sure, why not.

But I won't chant or anything.

You know, because of the fascism and everything.

I am currently writing this by slipping away from the Switzerland Qatar game, which seemed like a foregone conclusion in favor of the Swiss, and maybe it is, but Switzerland are so far unable to open up their small lead any wider. Maybe something weird could happen? I doubt it, but I'm up for it.

My main goal is to catch the midnight game between Brazil and Morocco, which will feature some brilliant players and two teams that are sort of considered outside contenders, but who everyone finds a bit difficult to predict just how far outside. Brazil is full of talent and have a great manager, but have been underachieving for so long now that no one knows how to really believe in them any more except by ancient habit. Morocco has been over achieving so much recently that it's oddly a bit hard to believe they can do it again. It's kind of a perfect early test and the first game I'd love to see. Alas that I will probably be compelled to sleep through it.

Maybe I'll catch the replay in the morning.

Don't tell me what happens.

World cup written ahead of time

The first game of the World Cup is over! And though I haven't seen it yet because it doesn't start for me for several minutes, I am aware of my obligations to keep you up to date on the World Cup regardless. And so it is. I am daring to give you the key points of this first match of the World Cup even though it hasn't happened yet!

Amazing!

But also accurate, maybe.

Actually, I am hoping that either:

A. I get super lucky and guess right.

or

B. You won't care enough to fact check, which, let's face it, this being the Internet, is more likely.

So, onto the key points of this exciting opening match featuring Mexico, playing at home, and South Africa, playing in Mexico.

If that counts as a guess I'm already one for one!

Here are your key points:

1. Mexico wins! Three to one.

2. Mexico's Gilbert Mora, a mere 17 years old and the youngest player at this World Cup, bags two assists!

3. Forty year old Guillermo Ochoa, also playing for Mexico, is taking part in his sixth World Cup. He is a goalie, and by "taking part" I mean "sitting on the bench" because he is old and they gave his job away. Which is a bit sad, because he would be the first player to play in six World Cups, pipping Messi and Ronaldo to it just a few days ahead. But he seems pretty happy to be there when the camera shows him.

4. Lyle Foster (who plays professionally in the U.S.) grabs the consolation goal for the South Africa team, giving them a slim ray of hope as they face slightly easier teams in their next two group games. It's not over yet!

Okay, you're up to date.

What's that?

The South Korea vs. Czechia game? 

Yes, that happened too! Or it's going to happen at four in the morning my time. 

How about you watch that one and tell me.

World cup preparations

 

Whether I watch a lot of the world cup or not is an open question. The timing of the matches (all very late for me in Europe), the quality of the streaming service I can buy to watch it, and the way it fits into my lifestyle are all open questions I can't answer very well until the games actually begin. But I can say that I have, for reasons I'm not fully clear on, obsessively studied for and know a lot about this World Cup. I don't want to burden you, my kindly readers, with too much information here, but I was thinking I could provide you a kind of idiosyncratic primer to this tournament. Maybe the best way to do this is to present it in five sort of simple topics that will allow you to dazzle strangers with your knowledge and perspective on this greatest of all sporting events.

But before we start, I have decided not to discuss the politics of the World Cup in my list because it is too long and complicated of an issue. So we'll leave that for another day. Just tell me when you're ready to hear about the apocalypse of capitalism and how sports are its last dying argument, nevertheless doomed like us all.

Onto the soccer fun!

1. The group stage is just for you to have a good time.

With 36 of the 48 teams going through to the elimination rounds (first place, second place, and even most of the third place teams will go through) this is not the tense, meaningful, and exciting part of the games. This is the get your feet wet part of the cup. Probably no team that is talked about as an even mildly serious contender is likely to go out after their little mini tournament of three games. This is where you can drop in and see if you're interested at all. Or maybe pick out a team or two, favored or not, and size them up. You can root for miracles or just ignore most of the vast sea of matches. Someone hopeless is probably going through despite what anyone thinks, which will be utterly thrilling for that team and its fans. One or two mediocre teams might go out and by some miracle a good team could too, which will be an emotional spectacle but not the likely or key point of this period. Here everyone is just establishing position and conditioning for the great race to come.

