Here we go again...... (Or NOT!)

 

At some point yesterday, THE GAME went live for the new season. 

Yes, after a few days of shutdown-for-updating this week, the Fantasy Premier League website is up-and-running again, and ready to receive entries for the new campaign. As you can see in the screen-cap above, there are already 684,000+ managers enrolled after a matter of hours. These are the people who take the game really seriously... (and I, alas, am one one of them)....

If you are really concerned about your overall rank finish (you shouldn't be!), it's good to Auto-pick a squad and 'register' it straight away, because early-bird registration is a small advantage: the order of first entering your team is one of the tie-breakers applied to separate managers on the same points total.

But, what do you know, the site is glitching already!!  I tried early registration yesterday evening. And this morning, I found that my initial squad had been unsaved, and I had to Auto-pick again. And then the Auto-pick feature itself was glitching, only giving me a partial team, refusing to complete a full squad for me (and displaying a team full of bizarre data corruptions, such as suggesting that Viktor Gyokeres was now a midfielder???). So, I had to keep starting over from scratch, and it took several minutes to get the job (I hope!!) finally done and securely saved. (I guess it was another of those problems caused by the game's servers getting overtaxed by the high levels of early interest. During that brief time when I was struggling to get my team registered, the total enrolment had climbed from around 560,000 to 680,000!!! It really is best just to rely on how high a points total you can reach, and not be too worried about the exact 'rank' number that comes with it at the end of the season.)

Also, curiously, the site appeared to have allowed me to stay logged in this year. Though, perhaps that was only because I had only recently re-registered, and had no team data to clear from last year (having been shut out of my account altogether at the start of last season - not for the first time!)...?  In the last several years, the game site has annoyingly insisted on an extended re-log-in process where you have to create a new password for the new season. I would be glad if that pointless additional hurdle has indeed been removed now.

Although, I know, for many people this seems very hard, the best thing to do now is to walk away and cultivate another hobby instead for the next month. 

Don't log in to the FPL site again until after this year's Community Shield game: Arsenal v Manchester City, on Sunday 16th August.

As I said in one of my earliest posts on this blog: 

So much might yet happen before the Big Kick-Off - valuable hints about form and tactics and likely team selections  (not many, perhaps, but some...) emerging in the pre-season friendlies, players arriving or leaving in the summer transfer window, and, unfortunately, INJURIES. There really is no point in trying to select a squad - even provisionally - when we really have no idea who's going to be playing (and for which team!) on the GW1 weekend in mid-August. There is no point in even thinking about it.

It's not just a WASTE OF TIME - it's positively a BAD IDEA, something that will almost certainly lead to you making WORSE DECISONS about your selections.

Because of the way the human brain works... if you start looking at the player options, and allowing yourself to think, even vaguely, about possible squads, you will inevitably start making some decisions about your likely squad: decisions based on inadequate, incomplete, soon-to-be-outdated information; hence, in many cases at least, WRONG decisions. You probably won't be very self-aware about this; well, if you're even a little aware of it at the time, you'll almost certainly forget about it very quickly. But these proto-decisions - not always outright selections, but foundatioinal preferences and prejudices and assumuptions that will have a massive influence on selections - are mostly forming deep in your subconscious; and once they're there, they're very difficult to displace. The deep-rooted cognitive bias in favour of self-consistency means that once you've made a choice like this, it's very, very difficult for you to change your mind about it (especially if you don't realise you've made that choice, and/or don't know why you've made it!). There's a similar, very dangerous phenomenon called the 'anchoring bias' - which means you're very likely to make decisions based on the first one or two pieces of information you look at.

Anyone who's picked a squad two or three or four weeks out from the start of the season is VERY unlikely to have picked a good one. And they're also much less likely to be able to pick a good one later on... than someone who only starts pondering the options after the Community Shield.

That is some of the most unpopular advice I have ever offered here; but also some of the most important. Please try to take it on board.

I'm off to read good books and practice my guitar for the next 4 weeks. See you all again on Friday 21st August!!

[Well, OK, I will probably start putting out some pre-season tips in the week or two before that. But I won't be attempting to pick my initial squad until the day of the first kick-off - and neither should you.]

A little bit of Zen (104)

 

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Another addition to the list of famous people we didn't realise had played Fantasy Premier League....

The TRUE 'Greatest of All-Time'

 

In my roast of Cristiano Ronaldo yesterday, I reiterated my view that - although the G.O.A.T. debate is fundamentally rather silly - there can only ever be one clear greatest football player of all-time, and that has to be Pelé. (I have spoken about my admiration for his gifts before, here and here.)

I would say that Pelé owns this title, and will always hold on to it - even if others should eventually attain the same level of skill or lasting impact (and I don't think anyone has yet; Maradona and Messi have come close-ish, but not really...) - simply because he was the first. He was the first true global super-star of football (at the dawn of the modern mass media era), he was largely responsible for making it most popular televised sport in the world. Every great player since has been measured against Pelé, has been inspired by Pelé, has tried to emulate Pelé. He is the benchmark of greatness in our game; and even if someone one day should - improbably - exceed that benchmark, that will not displace the player who set the benchmark.

The list of his unique achievements in the game is long: the youngest ever to play in, and score in, and win a World Cup Final; the first player to score in two, three, and four consecutive World Cups; one of the first players to play in two World Cup Finals and one of a very few (at the time) to have won the World Cup twice (the others were some of his Brazilian team-mates of 1958 and 1962, and, I suppose, a few of the Italians from the double pre-War victory in the 1930s); the only player to play a dominant role in two World Cup Final wins; one of the highest, if not the highest goals-per-game ratio ever recorded across a full career.

It's difficult to count his exact number of appearances and goals and so on, because records were only kept on paper - if at all - back in the '50s and '60s, and often have been subsequently lost or destroyed; many of the statistics have to be painstakingly reconstructed from brief newspaper reports. And there were many more specially arranged 'exhibition games' back in those days, which, while not part of formal competitions, were not usually regarded as 'friendlies' in the modern understanding. So, exact numbers may be a little nebulous and uncertain; the current consensus seems to be that he racked up 757 goals in 831 senior games. But that might be a very conservative figure; I have seen several other estimates that put both his games and goals tallies near to, if not above 1,000, if you count all of his youth team tournaments and later 'unofficial' games. However many total games you want to acknowledge as 'counting', it's clear that he maintained a career average of close to a goal a game - in what was, for the time, an exceptionally long career. And there was, inevitably, a considerable drop-off in his later years; in his youthful prime, he was managing well over a goal per game, in both club and international football. I don't think anyone else has ever done that (Cristiano is down around 65%; and that really is exceptional - just... not as good as Pelé). And he wasn't even an outright striker - not a centre-forward, but more of a support striker or attacking midfielder (what in South America is often called the ponta de lança, usually the most advanced of a highly fluid group of progressive midfield players who support the attack).

And of course, 'assists' weren't really a recognised term back in his day, not even a concept. It was an idea borrowed from American sport that only began to gain fitful traction in football from the early 1990s, and didn't really become a regular feature of life in the English Premier League until about 20 years ago. So, again, the records have to be compiled mostly from old match reports, which often fail to discuss in detail how a goal came to be scored. You would think that since Pelé was more of a support player than an out-and-out striker, a great facilitator and an exceptionally unselfish player, and since, especially with the national team, he was usually surrounded by other exceptionally talented players too, that his number of assists might be huge,... possibly similar to or greater than his number of goals. That is certainly the case with the '70 World Cup, where review of the match footage gives a reliable tally of 6 assists (a record for a single tournament which stood until this year, when it was narrowly - and somewhat contentiously - bettered by Michael Olise, who had the benefit of playing 2 additional games, including the laughably uncompetitive Third-Place Play-Off) alongside his 4 goals; that, however, may have been somewhat unrepresentative of his career as a whole, because he was playing the football of his life, and he was playing it alongside Jairzinho, Tostao, Rivelino and Gerson. Overall, he's usually credited with around 370 assists in his career, which is very much a guestimate - but again, I would suggest, probably on the low side. (Again, this is comfortably more than Cristiano, and only bettered by Messi over the last few years, when he's mostly been playing 'exhibition' football in the States.)

