Spill & thrills
The surprise, on the penultimate day of the 2014 football World Cup’s qualifying campaign, that South Africa pulled off in Soweto by beating champions and title favourites Spain gave the tournament just the kind of push it would be grateful for in the rest of its run-up phase. It didn’t really matter that the global galacticos had been knocked boots and brains in a friendly, as the officially competitive but long, arduous and mostly unexciting one-match-after-another process at the end of which 32 teams make it doesn’t even pretend to separate the makeweights from the heavyweights, lumping all together in an arbitrary mix. But South Africa, who hadn’t got through, humbling Spain, popularly described as Europe’s standard-bearers along with Germany, in the competition Brazil would host, came across as someone cocking-a-snook at received wisdom and getting away with it.
Not that the basic truth about the bloated tournament ~ it shows how quality has been sacrificed consciously at the altar of electoral equations within Fifa ~ can be anything other than eminently predictable. When you run your eyes over the list of the qualifiers ~ Japan, Australia, Iran, South Korea, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Algeria, Costa Rica, USA, Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain, England, Switzerland, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Croatia, Portugal and France ~ you know in your heart of hearts that God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world.
Portugal and France, with good reason, will resent the facile arrival at the conclusion, though. Didier Deschamps’ France turned things around dramatically, even sensationally, after going down 0-2 to Ukraine in Kiev, winning 3-0 at the Stade de France. Newspapers said they had lit up the whole of Paris. A Mamdou Sakho strike sealed the swing after goals from Sakho and Karim Benzema, whose effort was said by some people to have been flawed as the player was off-side. Another crackerjack in the latest series of qualifiers was the Sweden-versus-Portugal showdowns, in which Cristiano Ronaldo, with a four-goal haul across the two games, including a triple strike in the return match, fashioned a 4-2 triumph which ended all speculation, and a lot of punditry, about the relative merits of the pin-up boy they compared with Leo Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the scorer of so many seemingly out-of-this-world goals. Thus put out of the way, Ibra (as the world calls him) said the World Cup wouldn’t really be worth watching any more but endorsements didn’t really cascade forth.
Even if the participants limp and lurch into it after the grueling, gut-wrenching Champions League, there is hardly any doubt that the World Cup will once again require Messi to rise to the occasion. Whether or not he is Diego Armando Maradona’s creative heir can be established conclusively only if Argentina win it. His technical excellence has never been questioned; recreating 1986 has so far proved beyond him. And it doesn’t help that, minus the guiding influence of Pep Guardiola at Barcelona, his injury problems have cropped up again. Another player who will be watched 24×7 is Neymar, whose national team coach, Big Phil Scolari, has let it be known that he is secure in the knowledge that Brazil, hosts and the team with the brightest credentials in the tournament, will run out winners. That makes things additionally difficult for Neymar.
Africa has been said by some serious football critics to be a major contender this time around as Brazil’s climate is expected to suit Africans. Cameroon and Senegal did hit the quarter-finals in 1990 and 2002, respectively, and you can’t ignore Africa’s successes in age-specific and Olympic football. The very high representation of blacks in Europe’s domestic game is another big point. Europe, though, will look upon Latin America as its principal rival, bringing us to where we didn’t begin: the World Cup’s traditional rivalry format. It will never be won simply by dint of technical superiority: a lot more, including the winners’ psychology, goes into it.