2. The old mens' cup

Seven players who are 40 or older are playing in this cup! The first players ever to play in their sixth world cup are doing so, including Messi and Ronaldo who I need not explain or this basics guide will already be beyond you. Clerkmanifesto reader favorite Axel Witsel of Belgium is 37. Messi will turn 39 during the tournament. Can people this old make a difference in these games? Probably a couple of them can, and even if none are able to, their presence looms so large that such failures will be one of the singular down note stories as the cup progresses.

3. Terrible teams and miracles

With the wider inclusion of 48 teams there are some wild stories about some of the teams that have made it. For instance did you know that Haiti, because their home country is so messed up, have not played a game in Haiti in over four years!! I am personally enchanted with Curacao, a tiny country that's smaller in population and possibly even in physical size than the city I currently live in! There are 156,000 people in Curacao, they have a famous coach and absolutely zero chance. What a thing to root for!

4. Enjoy an extra elimination game!

To make up for a far more neutered group stage, take pleasure in an extra round of do or die football. Yes, the round of 32 match ups will be uneven, but everyone in it will have proved to be capable of winning at least, and here is where we can see something wild happen, and probably will. Plus, good teams' slip ups in the group stage can set this round up for some surprisingly key and competitive games.

5. It was always going to be the favorites, but which ones?

Bizarre miracles and shock eliminations aside, as a student of the pundits, it is almost impossible to find someone willing to predict even a mild dark horse making it to the finals here. The good teams have some freakishly disporportionate talent here. If a team as brilliantly talented as France or Spain wins there will be pleasure in seeing such good football being played. Any of the maybe five beyond them who could seriously win will bring the thrilling frisson of the unexpected, the glorious return, or the long sought historical achievement. In the end the winner always will have seemed inevitable, but enjoy now that no one knows.

Favorites yes, but no one knows! The book is blank and ready, and it is about to be written.

Preparations for the World Cup

 

The World Cup begins in a few weeks, and what better place to follow it than Clerkmanifesto, especially if you are not interested in it. 

But maybe you’re only interested enough to wonder who will win.

I don’t know, but pessimistically speaking, and probably realistically too, stupid France will win, which I say with all due respect and love as a person living in this beautiful country. 

The French are a team positively crammed with talent, and they keep winning or almost winning the World Cup so much that we are all worn out by it!

But having started negatively, let me tell you what I really wish for this World Cup, even if I know what I wish for is beyond my meager abilities in this direction.

 I would like everyone to win, so that, whenever anyone does win, I will rejoice: 

Even France, or England, or the Netherlands, or Portugal, or Germany!

Though I think this nice plan would be a lot easier for me if it were Argentina, Spain, or Brazil who won.

In the past I would run a World Cup betting pool at the library which was fun and a lot of work. I actually miss it. There was something about nudging people into a mild interest in the World Cup that weirdly appealed to me and my Quixotic nature.

Luckily I still have Clerkmanifesto for this kind of endeavor. So pick your team! 

Pick your team!!!!!

Post it in the comments.

I mean it.

 

If your team wins you will receive REDACTED BY THE CLERKMANIFESTO LEGAL TEAM. 

I promise.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but on my life I swear that REDACTED BY THE CLERKMANIFESTO LEGAL TEAM. 

So choose a team in the comments below! Dreams really do come true.

For myself I would delight in seeing our ancient Messi get one more World Cup, but I don't think that lightning will strike twice and though willing, I am also ready to move on. 

Always hostile to the soccer vanity of England in the past, I am suddenly finding my heart softened by my beloved club team, Barcelona, having signed an English player in Anthony Gordon. 

Maybe, dare I say it, England has suffered long enough?

And the same for Brazil.

But in the end, and when choices must be made half the Barcelona team is playing for Spain, so I simply cannot resist them. Plus, I choose Football! This is delightful, intricate yet direct soccer, with some of the most dazzling technical players in the world. 

But don't worry. If you're at loose ends you can pick Spain too!

Or Ecuador.

Japan?

Norway?

Senegal?

Curacao?

Wait, Curacao is in the World Cup?

Ah fuck it. Let's just all adopt Curacao.