One of the things I find most charming and impressive about the eminence he achieved is that it was based essentially on the acclaim of his peers. He played his entire club career (at least until his 'post-retirement' phase in America) in his native Brazil - at a time when there wasn't much television coverage of games. Also, there was no truly global media such as we have now, and no Internet or 'social media' networks. Pelé became internationally famous, became universally acknowledged as the greatest player in the world not because he was being seen on millions of TV screens every week, not because he had amassed a rabid following of fans on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, but by literal word-of-mouth: simply because every coach or player in the game who had been privileged to see him play, or just knew another professional that had seen him play, realised that he was something extraordinary - and told everyone they knew about him.

Although his club career was legendary in Brazil, it was of course in the World Cup that he truly made his mark on the wider global audience. He broke into his senior national side - into the Brazilian senior national side! - as a teenager, and appeared in a World Cup for them at the age of just 17; and he didn't just warm the bench or get only token minutes (as later greats like Ronaldo [the Brazilian one] and Messi did at their first World Cups; Maradona was almost exactly the same age as Pelé had been in Sweden, and already a sensation, when Argentina hosted the Cup in 1978, but his coach Cesar Menotti felt he was still too immature for such a big stage and left him out of the squad); on the contrary, he immediately became a key player for them, scoring 2 goals in the Final to secure an unexpected win against the strong hosts, Sweden. In the South American Championship the following year, he was the top scorer and the 'Player of the Tournament' when still 18 years old. He, of course, went on to appear in 4 consecutive World Cups. Nowadays, with career longevity greatly extended by advances in sports medicine, a few players have managed 5 or 6, and Messi has now played in more Finals; but no-one else has claimed 3 Winners' medals, or been the outstanding player in two winning World Cup Finals. He is one of a very select group to have won 2 Winners' medals (at the time, there were only a handful; though the total has slowly risen to 20): 3 wins is off-the-charts, and is unlikely ever to be replicated (although he had suffered a muscle injury in the second game of the Chile tournament in '62 and was able to play no further part; and in fact he did not originally receive a medal, as he did not play in the Final; he was only retroactively granted one 16 years later when FIFA changed the rules to award medals to all members of the winning squad).

But the 1970 World Cup - his comeback, his farewell - was where he went from being merely the greatest player of his day to an all-time legend. In the '60s, the game was much more physical, referees were far more tolerant of foul play, tackles-from-behind were considered perfectly legal - and there was not yet any 'sports medicine' to speak of, to help players get over serious injuries. Pelé probably got kicked more than any other player in history, before or since; he got bullied out of the 1966 tournament in England, suffering a series of brutal fouls from Bulgarian and Portuguese players which left him hobbling and nearly useless for much of the game that saw Brazil eliminated. He was so disillusioned by that experience that he announced his retirement from international football shortly afterwards, when still in his mid-20s. 

But he was persuaded to come back to the national team to help them qualify for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Approaching his 30th birthday (the typical retirement age at that time, especially for attacking players) and slowed by the effects of so many injuries inflicted on him over an already long career, it was obvious that this was going to be his swansong performance. And oh my god, was he determined to make it count; there was a swagger, an impetuosity about his play that had never been seen before on a world stage; and a steely determination too, a resolve that he was going to make this his tournament - that even if, somehow, Brazil didn't win it, he was going to make damn sure anyway that he was the only thing anyone remembered about that World Cup.

Words are inadequate to describe it, really. We've seen some other extraordinary displays of individual talent in later World Cups: from Cruyff in '74, from Platini in '82 and '86, from Maradona in '86 and '90, and from Messi in recent tournaments; but none of them have come anywhere near the impact Pelé had in 1970. He was utterly captivating, magical: every time he got on the ball, he made you think that something amazing might be about to happen - and very often it did. 

It is the supreme mark of his greatness, I think, that he has become most celebrated for goals he didn't score: the outrageous dummy around the Uruguayan keeper on the edge of the box, but then dragging the resulting shot inches wide of the far post from a tight angle; the majestic leap and powerful downward header that appeared to have snatched a win in the tight group game against England - until Gordon Banks somehow clawed it away from the foot of his post when it already seemed to have got past him, in what soon became known as the 'Save of the Century'; and that impish attempt to lob the Czech keeper from a few yards inside his own half (perfect length on the effort, but it drifted just wide of the post). There was at least one more I recall, not as celebrated as these three, though it really ought to be; I'm not sure which game it was in - also the Czech one, I think - but Pelé had a shot which rebounded sideways off the inside of a post; he didn't give up on the ball, but tracked it right across the mouth of the goal, catching up to it before anybody else towards the far side of the six-yard-box.... and then instantly back-heeled it towards the middle of the goal again for a teammate to tap home. He scored a lot of goals in that tournament too; but it was the near-misses that encapsulated his genius. [Yes, the greatest moments in football history are completely invisible to statistics!]

One of the defining moments of David Beckham's young career was pulling off a successful lob of the Wimbledon goalkeeper, Neil Sullivan, from around the half-way line, on the opening day of the 1996 season. He probably wouldn't have thought to attempt it if he hadn't grown up hearing about how Pelé had tried it in the 1970 World Cup. Pelé, of course, wasn't the first or only player to do something like this; but he was the first to become famous for doing it, the first to do it in a big game - that was watched on television around the world. That is legacy; and that is not at all an isolated example. Almost every great player of the modern era has referenced Pelé at some point, cited him as an example and an inspiration for some aspect of their own play.

That is a measure of his lasting influence on the game. And it wasn't just the lob from 50 yards out; he had all the tricks, he 'invented' almost everything. Well, he didn't, of course; I've seen interviews where he humbly acknowledged having copied a lot of ideas from other players, and even from kids that he used to play with in the street. But all the trademark moves we so love today, things that were later popularized by other players and sometimes came to bear their names - the Cruyff turn, the Rabona kick, the Zidane spin-turn, rainbow-flicks, bicycle-kicks, stepovers, headers from the edge of the box - he did all of that, back in the 1960s. 

More than the particular moves, he popularised a style of play, an attitude to the game - a joyous celebration of individual flair, imagination, improvisation. He promulgated the concept of il jogo bonito, The Beautiful Game - football as something more than just a contest, a sphere of creativity that could move people to tears with its occasional loveliness. He elevated the game from a sport into an art, into one of the highest forms of creative expression. Whenever I see a player now perform a fantastic piece of skill, I think that he is embodying the spirit of how Pelé wanted the game to be played.

I think it can fairly be said that Pelé made the World Cup as well. That tournament in 1970 was the first that was widely televised, the first where almost every game could be watched live - and many of them were, all around the world. The colossal media juggernaut that the tournament has become in modern times would probably have developed eventually, but Pelé's phenomenal performances in that first truly global edition of it gave the process a huge kick-start. He made the world fall in love with football that summer.

There might also be a case that he made the game in the USA too. He had a spectacular 'post-retirement' career with the all-star New York Cosmos for three seasons in the mid-1970s. And although that professional football initiative, the North American Soccer League, foundered in the 1980s, that brief shining moment in the '70s infected a lot of Americans with a love for the game, and triggered the beginning of a sharp rise in the game being offered as a sports option in middle schools and high schools over the next couple of decades. America is now becoming a modest power in world football again - and perhaps it might not have happened without Pelé playing for the Cosmos all those years ago.

I remember one particular moment from Pelé's time in America (occasional highlights of his games were shown on Grandstand, the BBC's Saturday afternoon sports programme). He picked the ball up 30 or 40 yards out from goal, and started cantering forward. Now, fair enough, the standard of most of the opposition in that league was not very high, and the young American players, in particular, were all simply awestruck by him and hardly dared to attempt a challenge; but he would have been hard to challenge fairly anyway, because he was driving forward with such strength and balance, the ball effortlessly glued to his toe. When two defenders did finally try to close him down, he gave a neat lay-off to Franz Beckenbauer alongside him (Beckenbauer!! this truly was 'Fantasy Football' made flesh!!); and when he received the German's instant return pass on the edge of the box, he saw that the keeper had rushed off his line to try to narrow the angle, so he played the ball first-time - a casual, insolent, inch-perfect chipped lob with the outside of his instep. It might have been a nothing game and a weak opponent, but it was one of the most perfect, one of the most beautiful goals I ever saw.

