JUNE 30 — Now this is what it’s all about!
International football is mostly forgettable and sometimes not even watchable.
The majority of games are either uncompetitive strolls between mismatched teams in predictable qualifying campaigns, or even less competitive friendlies with nothing to play for and star players either sitting on the sidelines or going through the motions.
Occasionally, though, those mundanities are swept aside and we are treated to the real deal, with elite national teams going head to head with everything to play for.
And today is one of those days, as the World Cup knockout stage gets underway with a pair of absolute belters: Argentina vs France and Portugal against Uruguay.
Where to start? The obvious place is with the two most famous players in the world, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Both enjoyed special and not so special moments during the group stages, with Ronaldo bagging a memorable hat-trick against Spain but then missing a penalty against Iran which ultimately condemned his team to a second place finish, while Messi did things the other way round: a missed penalty in the opener against Iceland before redemption in the final game with a brilliant goal to help secure victory over Nigeria.
Neither Messi nor Ronaldo have quite hit the heights of which they are truly capable so far in Russia, and their efforts to drag their respective teams into the quarter-finals — where they would play against each other — will make compelling viewing tonight.
It won’t be easy, though. Starting with Portugal’s game against Uruguay, it’s plain to see that Ronaldo will be starved of chances against a defence which did not concede a single goal in three group game victories.
The main reason for Uruguay’s defensive excellence is the presence of Atlético Madrid defender Diego Godin, who is perhaps the biggest victim of our insistent focus upon goalscorers to the exclusion of players at the other end of the field. Godin has been consistently the best central defender in the world for the last five years, and the fact that he isn’t as universally lauded as the likes of Ronaldo and Messi is extremely unfair.
His task for Uruguay is aided by the fact that his central defensive partner is his Atlético teammate Jose Maria Gimenez, and their telepathic understanding is guaranteed to make life extremely difficult for any opponent. If Ronaldo does succeed for Portugal tonight, he will have to do it the hard way.
That doesn’t mean Uruguay are all about defence, though: they also have two of the best strikers out there in the form of Barcelona’s Luis Suarez and PSG’s maverick Edinson Cavani, who scored three of the team’s five goals in the group stage.
The combination of a superb central defensive partnership and another top level pairing up front makes Uruguay extremely dangerous, and I regard them as third favourites for the tournament after Brazil and Spain.
Another team which really should be held in such high esteem is France, who boast an awesome array of talent all over the pitch from Raphael Varane in defence to N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba in midfield and Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe in attack.
But France, despite going through the group stage unbeaten, have never really impressed and somehow always manage to look less than the sum of their parts—with much of the blame for their underwhelming performances generally attributed to cautious coach Didier Deschamps.
France really should have more than enough quality to overcome Argentina today, but a combination of Deschamps’ negativity and the presence of Messi will probably make it a much closer contest than the quality of the two squads might suggest.
Interestingly, Argentina boss Jorge Sampaoli is reportedly considering dropping both Gonzalo Higuain and Sergio Aguero and playing without a centre forward, instead placing Messi in the false nine role he occupied so successfully for Barcelona during Pep Guardiola’s glory years.
The intention of that move would be to dominate the midfield, and that will undoubtedly be a key area in the game. It will be particularly interesting to see what kind of influence Pogba is able to exert—the Manchester United man is clearly hugely talented but he can also be a defensive liability, and if Argentina can exploit, that they could just progress to the next round.
Whatever happens, two top class football matches lie in store, featuring many of the best players on the planet. Enjoy it, because that doesn’t happen very often.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
