WC22 standing the test of time
An intelligent friend of mine, who is probably not as good at taking a ribbing as giving one (like us all!), still gets slagged off about a comment he made towards the very end of a soccer international in the old Lansdowne Road some years back.
The fourth official held up the number ten and my exasperated pal openly roared, “How the hell could there be ten minutes’ added-time?”, having been so caught up in the match that it didn’t twig with him that the Irish number 10 (in days when we had a plethora of good options for that key crucial play-making role, incidentally) was being called ashore.
Well, if said pal had travelled to Qatar for our first winter World Cup experience, he’d have had by now umpteen opportunities to repeat his vociferous error. Huge chunks of injury-time are part and parcel of what has been a generally very enjoyable tournament in terms of on-field football. With a few years of life in Saudi Arabia on my work CV when I was young and had hair, I share people’s concerns about off-field ‘stuff’ in that neck of the woods. However, loads of money invariably leads to the most vociferous errors of all.
We all knew for many years that this was coming, and it is a wonderful pre-Christmas treat for sports lovers. With local GAA activity pretty much wrapped up – to the great credit of Brendan Shaw et al – it is great to come home, pretty much at any hour of day and night, and know that 100-plus minutes of quality soccer can be flicked on instantly.
Yesterday (Monday November 28) was the last day that we were totally spoiled in this regard with games at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm, and no shortage of analysis in between, as breakfast, lunch and dinner are crammed into the schedule. With no dead rubbers to be endured rather than enjoyed, it has been sheer bliss.
From this afternoon to Friday inclusive, fans will be free until 3pm as both that slot and 7pm will have synchronised double-headers to determine the top two in each group. In truth, that is when the real drama will click in ahead of the mouth-watering knockout stages.
Already, the shock results have been above the norm. Witness my old Saudi pals (what a thrill it used to be to walk a few hundred yards in Riyadh every second Friday to see Brazilian legend Rivellino in his very early 30s playing for Al Hilal) edging out Argentina, and Japan and Morocco also shocking Germany and Belgium respectively.
However, Argentina are still very much in the mix, while the Germans look a pale shadow of former great teams, and Belgium seem much too inconsistent (yet again) to have any notions of breaking their major championship duck. Any mention of the Argies inevitably means a reference to Lionel Messi, many observers’ (including yours truly) choice as ‘best player ever to play the game’. There is near-unanimity that lifting the trophy (it shows my age when I almost wrote the Jules Rimet Cup!) would crown the great man’s career. Interestingly, I have yet to hear the same being said about Piers Morgan’s unemployed buddy, the less popular CR7. The latter’s chances of doing so seem negligible, unlike his perennial rival for the Ballon d’Or for many years.
RTÉ is the Irish station with the rights to show the World Cup, and all concerned are doing a reasonable job. Yours truly is a major fan of Virgin Media’s Tommy Martin as presenter, and Brian Kerr and Damien Delaney as his in-house experts, but I have had to survive on huge doses of lesser charm and expertise, albeit the bluntness of Didi Hamann is always appealing.
Our national station has fittingly slotted in the latest Saipan documentary in recent weeks, ‘Rebel without a ball’. A new clever beer advertisement ends with a line strongly suggesting that Thierry Henry’s handball antics in Paris in 2009 are not yet forgiven by the Irish public. Roy Keane’s exit from the World Cup seven years earlier falls into a similar category (for some of us), albeit each ‘new’ account of Saipan further clarifies that manager Mick McCarthy made an absolute dog’s dinner of his part in the fiasco. But not enough, surely, to cause our only superstar to end up walking his dog thousands of miles away?
However, we would just love to see a player with a fraction of the Mayfield man’s talent and leadership togged out in green when the current world champions (and who is to say that they won’wt have that moniker still come March?) arrive in the Aviva in a few months from now for the first of our very onerous Euro 2024 qualifiers. My text to half-a-dozen pals, “Can you just picture Mbappé running at our motley crew in Dublin?”, got varying responses – but all worrying! It has been difficult watching Oirishmen, Declan Rice and Jack Grealish, belting out ‘God save the king’ (I assume the queen has been replaced?) and not wonder what even that pair would add to our ‘motley crew’.
The irrepressible Mario Rosenstock has added Stephen Kenny to his list of ‘victims’ (our very own Conor Moore was ahead of the posse in that regard) and he gave the mimicked Dubliner a hard time last week opining that Kenny deliberately boycotted the Qatar extravaganza due to human rights issues. “We also plan to boycott Euro 2024 in Germany,” 'Kenny' added!
My own off-field moment to date involved Peter Collins asking Kenny Cunningham about Senegal manager Aliou Cissé ahead of their game against Qatar (the host country turning out to be every bit as poor on the pitch as we suspected). Collins: “You knew him when ye played together at Birmingham.” Cunningham: “He had very little English when he arrived, so we got on very well.”
No further comment!