Too much winning

 

In my adventures in following soccer, I have mostly experienced losing. My chosen National team was losing the World Cup simultaneously with my interest bursting onto the scene. My newly discovered club team circa 2014 swiftly emerged as the best in the world at that time and won everything while I still only partially understood what was happening. And then followed increasing heartbreaks for a decade. In this past year my chosen club team won nothing. Even following excellent teams, when it came down to it at the end of a season or tournament, I mostly had to wallow for days in the bitterness of catastrophic defeat. When one thinks of it, that's how sports are. In any single year or tournament, out of twenty or thirty teams, only one team can win.

That's a lot of people losing.

Sports, like the lottery, is all about losing, all while we dream big. It's the losing that is what's normal.

Until Argentina kind of stopped losing... anything.

A few years ago the major South American tournament, that had eluded Argentina and Messi through his whole career, came along.

And they won!

It was amazing.

It was glorious.

It was everything I had been suffering for in soccer all those years.

 Or almost everything.

Because next came the World Cup. The real prize. And Argentina won that too. The greatest triumph for any player or team in all of soccer, maybe even in all of international sports!

And it was heaven.

Soccer accomplished! 

The debt of all my pain paid off in full, with interest at a good return!

And then a month ago the Copa came again. The final was just last night.

And Argentina won again.

So, I guess that was nice. 

I mean I already have so much money, so to speak, with all the lottery wins.  I'm not complaining, it's just that it would have been so great for Colombia, who lost. And to be honest I don't really know where to put another one of these trophies of my winning team. They're kind of heavy, and have a tendency to pile up. But I guess I can pick it up and maybe throw it in the back of some closet somewhere?

Surely I'll need it eventually?

It's not a bug, it's a feature

 

As I follow the European Soccer Championships, actually called The Euros, I find myself in an oddly neutral position to the whole thing. Yes, I always sort of want one team or another to win, or sometimes I just want one team to lose. And I would like Spain to win the whole tournament if it could be so. But unlike with many years involving Barcelona and Argentina, my mental health isn't involved in anything that happens. I can endure any result pretty comfortably.

And this is teaching me some strange things about my decade long relationship to soccer. 

I have been watching a good number of goals scored in this tournament by accident. Called "own goals", these have been shots where a defending player has tried to clear the ball out of the area, or just been in the way and the ball bounced off of him, and it went into the goal! No one is trying to put the ball in the goal here, on the contrary, but it goes in anyway!

And watching these repeatedly it suddenly occurred to me:

It might not be the beauty of the game that so appeals to me, nor the wild story lines, nor the heart pounding excitement, nor the dreams dashed or coming true, nor the dazzling talent displayed in top level soccer.

No, alas, I think I might be drawn to the injustice.

The record of your deeds is recorded in the book of life

 

Since we're talking about soccer...

Allow me to bring to your attention a player starting for the Spanish National Team in the European Championships: Lamine Yamal. 

Lamine Yamal is 16 years old.

In the movies they generally don't even have 16 year olds play 16 year olds. It's too much trouble. They're not really up to the task. So they cast older people for those roles. But there's Lamine Yamal, actually 16, playing an intensely competitive game with the fastest, quickest, strongest, and most talented humans in the world, and doing it really well. A lovely diving save just prevented him from being the tournament's youngest scorer ever, but he did provide a dazzling assist.

Of course, we all did some pretty amazing things when we were 16 too.

Surely as good as Lamine Yamal.

No doubt that someone wrote it down somewhere.

Let us not dwell on our failures

 

As my fevered interest in the game of soccer slowly wanes over these years I am finding a small resurgence of interest taking place right now as the biggest international tournaments outside of the World Cup all happen at once. This weekend the Euros got underway in Germany to establish the best European team, and any day now the Copa America will get going to put forth the best team in the Americas.

In a month we'll know all.

It is a lot of soccer, but I might be up for a good bit of it. Perhaps being a little less invested in the winners I can enjoy some of these games more widely. There are many talented young players to watch, stories to chart, and there is plenty to root for. At this point I despise some things about soccer, I love some things about soccer, but also I just find some things about soccer strangely interesting.

How about I tell you one of these last ones now?

I saw this today in a game I much enjoyed wherein a favorite team of mine, Spain, thoroughly beat Croatia in one of the first games of the Euros. This exchange is something I have seen many times in soccer games. It goes something like this:

A player kicks a through ball way downfield to a forward, putting him in a great position for a shot or a pass to an open teammate. The player receiving the ball then proceeds to do something absolutely terrible. I think today he kicked it like thirty feet over the goal. Whatever it was it was a mess. And at the conclusion of all this, the player who completely screwed it up turned way back towards the passer and gave him the thumbs up.