Pelé always presented as kind, humble, down-to-earth and amiable off the pitch as well. He was a superb ambassador the sport for some decades after his final retirement as a player. But, for me, it was his personality on the pitch which cemented his legacy. Even when he was getting lumps kicked out of him, and was getting no help from the referee, you rarely saw any trace of anger from him, and never any sign of retaliation (he was only booked - a 'yellow card' offence, before they'd introduced the cards - once in his entire career; never sent off, never even close). On the pitch he always seemed to project a sunny disposition, that broad grin on his face conveying a simple childlike delight in being able to play the game he loved and to be able to entertain people by doing so. 

I quipped to someone on one of the Facebook forums the other day: What do you get if you combine the supreme athleticism and the lethal finishing of Cristiano with the inventiveness and the vision and the versatility of Messi? You get a player almost as good as Pelé! And he was a nicer guy, too....

[And I really don't think we'll ever see another player with that degree of natural talent again. Or at least, not with that degree of natural talent that will be allowed to flourish and express itself in such an unfettered, exuberant manner. It's just not the way of the modern game.

In theory, there should be a larger player pool now, as professional leagues have become more strongly established in almost every country in the world. Scouting and coaching programmes to nurture young talent have become far more widespread too. But I fear that might in fact be one of the limiting factors. While it should be a good thing that young players are being recognised and encouraged from an early age, allowed to devote themselves to football almost full-time, given opportunities to play with the other most talented youngsters in their country week in and week out, and to learn about the game from experienced professionals.... well, all of that, these days, unfortunately, tends to put a focus on hard work and physical strength and tactical discipline - not on instinctive, free-spirited improvisation.

It has often been suggested that one of the reasons for Brazil's relative decline over the past couple of decades has been that all of its finest players now go to play in Europe at a fairly young age - where they tend to get jogo bonito knocked out of them!

Pelé was almost completely uncoached, at least until his middle teens; he learned how to play football on the streets. And he kept that spirit with him always, even when he played in massive games on the world's greatest stage. That is why the world loved him. And why there'll never be another quite like him.]

Good riddance to Cristiano... And WHO is really the greatest of them all??

 

We had a record number of players of advanced age at this World Cup; and while a couple of these - Messi (turned 39 during the tournament) and Cabo Verde's outstanding keeper, Vozinha (40) - proved that some players can still function at at an exceptional level into the end of their 30s, and maybe even a little bit beyond,... Cristiano Ronaldo (now 41), alas, was not one of them.

Cristiano's game has always relied heavily on his exceptional physique - his pace, power, and stamina. Now that those have faded so dramatically, he is a pathetic shadow of his former self. Roberto Martinez's craven persistence with Cristiano as a starter for Portugal effectively left the team with 10 men, as he was nothing more than a passenger. He would simply loiter around the edge of the attacking third, waiting for his team to gain possession and run beyond him, then saunter up towards the penalty area, hoping that a wide attacking player would be able to hold the ball up long enough for him to catch up with play, and would be able to find him with a precise cross or a cutback. Cristiano still knows the optimum positions to take up, and still has the slick finishing skills to put chances emphatically away when they do fall to him. But he's become so slow-moving that it is just about impossible for him to find those spaces any more, or for his teammates to find him in them, if he does; essentially, because he no longer has the weapon of speed, he needs defenders to forget about him, so that he can move into a dangerous position and remain unmarked. Only the very bad defenders of Uzbekistan allowed this to happen; he barely got a kick in any of Portugal's other games. (Messi often played almost as slowly, and covered remarkably little ground; but his game has always been based more on guile and on an uncanny awareness of, and anticipation of, the evolution of space around him; those skills seem to have become even sharper with age.)

It was a sad way for him to end such a storied career - tarnishing his reputation, allowing himself to be mocked and vilifed for his hubris in continuing to insist on an international career when his body obviously just wasn't up to it any more. He really should have retired gracefully from the Portugal national team four or five years ago.

Now, there a lot of things to dislike about Cristiano himself - his obvious narcisissism, his often frankly creepy public persona, and his outstaying his welcome in international football to the obvious detriment of his country's chances in this tournament - but I'm sure what has most alienated the majority of football lovers from him in the last decade or so is the insane, toxic fanbase that has grown up around him in the social media era. It really has become A CULT. And its two main articles of faith are that Cristiano is better than Messi (laughable in itself, but... it gets worse), and, further, that Cristiano is in fact the Greatest Of All-Time (where do I start?).

Now, I've said a number of times that I regard this whole 'G.O.A.T.' question as pretty fatuous: there have been many outstanding players in this lovely game of ours over the years, and it's impossible to rank them against each other in any meaningful or decisive way. How can you really compare players who played in very different eras of the game, or who played in different positions (how do you compare a superb goalkeeper against a top centre-forward??), or who had very different playing styles in what was nominally the same position (how can you compare Kylian Mbappé to Gareth Bale or Zinedine Zidane??)? It just can't be done, it's pointless to even try.

However,.... since the Cristiano idolaters force our hand on this, so often, so relentlessly, so vociferously, I will offer this analysis.

Cristiano is a superb athlete and an exceptional goalscorer. And yes, in his younger days, he operated on the wing too; so there has been some versatility in his play, and he certainly has some astounding close ball-control skills, as well as top-class finishing. But Mbappé is even quicker and an even better dribbler, and has eclipsed his impact on the international stage in only a decade (with maybe a decade or at least another 4 or 5 years of top-flight football still in him); Kane is a much more versatile player, able to drop into midfield and open up play with a superb range of passing; Benzema and Lewandoski are at least as good as him in their finishing. So... even amongst the leading goalscorers of his own day, I don't see Cristiano as being clearly the No. 1.

And for Portugal, well, it takes some cojones to suggest that Cristiano is better than Eusebio, who was a dominant force in European and world football in the 1960s, and whose name is still spoken reverently even by people who never saw him play. Oh, the cult members have probably never heard of Eusebio! But they ought to have heard, surely, of Rui Costa and Luis Figo, giants of the Portuguese side within the last 30 years. And there were others of that sort of period, a 'golden generation' for the Portuguese, who ought to get some consideration too: Fernando Couto, Sérgio Conceição, and a little later, Beto. And in the current team, of course, the marvellous Bruno Fernandes. All of these are arguably better players than Cristiano, just for the greater range of impact they are able to have for the team, the greater range of skills and creative vision they are able to demonstrate. (It is, for me, very difficult to accommodate mere goalscorers amongst the very highest ranks of the world's greatest players; I venerate players who have a wider impact on shaping the game around them.) So, again, even among great Portuguese players, Cristiano is not obviously No. 1 - and probably not even really among the Top 5.

Then, if you delve back further into history, and focus just on the other great forwards, is Cristiano clearly better than Gabriel Bastituta, Ronaldo (the 'proper' one, the great Brazilian forward of the late '90s and early '00s), Marco van Basten, Patrick Kluivert, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Christian Vieri, Didier Drogba, Jurgen Klinsmann, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Hristo Stoichkov, Bebeto, Romario, Hans Krankl, Paolo Rossi, Leopoldo Luque, Allan Simonsen, Johnny Rep, Gerd Muller, Just Fontaine, Sándor Kocsis, Alfredo di Stefano?? I don't think so. I'm really not sure he's any better than any of these; he's certainly not better than all of them.

