I am not a football aficionado, but like most young boys in the MidEast I played football as my first sport but graduated to other athletic events as I grew up, culminating in tennis in my retirement years. However, like my good friend and colleague HorstCerni I did follow this latest version of the quadrennial World Cup matches quite frequently. I must have watched more than half of the group matches and almost all of the knockout ones. Here are some random thoughts on the event.
I liked the expansion of the competition to 48 teams as it gave spectators a broader view of how this sport is played in many more countries, especially those not usually competing on such a global scene
It was quite an accomplishment to host the teams in three countries at the same time; a plus to FIFA.
While most of the teams came from the powerhouses of Europe and South America, it was surprising how both MENA and Africa are becoming serious competitors. Even the three host countries of North America are fielding teams that can compete with the best.
On the other hand, missing from action are the big population countries in Asia; China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines etc. A big part of the world was not represented.
The biggest disappointment was the absence of Italy in the competition. A four time winner of the Cup it did not even qualify for the 2026 games. In fact it was the only one of previous winners not to participate in 2026,
About eight countries competing had populations less than five million, the smallest and most surprising being the island of Curaçao with less than 160,000 inhabitants.
What was interesting was the large number of players, even among the European teams, who were black or brown faces. One friend joked that Morocco’s team were largely French nationals, while their opponents the French team were more than half Africans!
Novelties from FIFA other than the expanded field of teams were the introduction of “hydration breaks “thus making football a game of quarters and not of halves. Some diehards think this breaks the fluidity of the game, but I felt it was a good thing from the health point of view. Despite the breaks we still saw many players cramp up and leave the pitch.
The showmanship of the games was quite impressive: the unfurling of huge national flags before the players and their national anthems was dramatic; the half time show was entertaining, but not really necessary; Infantino’s Peace Prize to DJT was a farce that was best avoided; officiating was generally good with the VAR technology a plus like the “hawk eye “ in tennis.
On the sport itself I still think it is the “beautiful game” but it has degenerated in some ways; the irony is it is called “foot” ball, yet players use their hands and heads as often as their feet! They throw in the ball when it goes out, they grab each other when chasing a ball, they pull the others’ hands, shirts and even pants. This roughness jars and it is disturbing that officials allow so much of it. When I played football the only contact allowed was a shoulder push.
Also unpleasant has become the many tricks players use to hurt the other, from kicking the shins to stepping with their metal cleats on the other’s feet. This behavior is supplemented by the antics of false injuries as they pretend to be hurt and then jumping up and running kilometers!
I don’t understand the addition of “stoppage time” or its importance. After all the match is 90 minutes long, with another possible 30 minutes overtime, so what is special about the 3 to 5minutes added? It really makes no sense. I do admit, however, that in fact many goals are scored in those short minutes quite often, but that is still unusual.
Another idiosyncrasy is the offside rule which I never liked. So what if an attacking player is a few inches ahead of the defenders? In basketball, it is called the fast break and is an additional exciting aspect making the game faster and more unpredictable. Why doesn’t football abandon this old fashioned rule? It may result in more goals being scored and enliven the game.
Critics of football have always claimed that sitting thru an hour and a half and seeing one side win by 1 to 0 is boring. One of the most interesting matches of this World Cup was the third place game between France and England when a total of TEN goals were scored. The disappointment came from the fact that France was the number one choice of winning the Cup, only to lose the third place slot also.
Another aspect of football I don’t like is the scene near a goal when a corner shot is taken. Having some 15 to 18 players jockeying for position while pulling and pushing opponents is not pretty. Perhaps there should be a limit of 5 players allowed from each team in addition to the goalkeeper defending? This would reduce the wrestling going on among all the players. A thought!
Officiating should become much stricter so that unruly actions can be punished more often. The yellow card is in my opinion not used enough. Teams at the Cup have a roster of about 25 players, so the expulsion of those with yellow cards should not in principle affect the teams.
Finally, I was sad that Messi and his Argentinian side did not win…it would have been a worthy retirement present for him to end his remarkable career. On the other hand I know that Spain played a better football, proving that their winning both the EURO and World Cup is no fluke. Their precision passing is a pleasure to watch and epitomizes what the “beautiful game” should be.
One of the most civilized games I watched was Spain vs Portugal where both teams displayed the kind of football that purists like me love to watch.
Like most of our XUNICEF colleagues I liked the great story about how Messi and Yammal met and how both became UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors.
Another disappointment was Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal whose performance was not up to its billing at all and his inclusion in the team did not make much difference.
