The beating heart of Les Bleus is playing his role in midfield in a way that no one else does, always on the half-turnThat blue wave just keeps on breaking. For the second time in five days at Al Bayt Stadium, France won a high‑stakes World Cup knockout game without at any stage being behind; without at any stage playing that well; and also without looking like they were ever seriously going to lose.Morocco were exceptionally good, pushing France back, but somehow always finding ways to not convert their slick, probing possession into goals. How to win: a study in Deschampian minimalism. Maybe someone should write a proper thesis on this. Continue reading...
Argentina’s icon ran things again and took a step back in time to set up a clinching third goal as Croatia were swept asideDoes it actually matter if Lionel Messi wins a World Cup? This will now be the narrative around the dog days of his final global tournament leading up to the final on Sunday.The reality is something else. In fact, watching Messi here the opposite seemed to be the case. This was not just a performance of edge and thrust and decisive moments but all of those things carved out of the air in his own unique physical style, a footballer capable, at 35, of basically making this thing up in his own image. Continue reading...
Falling short will sting but, if this is the end for the Croatia midfielder, the past three weeks have only served only to enhance his legacyIt began in Basel, an era ago, with a Lionel Messi goal. Only Luka Modric will know whether it wound down, in this monstrous and dystopian supplement to Doha, with exactly the same thing. At the end there was a hug from an old clubmate, Ángel Di María; then a more meaningful conference, arm around the younger man’s shoulder, with his dear friend Mateo Kovacic. Neither of them had been able to do quite enough this time and that is an achingly rare lament.Modric and Croatia have long exceeded whatever should naturally be expected and,...
Centre-forward whose goal knocked England out of the World Cup is often overlooked while all eyes are on Kylian MbappéI heard someone say recently that the France forward Olivier Giroud, their new record goalscorer, “deserves his flowers”. He does. Before each game for France at this World Cup, all eyes are on Kylian Mbappé, the star who has scored five goals in five games, but the impact of Giroud, who has four in four, flies under the radar. In the buildup to England’s 2-1 loss to France the story was the same: will Kyle Walker be the player to stop Mbappé? How effective is Mbappé going to be able to be?This matches a narrative that has stuck with Giroud throughout...
Our country is on the world map again thanks to 26 players and a manager who will be an inspiration for generations to comeBack in 1984, when Saïd Aouita and Nawal El Moutawakel returned to Morocco having won gold at the Los Angeles Olympics, King Hassan II is said to have told both athletes they had put Morocco on the world map. The King, in fact, was so proud of their achievements that he recommended that all girls born in the remainder of that year be called “Nawal” in homage of the then 22-year-old 400m hurdler who became a hero for every female athlete in Morocco and in the Arab region.I was only two years old at the time and...