But, as I said, the great creative players are always going to dominate these conversations for me: the likes of Ferenc Puskás (there's a reason the 'outrageous goals' award is named after him!), or Denis Law and George Best from the great Manchester United team of the late '60s, or Cruyff and Neeskens from the beautiful Dutch side of the 1970s, Michel Platini, Ruud Gullit, Lothar Matthäus, Gheorghe Hagi, Robert Prosinečki, Bernd Schuster, Roberto Baggio, Gianfranco Zola, Zvonimir Boban, Pavel Nedved, Francesco Totti, Andrea Pirlo, Kaka, Xavi, Luka Modrić, David Silva, Kevin DeBruyne. And of course from England we have many top contenders too, such as Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson, Glenn Hoddle, Trevor Francis, Paul Gascoigne, Darren Anderton, David Beckham, Michael Owen, Paul Scholes, Steven Gerrard, and now, Jude Bellingham. Indeed, there are an extraordinary number of wonderful English players who somehow never got a proper chance with the national side: Frank Worthington, Eric Gates, Brian Little, Vince Hilaire, Matt Le Tissier, and many, many others.

And that's without getting into all the wonderful defenders and goalkeepers from the annals of the game.

But really, there are only three players who are head-and-shoulders above the rest, who credibly have some claim to being recognised as the Greatest of All-Time.

They are, of course, Pelé, Maradona, and Messi. For me, Maradona is disqualified by his obnoxious personality. His athleticism, his ball-control, and his goalscoring ability were indeed super-human, probably better than Messi's and at least close to Pelé's; but, unfortunately, he was also a drug-fiend, a psycho, a thug, and a cheat. While he was generally acknowledged as the greatest player in the world throughout the 1980s, and on into the beginning of the 1990s, he also managed to be the world's least liked player (when the Spanish hard-man defender Andoni Goikoetxea broke his ankle with a hideous, and probably entirely deliberate, challenge from behind in 1983, he was widely cheered - or at least forgiven - by most of the football-watching world). Even worse, while Pelé and Messi were both able to communicate their devotion to the game with a joyful passion which made them uplifting to watch, Maradona always seemed to play with a scowl on his face, emanating a bitter anger - as if football were his revenge on an unfair world.

So, I feel that there can only be one answer to this question: it's Pelé. Messi might have come very, very close. Maradona might have come very, very, very close; but nobody wants to emulate, or even remember him. It's always going to be Pelé.

So, if you really want to have a proper in-depth discussion about who might be the greatest football player of all time,... I'm sorry, Cristiano Ronaldo is just not in that conversation, not even close: not even potentially on the fringes of the Top 5 or the Top 10 or the Top 20. For me, I really don't think he'd make it into the Top 50!!

And part of the reason, I have to say, is that he comes across as a bit of a dick. Leo Messi always seems deeply integrated into every team that he's played in. One of the reasons Argentina have so over-performed with him during the last decade or so is that the rest of the squad clearly love him to pieces and would absolutely lay down their lives for him on the field. Particularly in these latter years, and particularly with Portugal, Cristiano's relationship with his teammates has always seemed cooler, more distant, more awkward; but really, throughout his entire career, I can't recall teammates ever talking about him with the kind of spontaneous warmth and admiration that you find when players discuss playing alongside Messi or DeBruyne or Henry or.... any of the greats.  When teammates talk of Cristiano, you see admiration for his ability, gratitude for what he can bring to the team - but no warmth, no intimacy; profound respect, but no love.

He comes across a raging egomaniac who is excessively preoccupied with his public image - or rather, with his appearance - and with chasing records. And one can't help thinking that this passionate fanbase he has acquired are mostly drawn by that larger-than-life persona rather than his footballing skills per se. They seem to be besotted with his chiselled 'good looks' (although many of us find something rather offputtingly un-human, 'Uncanny Valley'-like about his weirdly adrogynous features) and his gym-toned bod; for many, there seems to be more homo-erotic fetishization than football appreciation going on behind their idolatry.

As he has extended his career beyond all reasonable limits, purely, it seems, to try to chase even more meaningless 'lifetime achievement' records', I fear there is a danger that this public persona may degenerate into self-parody, and that in a few years' time he will be remembered more for shilling personal grooming products than for his performances on the pitch.

I hope that doesn't happen to him. But he does seem likely to bring it on himself. It would be a great pity if... he were to limp on for several more years, continuing to take the tainted Saudi money to play in that ridiculous exhibition league, and forcing himself on the unfortunate Portugal team for another Euros or another World Cup, thereby making himself a complete laughing-stock. He undoubtedly used to be a truly great player, one of the greatest... maybe among the top 100 or so ever to play the game.

But Cristiano Ronaldo has stuck around far too long already. He should hang up his boots now.

A 'Team of the Tournament' - World Cup 2026

 

Everybody has to do one, right? So,... that's mine.

Many selectors in choosing such teams simply go for all their favourite players, and/or concentrate on the ultimately most successful teams. I try to achieve more balance and variety - by avoiding taking too many players from one nation, by trying to give recognition to some of the outstanding teams who were eliminated before the semi-finals or quarter-finals, and by attempting to create a well-structured team that could conceivably function together in reality (players who really can play on that side, in that position; a good mix of profiles; a solid central defensive midfielder to hold everything together). So many of these 'teams of the tournament' just stuff in 6 goalscorers/midfield creatives - who might be terrifying if they ever got the ball, but would in all likelihood be completely steamrollered by any half-decent side.

I suppose the potentially 'contentious' omissions in my line-up are Mbappé (brilliant, sure - but perhaps let France down somewhat when the chips were really down in that lame semi-final exit against Spain; for me, he never quite had that 'aura' of invincibility, of single-minded determination that he was going to turn games on his own - Vini had that: for the first four games, anyway, he looked absolutely unplayable), and Yamal (I really don't buy the common verdict that he had a 'disappointing' tournament: he was unlucky not to pick up more goals/assists [had a lot of near-misses, a couple of very good goals ruled out for narrow offsides; and the rest of the team weren't getting into the box enough for him to be able to create a lot of chances, that wasn't his fault - for such a dominant team, Spain's chance creation and chance conversion numbers were really poor...!], absolutely tore opponents apart down that right flank, and by drawing so many defenders to him, was regularly helping to create space for teammates in the middle; but... he wasn't quite Messi) or Manzambi (pity he got injured, but certainly a contender); and maybe Rodri (I said yesterday, I just don't think he had that great a tournament overall - was slow to grow into it, and actually quite poor in the first couple of games; Koné - and perhaps also our own Elliot Anderson - was, for me, much better) or Kane (as usual, faded after a bright start; and eclipsed in his own team by Bellingham).

Michael Olise might also have got in for many people, but I felt he never looked completely comfortable in that 'No. 10' role Deschamps forced on him; and he was another of the conspicuous misfires for France in those last two games, when it really mattered.

A lot of people like Pedro Porro at right-back too; but I felt he had one outstanding game, and was just OK in the others; and hadn't even started in the first couple of games. I'm not completely sold on my selection of Hakimi, but I wanted to give more recognition to Morocco, who were one of the standout teams of the tournament for me; as a Fantasy selection, he disappointed me rather - he was solid, rather than outstanding. But he was always a commanding figure on the pitch, an excellent captain. I was really tempted to give that slot to Norway's outstanding Julian Ryerson, though; he just missed out in my final cut as a result of his performances being hampered by injury in their last two games.

I also mentioned yesterday that, while I have nothing against Unai Simon in goal, Spain's control of games was usually so overwhelming that he didn't really have that much to do; his most impressive contributions were a few superbly-timed 'sweeper keeper' interventions, charging out of his box to intercept long balls over the top. Saves? Not many. Vozinha clocked nearly twice as many, in half the number of games! There were a number of other keepers who put in a strong claim for consideration too, especially Morocco's Bounou. And I was tempted to give the position to D.R. Congo's Lionel Mpasi, just for his extraordinary defiance of England in the 'Round of 32'; Iran's Alireza Beiranvand was in similar "You shall NOT pass!" mode against Belgium, and Curacao's Eloy Room clocked a remarkable 15 saves in one game against Ecuador. But the great fairytale of this World Cup was Cabo Verde's triumphant emergence from obscurity; they were, I think, only very narrowly behind Morocco as the best African team, and comfortably among the 'Top Ten' in the whole tournament. And their consistently solid veteran goalkeeper, Vozinha, was one of the key foundations of their success (and there's an additional appeal in his being still at the top of his game at 40 years of age!).

