England were brave and rose to the occasion but France had no need to – when they had five good minutes, they scoredMidnight strikes and the party is over. England crumple to the turf in fragments: one here, a couple over there, one more over by the centre circle. The Al Bayt pitch is a field of broken dreams, of hope and despair, and hope again, and despair again. In the VVIP seats, David Beckham is holding his head in his hands, although for only one of the reasons he should be. Afterwards Gareth Southgate will talk about how close they came, how much these players can still achieve. England are proud. England are defiant. But England are done.It is...
You could achieve the greater spread and interest that 48 teams is supposed to deliver with a rankings-based qualifying finaleThese, Gianni Infantino said earlier this week, have been the greatest group stages of all time. Unusually, he might be right (although his claim this was the most diverse last 16 is debatable at best). The football is only a small part of this World Cup but it has been largely excellent.There have been some shocks, some favourites went home early, some played up to their pre-tournament billing and every group produced tension and intrigue. Infantino was conducting an in-house interview, hiding from journalists and accountability as he has since his bizarre address the day before the tournament began, which meant...
Captain’s miss will haunt him but the reality is France were winning this game before they even started winning itFor a while, in those endless, scrolling micro-moments of gape, shock, acceptance and slowly gathering grief, the ball didn’t look like it was actually going to come down. There was always something weird about its angle, something anti-gravitational.The night was suddenly quiet, the ball a lovely white thing out there all alone in all that space. Maybe it could just stay there. Maybe this thing could just stretch out and not actually happen, or not happen enough to matter. Continue reading...
A team that has been embraced as siblings by the hosts Qatar has delivered a truly great moment in World Cup historyMorocco were almost there. The whistles had intensified, if that was humanly possible, and Walid Regragui needed to convey one last point. They would play with 10 men for the final few minutes and the manager called Azzedine Ounahi, the lungs and fizzing brain of his midfield, to the touchline.A word in the ear, perhaps audible but quite possibly not, concluded with a shake of the shoulders, a slap on the back, a physical way of demanding an extra iota of focus before Portugal pass, pass, passed their way through the thirds once more. Continue reading...
The Brazil striker can still win things but his major-chord career is over in the place that made him rich but stole his valueThe morning after its seven-game World Cup lifespan was complete, Stadium 974 – the shipping container one, a kind of elite Qatari hipster project, cod-Hackney to go with the cod-Paris – was already being dismantled by men with diggers and grabbers and electric wrenches.This is the way of things here. Indeed, as the yellow-shirted travellers streamed through the night on Doha’s driverless metro, another Brazil World Cup campaign done in a haze of tears and grief, it was tempting to wonder how long before the men who dismantle things would be out with their wrecking bars, setting...