It seems like there would be an apology in there for messing everything tragically up, but it's not like that. It's not like that at all. The thumbs up doesn't have even the slightest feel of apology.

The thumbs up seems to be saying "Good job there. Keep it up. Sure, we didn't score, but don't worry, it wasn't anyone's fault so keep giving me all your passes. You have done the right thing."

The sport I follow

 

For many years the main sport we followed here at clerkmanifesto was soccer. And though I tried to keep my soccer commentary on a back channel, one inclined to the research (it's never happened before, but it's always possible) could surely pull out and read through many dozens of soccer themed posts from my history of essays. 

And it has been irresistible to write about it a little: Soccer is a rich, complicated, beautiful game, flowing in wild narratives, and full of amazing insights into life itself.

Unfortunately, and I say this with real reluctance, soccer is also stupid.

Soccer is so, so, so stupid!

It is like the stupidest thing ever! 

In fact, I think soccer is the stupidest sport outside of professional wrestling, which, as you know, isn't even a sport at all! Wrestling is, well, like soccer with more planning.

And while I can't claim that this analytic conclusion concerning soccer is free of personal bitterness (after all, my heart has been raked over the burning coals of soccer more times than I'd like to admit), it is not completely disconnected from reality. Sure, at least half of all soccer match results are attributable to one team being better than the other, but, and this is super important, a disturbing amount of the remaining games, when teams are at least roughly close-matched, are decided either by insanely bad calls, moments of random luck, or the work of capricious gods who are simply mad at everything.

So I have switched sports.

I now exclusively follow English Amateur Competition Shows. Essentially these are The Great British Baking Show, Great British Sewing Bee, Great British Pottery Throwdown, and The Great British Flower Show which had only one season and might not have been British, I don't remember, but it was brilliant anyway. These shows have far lower stakes, more admirable participants, and much better judging than soccer could even dream of. And not only are these shows more wholesome, egalitarian, and fair than any professional sport I can think of, I can also watch them on the couch with my darling wife.

I'd say the only real shortcoming to these English Amateur Competition Shows is that they don't really make enough of them. 

So, in a spare moment, every once in awhile I check in on how Messi is doing here in America.

He's doing pretty good. But he's getting close to aging out of the game now.

Maybe he should take up baking.

Messi retires to Florida?

 

Longtime obsession of this blog, Lionel Messi, has retired. Feeling, as I do, that there is one more good year of top flight soccer in him, this is... sad. And though his retirement is commonly being described in other terms across the world, I feel he is retiring. I want to insist he is retiring. I want to demand that all of soccerdom refer to this moment as: Messi retiring. Yes, Lionel Messi, greatest soccer player of all time, a couple weeks before turning 36 years old, has retired to Florida.

Why would anyone in their right mind retire to Florida? Nevertheless, I will grant that retiring to Florida has curiously been done by many other people in the past. One might even say that it's an unhealthy national habit. Come to think of it, has anyone mentioned to Messi and his family that people retiring to Florida tend to sort of go... bad?

On the plus side, to keep fit while in Miami (his Florida city of choice), Messi has resolved to play in the local recreational soccer league there. This is like me ending my writing career on Clerkmanifesto and proceeding to...

I hate that there is no reasonable analogy in this situation!

There totally should be!

One might think that even an aging Messi would dominate a local recreational league. Maybe he will a little, who knows, but one should keep in mind that soccer is so popular, so ubiquitously played by so many millions of people, that the distance between the best team in the world and the thousandth best team in the world isn't as enormous as one might assume. Also, soccer is very much a team sport and Messi's new team... probably isn't in the top thousand.

But if Messi wants to fade away kicking the ball about with Benjamin Cremaschi, and maybe earn a soccer team and a spare one or two hundred million dollars in his dotage, who am I to fault him?

Oh, right. I am a voice on the Internet. 

There is no one we cannot fault.

 

Argentina five days later

 

It feels much longer than five days since Argentina won the World Cup in what amounts to the culmination of my arduous soccer watching career.

This feels like a long time to me, but that may be because of my being sick with Covid that whole time, and so some part of my brain is measuring those days in coughs.

There have been a lot of TV shows watched in that time too.