I'm disappointed I couldn't find room for any Colombian or Mexican players; they were also among my favourite teams of the tournament. (Julián Quiñones very nearly got in ahead of Haaland for me!)

Finally, Morocco's exciting young attacking midfielder Ismael Saibari was the breakout star of this tournament, for me (I'd never heard of him before, anyway; fans of the Eredivisie will no doubt have been aware - he was the Dutch 'Player of the Season' last year for PSV); Morocco's challenge faded after he got injured, but I think he still did enough to earn inclusion in a final 'Team of the Tournament' (and Bayern Munich seem to agree with me!).

So, that's it - that's my 'Team of the Tournament' for the 2026 World Cup. Feel free to disagree; but please do it politely...

Final thoughts on the 2026 World Cup...

 

A game of two halves

Or rather, perhaps, a game of four 'quarters'... The insane Third-Place Play-Off game between England and France was divided rather neatly by the drinks breaks and the half-time interval into four mini-matches - which went mostly to England: 2-0, 2-0, 0-3, 2-1. And this after I'd said that these games were often lame and boring affairs, especially in recent years, and might not be very high-scoring! Oh well, it's not as though I were a lone freak in expressing such misgivings; that was a reasonable and pretty mainstream view. That crazy, crazy game produced more goals than the last three Third-Place Play-Offs combined!!! It was the highest-scoring Third-Place game ever; it was the highest-scoring game in the World Cup for 44 years; it was the 5th highest-scoring game in World Cup history, and arguably the highest-scoring one that was actually quite closely contested (the other big goal-tally games were nearly all pretty one-sided clobberings). And all of that came completely out of nowhere.

Now, to be fair to myself, I had also observed in my post here on Friday that there was a chance this game might prove to be a bit more competitive than most play-off matches of the recent past because both teams - or more particularly both coaches - had more than usual at stake this time. Both were looking to atone for spectacularly disappointing semi-final performances; and for both coaches it looked like it might be the last game in charge - for Deschamps because he had long planned to retire now, after an extraordinary 14 straight years in the job; and for Tuchel because he was fighting to save his job amid the fallout from his abysmal capitulation to Argentina. And so, yes, we had two pretty good attacking teams who were enjoying their football again, with all real pressure removed from their shoulders; two teams who were looking keen to show what they were really capable of after their damp-squib exits from the tournament proper.

Hugely entertaining as it was to watch, though, we can't really say that it was a great game of football. Partly because there were no real stakes in it, and it was played more like an exhibtion match; and also because both sides simply omitted to defend for long periods! Argentina's thrillingly narrow wins over Cabo Verde and Egypt, and Colombia's strangely exhilarating goalless draw against Portugal were the standout games of the tournament. This one, despite being a rollicking good time, just doesn't register in the same way, it doesn't really seem to count.

Has Tuchel saved his job???

I rather hope not. It may have done him a lot of good to have been able to end the tournament on such an unexpectedly positive note with this high-scoring win - to secure "3rd Place" for us for the first time in our history. But there were still a lot of worrying aspects about this match: we didn't show any control in the middle of the park, we were again often flakey at the back, we were completely bulldozed by a re-energized France for much of the second-half and nearly surrendered a 4-goal lead, before rallying again at the end - and once more relying on a solo goal from brilliant Bellingham to rescue the day for us. And the strongest performance of the game for us came from hattrick hero, Bukayo Saka - who, despite having supposedly had 'fitness issues' all tournament, here was able to play the full 90 minutes without any apparent problem at all; indeed, he hadn't shown any signs of discomfort, failing stamina, or shaky form in any of his one-half-only cameo appearances earlier in the tournament; and he insisted after this game that he'd been 'fine' all along. So, what the hell was going on there?? How can you possibly prefer Noni Madueke or Morgan Rogers to an even half-fit Saka,.... let alone a possibly fully-fit one???

So, although that last game was a nice performance and a fun time for all, it had no bearing on the assessment of our overall performance across this tournament - which was mostly at least a little disappointing, and in the semi-final just catastrophically self-harming. And it raised a number of other alarming questions about what's been going on in the camp with selections thus far.

I said last Friday that I thought Tuchel's tactical blunder in giving the game away to Argentina on Wednesday was so egregious that it must surely be unforgivable. And, for me, he made things even worse through his subsequent responses. He initially refused to acknowledge any possible error, insisting that he made the best decision he could in the circumstances. Then, a day or two later, he ramped up his self-defence by claiming that he hadn't told the team to drop into such a low-block, that they just naturally did it of their own accord. This seems obviously disingenuous, dishonest; they really had no other tactical option, after the personnel changes that Tuchel had made at the second drinks break. So, Tuchel was now not merely trying to wriggle out of taking the responsibility himself, but was trying to throw his players under the bus. Even if this really had been true - and I find it absolutely unbelievable - a manager should not do this. He should defend his players as far as possible in public, and take the bulk of the blame on his own shoulders - even if he doesn't feel he deserves it. And he made things even a little bit worse still by implying that it was a problem of the players' mentality, that they get too cautious and too fearful in defending a lead for their country; he even used the horribly tactless phrase that there seemed to be "a problem in the country's DNA." Again, not something an England manager should saying in the wake of such a painful - and avoidable - defeat.

And as I observed the other day, it wasn't just the overwhelmingly defensive substitutions, the stripping away of any possible easy out-ball or counter-attacking options, and the retreat into the very deep 5-4-1 block that were the problems; it was how rigid and how narrow that block was: we again and again left Messi completely unchallenged, allowed him to roam around the edge of our penalty area wherever he liked. In particular, he kept on executing a very obvious short-corner routine on the right to put him into a good position to float in outswinging crosses from just outside the corner of the box. It would have been very easy to stop this; you just have to send one player out to block the passing-lane between the corner-taker and his support player - this is usually automatic when you see that a short-corner is being planned. But we kept failing to do that; and that is where the goals ultimately came from. That is a straightforward problem to fix from the sidelines; but Tuchel apparently did nothing.

Tuchel's failure in that match was not a single error of judgement, but a whole string of them. I've seen a lot of folks online coming to his support and suggesting that you can't condemn a man for 'one bad game'. Well, I don't think you can forgive a national team coach one bad game when it's that bad; and especially not when it's in the semi-final of the World Cup. You don't get any 'free passes' in a game of that magnitude. But his subsequent statements to the press have solidified my opinion from one of viewing his sacking as a regrettable inevitability to seeing it now as a matter of urgent necessity. I felt that his pathetic dodging of responsibility and his inept remarks about the players' supposed psychological failings marked him out not just as a very flawed tactician, but as a liar, a coward, and a shitbag. I don't want a man like that in charge of our national team for one more week. I hope the FA will call him in for a review of his World Cup performance in the next few days - and ask him to resign, or else sack him.

The 'Golden Boot' - does anyone really care??

Remember back in 2018 when Harry Kane won the World Cup 'Golden Boot' award? He only notched a very modest 5 or 6 goals, nearly all of them in the group stage; and I think 2 of them were penalties, 2 were free headers when poor defences forgot to mark him at corners, and one was an inadvertent deflection - which probably should have been credited to the original shooter, Jesse Lingard. The 'best forward' in the competition had done basically bugger-all, and in fact had been so off-the-pace and anonymous in most of the knockout matches that there was a rising clamour in the British press to drop him. But that's the 'Golden Boot' for you; the primary goalscorer with a side that progresses a long way into the tournament is likely to win it, regardless of how well or badly they've played. And while it is a nice little trinket to add to the mantelpiece, I really don't think most players care about this sort of thing very much at all. Well, not once you've won one, anyway! One - however trivial it is at heart - might still be coveted as a career accolade for 'completeness' sake.

