Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 60

Lionel Messi’s international career has never felt closer to oblivion | Jonathan Liew

There is time for Messi and Argentina to save their World Cup campaign, however, despite a shock defeat by Saudi Arabia

There was more time. When you are Lionel Messi, there is always more time. Another split second to play the pass. Another couple of beats to wait for the space to open up. Another year to mount a challenge. Another World Cup to fight. And here, on a bright warm day in November, with the clocks striking 13 minutes of injury time, there were still a few more seconds for Argentina to make things right.

Messi advanced down the right channel, nudging the ball along with impatient taps of his left outstep. A little space had opened up in front of him in the Saudi Arabia midfield. Ángel Di María was making the overlapping run on the right wing. In between him and the goal stood three defenders. Briefly, thrillingly, you could see the cogs whirring as Messi contemplated taking them all on and saving the match on his own. Instead, the pass went sideways to Di María and the cross went nowhere. There is always more time.

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England show their true colours with meek surrender in armband fiasco | Jonathan Liew

The threat of ‘sporting sanctions’ from Fifa was enough for England and other countries to abandon their principles

Every man has a limit. A place they will not be taken, a line that will not be crossed, a point at which they bend and break. And as England’s footballers peeled off their smart blue training jackets a few minutes before 4pm local time at the Khalifa International Stadium, perhaps we discovered theirs.

They really, really wanted to wear the armband. Perhaps was the main thing. Indeed that was the thrust of the Football Association’s statement issued about an hour before kick-off in their opening World Cup game against Iran, in which it declared it was “very frustrated” with Fifa’s ban on the little strip of elastane that had been unveiled with such proud fanfare in advance of the tournament. On reflection, maybe the real armband was the press releases it issued along the way.

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World Cup 2022: England, Wales and others back down over armband row – as it happened

A joint statement from England, Wales and five other European nations says they will not wear the OneLove armband in Qatar

My colleague Jamie Jackson in Doha has a little more from that Cristiano Ronaldo media appearance:

Cristiano Ronaldo was speaking at his nation’s World Cup training base for the first time since the allegations he made against United that have caused the club to explore potential legal action against the forward.

We got close, but we just couldn’t get over the line. But it’s magnificent that they’ve got there, and they are there on merit. We’ve got some great players. Gareth Bale’s coming to the end of his career – he’s got a few years left – but we need our top players. And the young lads, we’ve got a really good blend of players, and I’m really excited about it.

I think it’s really important today that the game against USA, they need to win it. It’s not the end of the world if they draw, or they need something out of the next two games, but we don’t want to go into the England game, you know, needing something.

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Lionel Messi’s World Cup swansong might just be his best shot at glory | Jonathan Liew

At 35 years old, the Argentina forward is humbler, wiser and ready to complete one of football’s greatest stories

In the summer of 2016 Diego Maradona and Pelé were sitting in the Palais-Royal in Paris as part of a promotional event organised by a Swiss watch company. Afterwards the pair held a press conference and before long the topic of conversation turned to Lionel Messi.

“He is a great person,” Maradona said, “but he has no personality. He doesn’t have the personality to be a leader.” Pelé agreed. “He’s not like we were back in the days,” he said. “In the 1970s we had really good players like Rivellino, Gérson, Tostão. Not like Argentina now, which depends only on Messi. Messi is a good player, there’s no doubt about it. But he has no personality.”

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Brazil are a powerhouse but political divides may derail Tite’s swan song | Jonathan Liew

The stakes are high for the Seleção as a fractured country’s future might just begin to be mended if they win a sixth title

Every four years, the district of Caiçara in Belo Horizonte transforms itself. Rows of Brazilian flags dance from lamp-posts and telephone poles; the roads and pavements are slathered in blue, green and yellow paint by an army of volunteers.

It is a tradition that goes back to the 1994 World Cup, and until now has taken place entirely without objection. This time, however, the local community felt it necessary to issue a caveat. And so, in among the bunting and the balloons, a banner reads: “NÃO É POLÍTICA, É COPA.” It’s not politics, it’s the cup.

