At The World Cup Semifinals, Soccer's Very History Is On The Line
Tiki-taka or heavy metal, Messi or Ronaldo, style or steel: there is more than one footballing culture war, but the last one in that list has been most prevalent at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The semifinals loom ahead of us now—Argentina and Croatia today; France and Morocco on Wednesday—but the four quarterfinal matches already reinforced the iron law of soccer: possession, slick passing, even the modern metrics of final-third entries and expected goals—but none of it really matters compared to the two numbers at the top left-hand corner of the screen. It doesn’t matter how glorious your patterns of play might be, how dazzling your technical skill. You’ve got to keep the other team out, and you’ve got to take your chances when they come. Put the ball in the net, or you’ll nearly always pay the price. It defies logic, but any team that misses a handful of good chances while dominating the play will promptly be scored upon. Trust me, I’m an Arsenal fan.
How many teams have gone full Oberyn Martell in this tournament? How many sublimely skillful players have sashayed around the opposition, almost taunting them as they dominate the fight, only to find out that it’s all for nought if your opponent is big and strong and driven and resilient, willing to crush your eyeballs into your head? Fine, we’ll take it easy with the Game of Thrones. But no one learned this lesson quite like Brazil, who came grooving off the team bus to samba rhythms and did some capoeira on Croatia without anything to show for it until suddenly, finally, Neymar Jr. and Co. cut the defense open in a stunning sequence, all elegant pass-and-move simplicity. It was a goal worthy of sending any team to the World Cup semifinals. But the Brazilians faltered, they shipped an equalizer, it went to penalties, and they’re out.
We will all be deprived of a South American showdown in the semifinals, the meeting of the giants from the Southern Hemisphere. But no matter: Lionel Messi fulfilled his end of the bargain, just about. The Argentines faced a similar test in the Netherlands, who had first and foremost sought to nullify the young upstarts of the United States to clamber out of the Round of 16. They brought the same vibes to a sterner examination, but Messi put Argentina two up from the penalty spot after he set up the opener with a piece of superhuman dribbling and vision. That’s when they then pulled back into their shell, as teams almost inevitably do when the stakes are so high and the gas tanks are running low. They could not keep hold of the ball; the Dutch seemed to have 100 percent of the possession. They threw on big strikers, started hoofing long balls at an Argentine defense lacking in height, and turned the match into a basketball rebounding drill. Somehow, they scrounged together two goals. Somehow, they sent the match to extra time with a clever set-piece routine in the final moments of the 90-plus-infinity minutes. Somehow, they got to penalties, even as an Undertaker Argentina lay siege to their goal at the end of extra time, culminating with a strike from young Enzo Fernandez—a breakout star at this tournament—smashing off the post in the 120th minute. It had all the makings of an Oranje victory in penalties, but Emi Martinez saved the first two Dutch strikes and Argentina just about held their nerve.
That took some doing, what with the weight of Lionel Messi’s legacy on the line. The little man is the great one, the best to ever do it, the passer and the dribbler and the master free kick taker and, of course, the lethal marksman. He has acquitted himself well at this tournament, scoring and making crucial goals at crucial times, all with the Sword of Damocles over his head, waiting to rush downward in a cutting chorus: He could not match Pelé and Maradona. He could not do it for his country. He could not claim the ultimate prize. He will need to survive again against Croatia, led by Luka Modric, the timeless midfield maestro who, at 37, is leading a team of what certainly feels like similarly advanced age. Modric is the conductor of the orchestra, and any aspiring central midfielder at home could spend this game watching him flit and glide about in the gaps of space from box to box. He covers an astonishing amount of ground for a man his age, but he also wins these battles with his mind. He sees the angles, the little movements, and he is in complete control of the ball at all times so as to capitalize on his gift of vision.
His Croatia team have the know-how, the steel of experience—sometimes bordering on cynicism—to survive round after round, no matter the opponent. They got a draw against Morocco in Group F, put a beating on Canada, and drew again to subdue the dangerous Belgians before eking out two straight knockout wins on penalties. They won’t fear those this time, particularly with goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic between the sticks. That man is going to get a bag after this tournament. They’ll think they can steal one on the break through Ivan Perisic, or from a set piece if one of the big men in this team can latch onto quality balls coming into the box. The Croatians saw off Brazil, just about, but Argentina proved against the Netherlands that they are a different animal. They have fire in the bones, the animating devotion you might expect from full-fledged disciples to Saint Leo. If it comes to that, they will happily get into a street fight.
On the other side of the bracket, Morocco might just come to define this tournament, as the only team that has outshone Croatia in terms of sheer force of will. They do not have a Messi or a Modric to rally around, though Hakim Ziyech is the standout as far as technical skill. He brings a touch of class to the right wing, a left-foot wand he’ll use to swing balls in towards that corridor of uncertainty between the back line and the goalkeeper. He’s joined by Achraf Hakimi among the team’s high-caliber individual technicians. But the Moroccans have been governed by the raw power of the collective, of 11 men working in tethered tandem, and they will defend for their lives against the 2018 champions even if centerback stalwart Romain Saiss is missing. He went off injured against Portugal, when Morocco extinguished a constellation of stars stretching well beyond Cristiano Ronaldo. They have conceded just one goal in this competition, and they will spend the lion’s share of their energy trying to maintain that incredible record.
As if the first African team ever to make the last four needed any further motivation, they’ll be up against an old enemy indeed: France, which once called a chunk of the nation its “protectorate.” They’d divvied the territory up with Spain, whom the Moroccans already saw off in the Round of 16. Colonizers they may no longer be, but in football, anyway, France remains the preeminent world power. Even without World Player of the Year Karim Benzema (not necessarily a tragedy within the French camp, depending on which anonymously sourced tale you read) or the enigmatic midfield dynamo of Paul Pogba (like Benzema, injured), this is a formidable outfit. 22-year-old Aurelien Tchouameni replaced the latter in midfield for this tournament and unleashed a howitzer to put them 1–0 up on England in the last round. Benzema’s replacement, Olivier Giroud, scored to put France up again after England found parity through a Harry Kane penalty. In all honesty, the French were lucky to be in the position they were when Kane had another opportunity to equalize from the penalty spot in the 84th minute. They were pretty comprehensively outplayed by the Three Lions for much of the game, and the referee could probably have given another penalty or two against them, but the real luck arrived when Kane sent his strike above the crossbar and, we can only assume, into orbit. The iron law takes another victim.
The French will expect to have the possession and the passes and the final-third entries and the expected goals. None of that will matter if they fail to put the ball in the net, and Morocco may yet prove a trickier test than star-studded England. The French did what needed to be done in that one; England didn’t. Morocco have done it in all five matches thus far, and so have the other two teams still in the hunt for every footballer’s crowning achievement. Will the French win a second term as champions of the world? Will Luka Modric drag his team to the final again, just as he did four years ago? Will Morocco shock the world, again, relishing their role as representatives of Africa and the Arab world? Or will Lionel Messi, the Gretzky of the world’s game, win the thing that might just get all the holdouts to acknowledge just where he fits in the pantheon? Even the Ronaldo fans out there should be glad they might get to see it.
We mortals are but shadows and dust. We should smile when the opportunity comes along to bear witness to the transcendent. And then we can go back to arguing online.
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