Many people are calling that final the greatest sporting match ever played.

I fancy a bit of hyperbole myself. 

It was my favorite result from any sporting match ever. I'll readily say that!  And I suppose it was an emblematic game of soccer, full of drama, great moments, heroism, and changes of fortune. It was operatic.

Soccer is the most narrative of sports.

And this World Cup was a great narrative:

The most gifted player of all time lifted the greatest trophy in the sport in the twilight of his career.

But what's a little weird about soccer is that brilliant soccer, and great moments of virtuosity in the game, can easily have almost nothing to do with results.

But I'll admit:

I find it a relief when there's even a rough correlation.

The circle of life

 

There is a strange momentousness to this day, a closing of two circles.

One circle involves how after three years of writing about, thinking about, fending off, and occasionally obsessing over Covid, I finally have it. I first wrote about it here just barely under three years ago, before, apparently, the CDC had even declared it an International Health Concern. Looking at that post, which you can see at this link:

http://www.clerkmanifesto.com/2020/01/your-guide-to-coronavirus.html

I find it an odd mix of rambling and extremely prescient insight. The capturing of the quality and feel of my current symptoms is positively uncanny. 

Let's just say I am coughing a lot.

The other circle involves Lionel Messi and the World Cup. 

Over the years of my intense focus on his feats I have written as few blog posts about him as I could manage to restrain myself, but there are still a fair number. I first saw him in the World Cup eight and a half years ago. He utterly captured my attention as possibly the most magically skilled athlete at his sport, at any sport, that I had ever seen. He lost the World Cup Final that year and I had some harsh words for the Argentina team. I have since learned volumes more about soccer and have watched hundreds and hundreds of games, most of which featured Messi. Nevertheless I did have the gist of the whole thing back then. And everything that was missing from that Argentina team eight years ago was thankfully, joyously there this time as they won the World Cup.

 They did not win by a team spirit that refused to too much elevate Messi, like last time. They instead won through a team spirit that was formed through a love of Messi.

It was very satisfying. 

Maybe even a tiny bit more satisfying than this Covid is dismal.

World Cup Final

 

Considering what a big deal a World Cup Final is to the sporting world and to all the, er, the ball watchers of Earth, it is amazing that today is only the 22nd one of these to ever happen.

22! In almost a hundred years!

I guess that scarcity is why this game is such a big deal, so big a deal that

OH MY GOD, I CAN'T BEAR TO WATCH!

I mean, except I will watch, though perhaps the pleasure of it is getting edged out by something like dread, or terror.

Oh well, que sera sera.

Most of my readers are unlikely to encounter this post before The World Cup Final is played, and some may be like, politely, "Oh, who won?" Without much caring about the answer. But some readers are sweating blood during the game, or in agony in its aftermath, or unbridled joy. People are different, which is one of the tritest observations I have ever made in the history of this blog, and yet somehow continues to confuse me with an astonishing regularity.

So who will win?

The devout superstition of this blog's discussion of this World Cup prescribes me to say:

France.

France is going to win.

Not that I'm happy about that.

Oh, no, not    at      all.

Anyway, we are on then now to the final, with our dread and hope and indifference and superstition all crammed together. After all that wild stuff happened, through 63 matches, it is, one last time, all to play for. I leave us all on the brink of a precipice, as we always are, everyday, the mundane and terrible, wild and wonderful future obscured from every human being who ever breathed. 

And that, for good or ill, is true of us all, no matter how different any of us might be.

Your World Cup Semifinal Predictions!

 

I have not really been brave enough to predict much in this World Cup. As I said, no one knows what's going to happen and then after it happens it was oh so obviously going to be just that. 

At which point my prediction, for example, might look a bit... silly.

But then I saw someone sort of famous in soccer predicted a semifinal of France vs. Morocco.

Not very many people predicted a semifinal of France vs. Morocco.

People were all like: "This guy is amazing!"

The only problem is that all his other guesses were completely wrong, so wrong as to be outright wacky. I think maybe the other semifinal is supposed to be Ghana vs. Cameroon.

Ghana and Cameroon are not in the other semifinal. They were drummed out of their groups unceremoniously.

Though they certainly gave it a good go!

Anyway, my main takeaway from all this is:

Who cares?