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France are richly talented but beset by problems before World Cup defence

Injuries, public disenchantment and a certain bald idol eyeing his job is heaping unusual pressure on Didier Deschamps

Zinedine Zidane wants your job. Zinedine Zidane is making very little secret of the fact that he wants your job. Indeed, the normally taciturn Zinedine Zidane is giving interviews to L’Équipe nakedly advertising his suitability for your job, and describing it as his “deepest desire”. “If it has to be done,” Zinedine Zidane has said of your sacking and imminent replacement by Zinedine Zidane, “it will be done.”

Most mortals, when faced with this utterly petrifying state of affairs, would probably quail at length before ultimately surrendering to cosmic inevitability and giving Zidane whatever he wants. But Didier Deschamps is built a little tougher than that. You probably have to be in order to win World Cups as a player and coach, to do this job for more than a decade and still thirst for more.

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Qatar 2022 is actually happening: a horrifying but irresistible prospect | Jonathan Liew

The victims of this World Cup are owed our remembrance and our future vigilance, even as the football takes centre stage

And now, finally, some football. For much of the 12 years since Sepp Blatter’s fumbling fingers ripped open an envelope containing one word and a thousand questions, the 2022 World Cup has been able to exist in our minds as little more than a surreal abstraction. A computer-generated simulation. Some Philip K Dick-infused vision of a future that might never come to pass; that could even somehow be averted if we made the right choices. But the time for daydreaming and denial is over. This is happening. Matty Cash is going to Qatar, and to greater or lesser extents, we’re all going with him.

Why? How? Why here? Why now? And – frankly – what the hell? Just a few of the more intelligible responses to a project that from its grubbily cynical inception has felt like a giant step into a sun-scorched unknown. This is not the first World Cup to be held in the shadow of totalitarianism. It is not the first to be awarded under questionable premises, nor the first to be built at a ruinous expense to the public exchequer and the planet. But in most other respects it is like nothing this sport will ever have seen before.

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World Cup Groups A and B, plus: how did we get here? – Football Daily podcast

Max Rushden, Ed Aarons, Jonathan Liew and Barney Ronay preview the World Cup. Plus Max, Barney, Barry Glendenning, Philippe Auclair and John McManus discuss all things Qatar in ‘How did we get here?’

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the pod today: the panel look ahead to the World Cup in Qatar by honing in on Groups A and B. Who are the star players in each squad and how well are they likely to do in the World Cup.

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England’s white-ball side keep showing the rest they’re playing a different sport | Jonathan Liew

Victory in the T20 World Cup final is a prime example of how cricket is turning into two distinct games

A little before 8pm local time in Melbourne on Sunday, Adil Rashid stepped up to bowl the 12th over of Pakistan’s innings. The 11th, bowled by Liam Livingstone, had just been swatted for 16. After a sluggish start, Pakistan were 84 for two and the tide of the game was beginning to turn. It was at this point, in the white heat of a World Cup final, that Rashid bowled a wicket maiden.

We should probably talk a little more about this. Except it’s not that easy. “The Wicket Maiden Heard Around The World” doesn’t really roll off the tongue. It doesn’t have a score or number attached to it. You can’t capture the brilliance of that over in a statue or a photograph. It ended not with wild celebrations or even a salute to the crowd, but a pat on the back and a medium-size round of applause.

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Graham Potter is still Chelsea’s solution to their systemic problems | Jonathan Liew

Chelsea will continue to look vulnerable until the new manager solves their deep-seated issues and his ideas have taken root

Thiago Silva paused with the ball on the halfway line. Alongside him, his teammates were pointing and shouting at him to do something with it. Up in the stands, the various strands of encouraging advice being proffered by Chelsea fans had essentially congealed into a single unintelligible noise – something like “faacckkinggettrrrrid”, if we were going to try and transcribe it. And so it was that in the final minute of injury time, with Chelsea rousing themselves in search of a late equaliser, their chosen tactic was to pump a high ball up to the 5ft 7in Raheem Sterling.

As it happened, Sterling was offside, and soon after that Michael Oliver brought proceedings to a merciful close. And strictly speaking Chelsea lost this game not in the fumblings of stoppage time but in the inept and inchoate hour and a half that preceded it. Still, as an emblem of their deficiencies and inefficiencies here, it was as good as any. The good news is that Chelsea look like a team with plenty of ideas. The problem is that nobody seems to be sharing their ideas with anyone else.

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