On a personal basis I was most dismayed by the loss of the remarkable team from Egypt to Argentina. Leading by 2 to 0 less than fifteen minutes from the end I could not have imagined that Argentina could score three goals in such a short time.
As a Canadian citizen now I was pleased with our team’s overall performance, though it was clear they need much more work to compete with the best.Their 6 to 0 victory over Qatar was a worthy accomplishment.
One of the lowest points in these games was FIFA’s accommodating Trump to defer the red card expulsion of the US best player Balogun.
All in all these games were a pleasant interlude for most spectators and a welcome break from the unpleasant news of events around the world.
Thanks, Fouad. Very nice review. I also disliked the physical aggressiveness and pulling at shirts. And yes, the off-side rule should be eliminated.
ReplyDeleteFuad, your reflections on the FIFA World Cup matches were a treat to read. Like you, I am no football aficionado but admit to having my first experience of glory in sports by playing on our elementary school boys’ soccer team to defeat a local private school boys’ team. Our coach had been determined to win despite girls not being encouraged to play soccer. We won but I was never allowed to compete again and so went on to other sports. Organized, exclusionary football left a scar on my love of the sport.
ReplyDeleteI have watched the rise of FIFA, and the corruption involved, with severe misgivings. My husband, Suhail, loves football and has coached youth teams in the US and Egypt. He made certain our daughter, Nora, could play at UNIS. She has gone on to become a professional sports trainer. This past summer we had a family subscription to watch all the games as Nora awaited the birth of her first child. To my surprise I was captivated by the games.
Yes, like you and Horst I too was disappointed to see how aggressive the players could be with each other, using all kinds of theatrical tricks to injure the opposition and in turn raise the level of drama on the field (pitch) with feigned death throes. I was also appalled by the money involved, the commercialism of the extra breaks and the shameful political interference by Trump with Gianni Infantino to keep Balogun in the games..
But it was a heady experience to see how the playing field between countries is being leveled, especially by small countries making the cut. The games promoted the dream of all children to play the game with any kind of object resembling a ball in a neighborhood vacant lot. I rejoiced in seeing players from backgrounds like that make their way to stardom. That’s the football I love.
Can that dream survive the FIFA World Cup? In the end, the most worthy team, Spain, won through maintaining the highest standards of skilled teamwork. Political interference lost out. What comes next deserves watching.
My views and feelings fully coincide with those of Fouad, Horst and Laila. This "beautiful game" could be more elegant if some of the changes suggested by Fouad were implemented. Re. Gianni Infantino's opportunist hobnobbing with DJT, it appears that, as the NYTimes headlined, his hubris has now met the Icarus moment – the FIFA president has finally flown too close to the sun and is on the verge of his wings melting!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7482481/2026/07/31/gianni-infantino-world-cup-stake-sale/?searchResultPosition=1
Thanks Fuad. Your article was enjoyable to read. Messi played very dirty and should have been red carded. Argentina deserved to lose. They benefited from poor refereeing until the end when they didn’t. And even then they tried to distract the ref from giving a red card with another player’s theatrics falling down when there was no spanish player anywhere near him!!!! So I am glad you enjoyed and you have made some excellent suggestions. But Infantino and FIFA are alas more interested in money and power and not really improving the game. Be well and do good things
ReplyDeleteDear Leila, Suhail, Kul, Moncef and Fouad:
ReplyDeleteI think we all grieve for the beautiful game which is being destroyed by so many people flaunting the rules as if they don’t exist. That we saw the Spanish Team winning through pure excellence is a plus – but if we – the fan base – don’t tell the players, the politicians and FIFA that the circus that we saw particularly with the Argentinians, they are likely to lose us. They should remember that it is the fans that make the competition. If they don’t fill the seats then the competition and FIFA become irrelevant.
It appears that some people think that robust brutality on the pitch is entertainment. To them I say, go watch cage fighting on a different TV channel. After all, the President of the USA had a fighting cage setup at the White House, didn’t he ? If he gets a thrill that way, so be it. Leave the beautiful game to be played exactly as the rules state. Shoulder barge is permitted; groping is not permitted. A far stricter refereeing regime with yellow cards being used from the first blatant infringement might incline players to play within the rules. A red card must be a red card and politics should not come into the equation.
I felt sad that probably one of the best referees in the world - Omar Artan of Somalia - was barred by the USA from entering the USA,. How can it be a world cup if politics determine who may attend and who may not ?
Sepp Blatter over-reached himself, and it looks as if Infantino is heading the same way. The question is, does FIFA have to go through a UNICEF style Management Excellence Exercise to achieve a better system ?