The last 16 as seen from Row Z
Eight games and a heavy dose of controversy
Hello
Pardon the lack of posts over the last couple of weekdays. A lot of life events crammed in (all good ones) which left me little time for thinking beyond the odd bit of live drawing which I hope you caught but if not is included here.
Usually the last 16 is where you arrive after the groups. The last 32 felt like a cheeky wee bonus round that weeds out the chaff, the Dutch and the Germans.
I can’t even remember if this was the first game but Morocco papped out a spirited Canada and their somewhat delusional boss Jesse Marsch. Canada should regret not winning the group. Morocco are decent but are far from unbeatable (unless you’re you know who). Either right before this game or right after it was France v Evil Paraguay. In the last 32 we admired the tenacity and resilience of Paraguay as they despatched Germany on penalties. Against better quality opposition they resorted to the dark arts. Hack after hack after hack was enabled by that fucking awful referee from the Scotland Morocco game. It took a VAR intervention to get him to give a penalty to France. More sorcery from the Paraguayans as they roughed up the penalty spot for Mbappe. Made no difference to the great man though.
So France showed they can win the hard way too. They are the class act of the tournament.
Brazil v Norway. There’s only one team that has made Brazil look decent and that was you know who. And so it was that Norway held their own until late in the game when Erling Fucking Haaland did his thing.
After chortling at Neymar’s tears this game had me thinking of the unbelievable scenes at the Ullevi. How things have changed since then. I’ll revisit this in the coming days.
Weather delays kept the big one at the Azteca delayed until 2am which must have had a few English supporters reaching for their Daily Mail guide to staying up after midnight. It turned out to be the second best tie of the round for the neutral (whoever they are). Fair play to England for seeing out the win with ten men. The Three Lions did them proud.
Harry Kane’s post match Britain’s Got Talent audition was one for the ages.
Monday evening dealt us Spain v Portugal. Thankfully Spain eked out the win. I’ve been on the “Roberto Martinez is a fraud” bandwagon since his sabotage of Belgium’s golden generation. Ronaldo Naemates was useless again apart from the quality greetin’ face.
Roberto has since fallen on his sword and is looking for the next opportunity to smear on his CV. I’m sure the SFA will be in touch.
There’s been plenty said about the controversy surrounding the USA and the suspension of the suspension for their star striker Balogun thanks to a phone call from President Orange to his pal Gianni.
Honestly this is the kind of thing you’d expect from the Eastern Bloc in the olden times or in the North Korean Olympics. It’s so brazen and ultimately accepted due to the powers granted or taken by those involved. We should be thankful then that when it comes to matters on the pitch the men in suits are powerless.
All hail the Football Gods.
As an American football fan it has amused me to read the comments from those in that NFL world as they try to understand the world of soccer. From experts to chumps.
This brings us to yesterday’s monumental match between Argentina and Egypt.
Yasser gave Egypt a stunning lead.
Leo missed a penalty yet again.
Into the second half and Egypt scored a phenomenal end to end goal that was ruled out due to a foul in the parking lot. Never mind said the Egyptian lads and the same three guys Salah, Hussain and Zico went and did the breakaway thing again.
That’s no skin off the nose of La Albiceleste though.
The Egyptian bench were raging as it seemed there might have been a foul on Salah in the build up to the winner. Does fortune favour the big teams? Well we all know the answer to that.
Cheers
Keith
PS Switzerland beat Columbia on penalties which was a wee shame I thought.