So here are my very authoritative semifinal predictions:

France 7

Morocco 0

Sorry Morocco, but Morocco is like a heroic kid at a giant dam. It's been an amazing feat holding back the force of all that water, but it has built and built and built, and now, when it finally bursts, it's going to be ugly.

Croatia 2

Argentina 0

Of course I desperately want Argentina to win, but my superstition that predicting Argentina's loss in this space will always work out for the best, causes me to not dare alter my path.

If I'm right about these predictions we will revisit them. If not we will forget all about it.

More things I don't say (World Cup version)

 

I was out alone at the front desk of my library on a moderately busy Saturday trying, with mixed success, to follow the World Cup on my computer. A man came up to the desk and needed some help with a couple of small things, requesting a book and renewing one, after which he looked around at the few dozen people scattered around the large first floor of the library and commented "It's unusually quiet here today, isn't it?"

I did not reply: "The very fact of you standing here saying that belies your statement." 

That would have been impolite and unprofessional. 

So instead I simply said, "It comes and goes." while missing the crucial second goal for France against England.

Wales wins the World Cup

Down now to eight teams in the World Cup we have seven top teams and only one measly remaining underdog, Morocco, and we have our first days off since the games began. Everyone can now rest up for two days- Wednesday and Thursday- maybe I won't even write about The World Cup for all of Thursday! And then Friday it's back to action: Croatia play Brazil in the morning. Argentina lose to the Netherlands in the afternoon.

And in this moment of collecting ourselves FOR THE REALLY BIG GAMES, and because we found the Spain Morocco game very disappointing, we'd like to discuss...

Underdogs!

When criminals in this world appear

And break the laws that they should fear

And frighten all who see or hear

The cry goes up both far and near

For Underdog (Underdog)

Underdog (Underdog)

I have found, in being a passionate follower of the World Cup, that people love underdogs. 

People were super excited about South Korea, Australia, and Japan, and now Morocco. And I am fine with these teams, but skeptical. Because I have found that people enjoy the easy nobility of supporting the little guy when they have nothing on the line, and don't really care. It is a theoretical stance. And I have also found that people only really support a specific underdog after they are successful. An upset by Japan, or a last minute win by South Korea, created many fans who vanished without a tear as soon as their inevitable losses. No one, absolutely no one when I signed up people for my World Cup pool, said anything like: Give me Ghana!

Which doesn't matter I guess, because these people are mostly not watching these games, or not caring about them very much anyway. But I will say I appreciate a fan in this context, someone who has made their pick and decided to care. And if someone at the start of this tournament were to decide to support Brazil because they were the biggest favorite in the tournament, and then they watched them and cared and enjoyed their flair and style, well, their heart is on the line too. There were 32 teams, and a half dozen of them were very very good, another half dozen could be the best team in the world on a special day. Which means that at the start of this tournament every single team alone, no matter how excellent, was, nevertheless, an underdog, 

just some more so than others.

World Cup updates

 

Suffering as I am, from a cold or flu, I have been able to fanatically focus on The World Cup as I can't really manage to do much else.

And so I bring you another up to the minute report from the events in Qatar.

After a thrilling roller coaster of a group stage, chock full of crazy upsets, and numerous twists and turns, we braced ourselves for the round of 16.

In which everything went exactly according to plan. Exactly! Favorites won. Big stars excelled. And all the obvious predictions that most people didn't want to make because they were too obvious, came true.

Which goes to show that soccer is a game full of an astonishing amount of luck, until, suddenly, it isn't.

If Portugal and Spain can win tomorrow (or today, your time), which is by no means assured, unless it happens, in which case it was, it will mark one of the most perfect fait accompli in the history of the World Cup. The quarter finals will consist of an almost perfectly expected final eight of most favorited teams in the world. Not a Cinderella team among them. Not that people won't desperately try to make the lowest hanging fruit into one. Don't fall for that.

And all that sounds pretty boring maybe. But soccer is strange; the unpredictable sets up the obvious, and the obvious leads to the unpredictable.

If Portugal and Spain go through, which, who knows really? Then the quarter finals all of the sudden will have no favorites and no underdogs.

Oh, I mean no favorites until there are winners. 

Then it will have been obvious all along.

Also, as per the compulsive reverse psychology superstition of this blog:

Argentina, alas, will be edged out by The Netherlands.