Kane was in the hunt for it again this year, but didn't mind sitting out the Third-Place Play-Off to give some of his squad-mates a chance. Bellingham was in the hunt for it, but didn't mind being used only as a late substitute. Mbappé was in the hunt for it... and apparently insisted on playing the whole game on Saturday - preventing Jean-Philippe Mateta from getting a World Cup start to his name. That looks like a case of 'The Ego Has Landed'..... There will always be a few players for whom these silly baubles exercise an irresistible fascination. And that might perhaps be becoming a more common attitude as the modern world becomes more and more focused on statistics and 'major career achievements' in assessing a player's 'greatness'.  [I was teasing one of the online Cristiano zealots the other day by mentioning that one of the 60 or 70 players I would personally rate more highly than Cristiano was England's Matt Le Tissier. He had absolutely zero ambition, was content just to play for the joy of the game, and chose to spend his whole career at the small-town club who'd given him his first chance; he turned down moves to big clubs, missed his chance to play for England, and never won shit - except the love and admiration of everyone who ever saw him play. 'Greatness' lies in what you can do on a football pitch, and how that makes the people who watch you feel; it is unquantifiable - its measure exists in the hearts of football lovers, not in dry tables of statistics of number of games played, goals-per-game scored, and major trophies won. Matt Le Tissier was one of the world's great players of the 1990s, but the record books barely noticed him.]

But for me - and for many players too, I know; and, I would hope, for most fans - this award should be an utter triviality, an irrelevance.

The other 'prizes'

The other gongs given out at the end of the tournament do seem to have a little bit more weight and purpose about them than the - largely random - who happened not to be outscored by anyone else this time? prize. Although I've always felt that clean sheets are a measure of overall team performance which often have fairly little to do with the quality of the goalkeeping; for me, a 'Golden Glove' award ought to be based on the number of saves - and perhaps only the number of 'big saves', or at least with a substantial weighting towards those saves that were particularly impressive technically and particularly important to a match outcome. Again, the best teams who dominte the possession stats and control games well, they may limit their opponent mostly to hopeful shots from distance, which the keeper can gather to his chest without raising a sweat: racking up a lot of 'saves' of this type should not qualify anyone for an award. On my preferred criteria, I think Cabo Verde's Vozinha might have been able to claim this award, and that would have been a popular 'People's Choice'; it would have been nice for Cabo Verde to receive some official recognition for the astonishing contribution they made to this tournament.

The 'Young Player of the Tournament' is usually the most interesting one - and often flags up a player who's going to become a major force in the game for the following decade. However, I feel the age cut-off is a bit niggardly: 21-and-a-half! I don't see the harm in adding another year or two to that. Basically, players only get, at most one shot at winning it; they only have a chance at it if... they break into their senior national team in their teens, and establish themselves as a regular starter within a year or two; if there's then a World Cup scheduled in the narrow window - for most players, a lot less than 4 years - before they exceed the age eligibility threshold; and if their nation qualifies for that World Cup, and they are fit to participate in it. That's an awful lot of 'ifs'; so, it's no surprise that many great players were never in the running for this one. Raising the age threshold by just a year or two would make it much more accessible to more promising young players.

This year, Spain's outstanding 19-year-old defender Pau Cubarsi was a worthy and uncontroversial winner. Though it was a little bit of a pity that the field was thinner than expected: Jamal Musiala had a somewhat limited impact, and Germany unexpectedly crashed out of the tournament early; Johan Manzambi got injured and missed Switzerland's last couple of games; we didn't see much of Cubarsi's teammates Nico Williams, Pedri, or Gavi; and Lamine Yamal, while he played very well, wasn't able to convert his his terrifying wing-play into many concrete attacking contributions. In another year, any of them - or indeed, Mexico's impressive youngster Gilberto Mora (he's only 17, but will be a few months too old to be eligible for the award in 2030) - might have earned this award. But it's nice to see it going to a defender. (And it's nice to see it going to a player who'd unmistakeably earned it; the 2022 award to Enzo Fernandez was a bit of a headscratcher for many of us!)

There are some misgivings about how these awards are decided, though. The voting process is rather opaque; and the preliminary shortlisting by FIFA's 'Technical Study Group' even more so. There defiinitely seems to be a heavy bias towards players facing each other in the Final; and while there might be an argument that they must have made a major impact in the tournament if they've made it all the way to the last round, one suspects that it's more to do with the convenience of knowing that they're going to be on hand for the presentations after the game.

And this year's selection of Rodri was, I found, not merely surprising, but pretty damned baffling. Undoubtedly he was a very influential player in Spain's success. And he did grow into the tournament, improving gradually game by game until he was somewhere near his old self again in the last two or three games of the tournament. But still, I would say, not quite at his level of two or three years ago. And in the opening couple of games he was frankly poor; not just a bit below-par, poor - so poor that there was a strong case for dropping him in favour of Zubimendi. While I like to acknowledge the importance of defensive midfielders, I feel it's difficult to prioritize them in a tournament when there have been so many great performances from more attacking players. And it's even more difficult to see how it's earned by a player whose performances across the whole tournament have been, on average, not that great. I felt Manu Koné and Elliot Anderson were far more impressive in that role this time.

But, really, how could it not be Messi or Bellingham? They both scored a boatload of goals, and, even more strikingly, both demonstrated an unflinching determination to drag the fairly mediocre teams around them through a succession of difficult ties by sheer force of will. These were two of the best individual performances, the most impactful performances for their teams, that we have ever seen in a World Cup; and I would have been happy to see them share the award. I wonder if Jude missed out purely because England didn't reach the Final (and perhaps because of a perception that they weren't really that good, and hadn't deserved to get even as far as the semi-final)? And I suspect Messi may have suffered from a certain ennui towards him (he's been around forever, he's won absolutely everything already - why does he need another prize?), and from the rising unpopularity of his rather niggly and petty team, and from the mounting online backlash against the supposedly excessive amount of 'help' that they'd been getting from referees in the tournament. Many voters probably saw Rodri as a less contentious choice: nobody hates Spain, nobody hates Rodri! And maybe there was an element of sympathy in the selection too: aw, look, he's making a comeback after two years in the wilderness with all those injuries.  But, just on the football.... a weird choice!

The inevitable anti-climax

We should not have been surprised that the Final turned out to be so excruciatingly dull. They are rarely anything else. 1986 was good; 1998 and 2006 were quite good; all the others since 1970 have been frustrating anti-climaxes with far less action that we'd hoped for - and often none at all.  People got all excited about the 2022 Final because it finally kicked off near the end of regular time, and produced a thrilling period of extra-time and then a tense penalty shootout; but the first 80 minutes of it had been like watching paint dry. The Quarter-Final and Semi-Final rounds almost invariably produce the best and most entertaining games of any tournament.

This year's, though, suffered especially from the counterpoint with the most improbably thrilling Third-Place game the competition has ever seen the day before. And also.... yes, it was just particularly dull. I fretted before the game that Spain hadn't quite fully clicked (Yamal having to do too much, without Williams on the left to balance him; Oyarzabal struggling to find any consistency in front of goal; Rodri mostly being still quite a long way below his imperious best of a few years ago...), and were struggling to turn their domination of matches into goals. And so it turned out again. Although all of the stats suggested they should have won much more comfortably than they did (and I was gutted to see a couple of good goals get chalked off - probably 'correctly', but very, very harshly - which undid my 3-0 prediction!), things were getting a little bit nervy when they were taken into extra-time without having found any breakthrough. 

There was also a problem that Argentina were visibly knackered after a succession of such close and tense games in their path through the knockout rounds, and two gruelling periods of extra-time; their players started dropping out with injuries left and right, and nobody had very much running in them. They also probably showed Spain 'too much respect', sitting off them and trying to contain them, rather than seeking to create any attacking threat themselves; they just weren't able to get Messi on the ball very much in this one - again, much as I'd anticipated.

A sad irony - and the Argentina hate

Because Argentina's strength and stamina were so shot, and because they were being so comprehensively frozen out of the game on Sunday, they did resort to far more niggliness and, as the game went on, downright unpleasantness, than we'd seen from them in the tournament so far - belatedly deserving the previously rather unjustified or at least wildly exaggerated criticisms of their behaviour and their foul-count which have been endlessly echo-chambering online for the past month. And, alas, things really boiled over in some ugly scenes at the final whistle when a number of Argentina players got involved in an unseemly scuffle with some of the Spanish substitutes - throwing at least one of them to the ground, and seeming to throw some wild slaps or punches in their direction too. Some TV commentators reported at the time that Paredes - who seemed to be the ringleader in the fracas, and was lucky not to have been sent off during the match for multiple unfair challenges - appeared to have been shown a red card; though their basis for saying this was never explained, and it was not backed up by anything we saw in the TV pictures. A day later FIFA was saying that he hadn't been; but in clumsy language that made it a little unclear whether he had never been shown a card, or if he had been and they'd decided to surreptitiously rescind it. 

