And then, after much has been said about the mini-country that can host the World Cup, the game itself starts on Sunday. Qatar – Ecuador, the first of 64 duels in and around Doha, the biotope of top football for a month. The game, practiced in its greatest form, at the highest level. Although? At the clubs, the level of play has on average surpassed that of the national teams, due to the collection of talent at a number of clubs.
In the countries, national coaches make concessions to offensive intentions, because they have less time to sharpen, because defending is easier and safer than carefree attacking and because winning is the most important thing in a tournament. The best footballers have been plucked from the sometimes well-oiled club teams, this time in the prime of the season. For the first time there is a World Cup halfway through the year, due to the heat in the summer in Qatar, although the temperature is currently higher than normal in November.
Top performers and unknowns in the colors of their sometimes small country, with all the illusions for the supporters who stayed at home or traveled with them. Uruguay may consider itself somewhat promising, because that country with more than 3 million inhabitants always produces beautiful football players, such as Federico Valverde, star at Real Madrid, or else Darwin Núñez, who went to Liverpool for 100 million last summer. Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the best attack in the world on paper at Paris SG, have again been delegated to the national teams of Argentina, Brazil and France.
Croatia as a finalist, like four years ago in Moscow, after a blissful semi-final against England, is one of those stories that colors World Cup history. Croatia’s shirts were sold out everywhere, because countless non-Croats also identified with fighting football with frivolous elements from Luka Modric and co, and also because the red and white checkered shirt looks so fresh.
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There are eight world champions in football after 21 World Cups: the big three of South America (Brazil 5 titles, Argentina and Uruguay 2) and the dominant five of Europe (Germany and unseeded Italy 4, France 2, Spain and England). Brazil, always looking for the balance between realism and the swinging football of Pelé and Garrincha, of Falcao, Sócrates and Junior, of Romário and Bebeto, or of Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, always tries to develop a few men in the front, with Neymar as a pearl. The dribbler who has often been criticized as a poser, but who always gets kicked and sometimes shows football that counts as almost impossible.
Apart from Brazil, the World Cup has numerous teams that can claim opportunities, not always immediately for the title itself, but at least for the quarter-finals: Argentina, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, England perhaps. The Netherlands, Belgium and Uruguay are among the outsiders. Croatia, Japan, Denmark, Switzerland, Mexico and Senegal are also strong in the broad field.
Previously it was logical that a country from South America won in (South) America and a European country in Europe, with only Brazil in 1958 as an exception (in Sweden) for a long time. That pattern has been broken, especially now that other continents are also allowed to organize the tournament. Brazil last won in 2002, at the first World Cup in Asia, in Japan and South Korea. The last four champions are European: Italy, Spain, Germany and France. Home advantage disappears. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934), England (1966), West Germany (1974), Argentina (1978) and France (1998) benefited from this. That Qatar wins, the first debutant to be the first Arab country to organize, is out of the question.
Goodbye
Let Messi win, many fans say. Then he is finally the best of all time, as the crowning glory of his almost unique period of more than fifteen years at the world top. Argentina finally won the Copa América with Messi last year after losing three South American championship finals. Either he himself was not very good at a World Cup, or others were injured, or they were not much support to him.
In his previous four World Cups, he was a finalist once, in Brazil in 2014. For a moment, the Argentinians seemed to win against the Germans, who still took the match, thanks to Mario Götze. For many footballers who have dominated the sport for years, this will almost certainly be the last World Cup. Messi (35), but also Cristiano Ronaldo (37), Modric (37), Benzema (34) and Lewandowski (34). All have never been world champions, because Benzema was not part of the winning French team four years ago.
For the foreign press, it is feast during Louis van Gaal’s farewell tour. “If you can imagine, you can also do that on the field,” he said about the Orange’s chances. In terms of player material, reaching the quarter-finals would already be an achievement, but Van Gaal argues that in the end the best team wins. That’s why he said on Wednesday, in his own version of English: ‘We can come an end.’