The first precedent for today’s match in Doha was in 1950, it finished 1-0 and is still remembered today as “The Miracle of Belo Horizonte”. In the field Colombo, Pariani and the hero, goalkeeper Borghi: all three of Milanese origins, all three raised in the same parish of St.Louis which is still called St.Ambrose today
Today is England vs United States. And it can’t be, it never was, a normal game. Because in football, more than in any other area of life and civil society, the English feel – would feel – they can restore their former superiority over the willing, but still crude, men of the colonies across the Atlantic.