Paredes, and one or two of his teammates, deserve stiff sanctions for those unruly scenes; but now that the tournament is over, I doubt if anything will be done. I suspect that FIFA will think that their PR goals are better served by brushing the whole thing under the carpet and hoping people quickly forget about it than by prolonging the media spotlight on this incident - and on the various other dubious bits of tournament management FIFA might be reasonably criticised for - by holding a full investigation, and handing down penalties days or weeks after the event. I think that would be an incredibly dumb decision for them to take. But that's FIFA for you; they are not the conniving 'evil geniuses' the online conspiracy hordes try to make them out to be, they are just dumb, clumsy bastards who keep shooting themselves in the foot.

It is a pity that Argentina let themselves down so badly with their dullest and dirtiest game of the tournament - in what will surely be Messi's farewell to World Cup football. And it is an even greater pity that this escalating niggliness and thuggery was allowed to proliferate and get out of hand by the worst refereeing display we've seen in the whole tournament, from the Slovenian Slavko Vinčić. I really don't know how he was ever selected; with only a handful of Euros and World Cup games under his belt so far (about 50 Champions League games over the last several years, but the majority of them in the group stage), he just doesn't look to me as if he's sufficiently experienced to take on a game of this magnitude. I would say there have only been three or four previous games in the tournament where the refereeing was conspicuously poor - and none of them involved Argentina. 

The greatest pity of all is that Vinčić, with his inept performance here, letting so many fouls go unpunished that the match overheated and the Argentinians were completely out of control by the end of it, has belatedly given some genuine ammunition to the conspiracy nutjobs. Yes, in this game - in this one game - it did look like FIFA might be trying to tip the scales in Argentina's favour. But of course they weren't; it was just a referee being overwhelmed by the occasion and having a very, very bad day. Even the most 'biased' - the only 'biased' - referee we've had taking charge of an Argentina match in the tournament was completely unable to swing the match their way. And so all the conspiracy nutjobs have left now is to whinge endlessly about the injustice of Paredes not being sent off after the game had finished. - which might indeed be unjust, but clearly could not have affected the outcome of the game, and thus cannot fit within any conspiracy theory of how FIFA was supposedly trying to secure another win for Argentina.

And I've said this before, but I'll say it again: where is the motivation for any such shenanigans supposed to come from? Messi is a has-been: he effectively retired from proper competitive football when he joined America's MLS three years ago, and this was surely his swansong on the international stage. He has ZERO ongoing value to FIFA in boosting their global brand image and revenues. And Argentina have always been a deeply unpopular footballing nation with almost every country on the planet, so.... what possible advantage is there to FIFA in trying to promote a disliked team and an ageing star player who's about to retire?? Absolutely NONE; it's utter nonsense. 

My high school history teacher was fond of saying: "There are two main theories of the historical causation of major events: conspiracy and cock-up. 999 times out of every 1,000, it's the latter."  

Argentina might have caught a few more breaks from the refs than most other teams over the tournament; they certainly were cut a lot of slack by the hapless Mr Vinčić in the Final. But it's just an accumulation of minor errors working slightly in their favour, not a decisive factor in their success in this tournament - and certainly not part of an abstruse masterplan.

A Fantasy calamity

The polar extremes of the last two games constituting the World Cup Fantasy game's MatchDay 8, a humongous points bonanza in the often dull-as-ditchwater Third-Place game and a sterile goalless (at least, in regular time...) Final, meant that people who'd included plenty of French and English players in their teams prospered hugely. People who guessed correctly that Mbappé would force Didier Deschamps to let him play the full game did particularly well. Those who'd taken a punt on Saka finally being allowed to play a full game did even better... Those who bet once again on Jude Bellingham have never been disappointed in this tournament - even though he only got on for a short outing at the end.

Those who were able to hang fire on their MD8 selection until shortly before the Third-Place kick-off enjoyed a huge advantage in knowing for sure who was going to start in that game. (This is one of the reasons I don't like live in-game substitutions; it creates a massive disadvantage for people in unfavourable timezones, who may not be able to stay up half the night to swap things around immediately before or between games. People often lobby for Fantasy Premier League to introduce a similar facility; but I feel that would be unfair on the many people in East Asia and Oceania who like to play the game.)  And, as I observed in my post-Semi-Finals review, you probably couldn't afford to set up especially for the Third-Place game unless you had your Wildcard still available to use. (And if you did, as I did, that would cut you off from being able to use one of your other chips in MD8. The 'Maximum Captain' chip, in particular, could have been very valuable in this round, as it was so uncertain who would actually produce the weekend's big points.)

And so, really, for most people, the entire Fantasy competition was decided on the final weekend. If you'd backed the right players in the Third-Place Play-Off, you might have racked up a pretty huge total. If you'd backed the wrong players in that game and/or had concentrated largely or solely on players in the Final (because you didn't have a Wildcard left to make multiple changes), you were utterly screwed and might have ended up with just 30 or 40 points. (Yes, that's what happened to me: I crashed from being top in all my mini-leagues to bottom!!!)

It is a cruel and capricious game, indeed.

But now that it's over for another four years, I'm missing it already....

Thoughts on the World Cup Semi-Finals

A strange case of absence

I had - narrowly - fancied France to prevail over Spain in their semi-final on Tuesday. I had even thought that playing the big game on their National Day might give them a bit of an additional emotional lift. But, if anything, it seemed to have the opposite effect - leaving them strangely flat. It was actually one of the worst French performances in years. Now, Spain, of course, deserve a lot of credit for controlling the game so cleverly and knocking France out of their usual comfortable rhythm. But I can't help feeling that Didier Deschamps has stayed on far too long in his role, and that things have started to go stale under him. In fact, he's long been criticised for often excessively conservative tactics; and, given the extraordinarily talented group of players he's had at his disposal, the fact that they haven't won anything in the last 8 years should have been becoming a cause for concern. I get the sense sometimes that Deschamps might not be all that popular with his players, or at least that he doesn't handle the motivational side of his job particularly well; there doesn't seem to be that obvious warmth of rapport between him and his team that we've seen on so many of the benches in this World Cup.

And there have been some odd selection decisions from him all through this World Cup: playing Dembélé out wide on the right, rather than in the more central areas where he thrives for PSG (he has been largely ineffectual, only occasionally popping up for a goal when he's drifted inside into more familiar territory), while Olise has been taken in from that wing, where he's usually so dangerous for Bayern, and asked to act as a No. 10 (to be fair, he has shown a lot of promise in this role - but it's not one he's intimately familiar with, as yet); Bradley Barcola repeatedly being preferred for the start to Désiré Doué, although the latter has always looked far better when he as come on as a sub; only token minutes being given to Rayan Cherki; and Lucas Digne being suddenly preferred to the more established Theo Hernandez at left-back (again, Digne's a great player and had been doing a very good job so far - but he was taken apart by Yamal in this one). But the oddest call of all was dropping midfield linchpin Manu Koné, who has been outstanding all tournament, for the only-just-back-from-injury and still-not-100% Aurélien Tchouaméni in this game. Collectively, France just didn't show up for this one; every single player was strangely below-par; but the sudden disappearance of the one player who might have been able to go toe-to-toe with Rodri and give them a measure of control through the middle of the pitch was probably the most decisive factor in this lacklustre performance. I really think this might have gone down as one of The Greatest Foot-Shootings in World Cup History - if Thomas Tuchel had not so spectacularly gazumped that claim to notoriety barely 26 hours later.

The Comeback Kings and the Masters of Disaster

England produced their best performance of their tournament, matching Argentina's physicality and niggliness, refusing to be overawed by the aura of Lionel Messi, and indeed almost completely neutralising his threat in the first-half, mainly thanks to a tenacious man-marking display from the outstanding Elliot Anderson. And then we score a superb goal on the break 10 minutes into the second-half. And Argentina, for once, look like they have no response. We're in control of the game, and closing in on our first Final in 60 years. But at the mid-half drinks interval, Tuchel unfathomably decides to withdraw into siege mentality again, swapping attacking players for defenders, committing to a 5-4-1 low-block for the remaining half an hour - and leaving us no ready out-ball, no means of counter-attack, so that we will be relentlessly penned in, allowing our opponent almost 100% of possession for the remainder of the game. We had more excuse for that tactic against Mexico, since we had a bigger lead, and had been reduced to 10 men by the Quansah sending-off; but even there, we had to hang on by our fingernails and were extremely lucky to get away with it. Against a much better attacking side who've made a habit of late comebacks in the knockout rounds of this tournament, it was obvious suicide. Even worse than the ultra-defensive substitutions was the insane rigidity of the defensive structure we adopted: Tuchel was insisting that we kept our block so narrow and deep that Messi - who'd been well contained for almost the entire game - was now allowed to roam free around the edge of the area; again and again he was allowed to work short-corner routines, completely unopposed, which set him up to be able to chip in dangerous crosses from just outside the box, 15 or 20 yards from the byline. We were just allowing him as many chances as he wanted to set up possible scoring chances, and it was no surprise at all that two of them were ultimately successful. We might, in fact, have conceded 4 or 5 goals in that torrid closing phase of the game. The capitulation had been so thorough and so abject that not even the most patriotically biased of British pundits - and Alan Shearer is probably right at the top of that list - could dare to say that Argentina hadn't deserved the win.

Should Tuchel go??

After that horrendous meltdown for England in their closing 20 minutes or so against Argentina, there has been a fair old maelstrom of discontent erupting around poor Thomas Tuchel's head - calls for him to be sacked immediately, even before the Third Place Play-off game. I find that a bit of a tough call to make. We don't like to see managers canned over one bad result, especially after what was overall a 'good' tournament for us. And he was presumably brought in with a medium- to long-term plan to rebuild our squad for the post-Kane era. He is probably the most tactically astute coach we've had for a long while, he's got a record of winning big trophies, and I like a lot of what he's done; he certainly deserves a lot of credit for getting us this far with what was, ultimately, a fairly mediocre team. 

Unfortunately, I think the backlash from this last game will be so intense that his position will be untenable. We have the lead, we're 10 or 15 minutes away from our first Final in 60 years,.... and he completely throws it away with some daft tactical decisions that pretty much the entire planet can see are going to be suicidal. I'm afraid there is no coming back from that. 

And I fear he'd probably ramped up the pressure on himself too high already, making so many curious and often unpopular decisions before and during the tournament, yet always brashly insisting that he knew best how to get us to the Final. Other managers - like dear old Gareth - who hadn't made so many confrontational choices might perhaps have been able to get away with such a catastrophic disappointment at the penultimate hurdle; but not Tuchel. Leaving behind popular and dangerous players like Palmer, Gibbs-White, Wharton, Foden, Alexander-Arnold and Bowen; bringing in their stead rather questionable choices like Madueke, Gordon, and Spence (at least the latter two did eventually come good, and I could see the case for Madueke - although he ended up making a poor show in the tournament); bringing along so many injury-prone players like James, Stones, and Livramento, and players who were already struggling with injury like Saka and Rice; overplaying an obviously under-par Rice, but making little or no use of Saka, Mainoo, Watkins, Chalobah; while bringing along complete dead wood like Henderson, Toney, and Quansah; and constantly chopping and changing personnel, to no obvious advantage - trying out 5 different players in the wing positions, 5 more at right-back alone, and another 2 at left-back??? All of that had already run his credit very low - to the point where I think there's really no surviving him going, "You know what, let's NOT beat Argentina...."

How sharper than a serpent's tooth...

One of the things that has depressed me most about this tournament is the really insane level of hate that poor Lionel Messi and his Argentina team have engendered. As I mentioned in the last of these round reviews, there is now a prevalent 'conspiracy theory' that FIFA is coordinating a massive match-rigging campaign to ensure their success - an idea that completely defies practicality (how on earth do you 'rig' even one game of football, that has so many moving parts in it, literally hundreds upon hundreds of potentially decisive 'game actions', let alone an entire tournament??) and motivation (why on earth would they even want to? players like Yamal and Bellingham are the new faces of the game who will dominate the global narrative, and the global drive for increased sponsorship and TV rights deals - not has-been, about-to-retire Messi), and indeed even the obvious facts (none of the supposedly 'contentious' refereeing decisions in their favour have actually been wrong - and there isn't even much scope for sensible argument about any of that, they have been very clearly correct).

There might have been a little bit more of a case for such accusations last time in Qatar. There, FIFA really did seem to be exerting themselves to smooth Messi's path to a World Cup win through some unduly favourable refereeing - although even there, I would suspect that rather than wilful conspiracy, this was just an accidental artefact of referees' natural leniency towards the world's best player; the chief complaint was how Messi himself had become unduly card-proof, despite committing several potentially yellow-card-worthy fouls, including two in the same game at one point, which arguably deserved a sending-off. But most great players, and even many quite average players who have no reputation for excessive physicality, are cut a lot of slack over yellow cards. It got to a point where it was perhaps crossing a line of 'fairness' - but that needn't have been the result of any conscious policy. That still rankles with a lot of people, though; and they are convincing themselves that it's happening again, and even worse - when it just isn't.

A lot of this rancour no doubt comes from the fact that Argentina have rarely been a popular nation in world football: they've often suffered under a - not unfair - reputation for being arrogant, dirty, and inclined to cheat (a reputation which reached its nadir with Diego Maradona, who was somehow both the world's most skilled footballer and also its least likeable). But that doesn't seem an appropriate resentment to bear against them in this tournament: they've actually been playing well, and playing fairly, without excessive physicality or play-acting. 

Alas, a lot of it also comes from the insane rivalry between devotees of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. The fact that Messi is still playing some of the best football of his career as he closes in on his 40th birthday next year has incensed the Cristiano idolaters, who were hoping they might see something of the same from their man. But no, Cristiano's game has always relied heavily on his exceptional pace, strength, and stamina; now that those have faded, he's become a passenger on the pitch, a player whose presence was visibly holding his team back in this tournament - really, something of a laughing-stock. While Messi actually seems to be thriving in his new style of play, where he just stands serenely still most of the time, and waits for space to evolve around him. His play may have been relatively unspectacular for the most part, but for people who truly appreciate the game it has been a thing of beauty to behold. I can imagine his performances in this World Cup being used in training videos for decades to come. Whereas,.... in the starkest possible contrast, Cristiano's World Cup was a complete non-event. And that has whipped up such a frenzy amongst his deranged cultist followers that... well, it is spilling ever outwards into parts of the Internet constituency that are usually more temperate and unbiased in their views.

And so.... it pains me to see so many people responding to this once-in-a-generation footballing treat with snide remarks about Messi being 'overrated', 'undeserving' of his success, and, most bizarrely of all, a 'cheat' (even if he were getting an undue amount of 'rub of the green' in the refereeing decisions, how would that be his fault??). It is worryingly delusional and absurdly ungrateful. We haven't seen performances this magical in a World Cup since Maradona in 1986, Cruyff in 1974, and Pelé in 1970. That means... most of these jackals deriding Messi's performances have never seen anything like it before in their lives. That doesn't excuse them. If they can't appreciate football, they shouldn't be watching it, let alone daring to comment on it.

We have been privileged to see football elevated to a new level - by a man who should be too old to play professionally any more. The only appropriate responses are awe, wonder, and profound gratitude. If I hear anyone calling him a 'cheat' in person, I am going to punch them.

Fantasy dilemmas for MatchDay 8?

The major curveball for the last MatchDay of the Fantasy World Cup competition is the unnecessary inclusion of the - otiose, risible - Third Place Play-off game on Saturday evening. Historically, this has tended to be quite a low-scoring game. There have been a few notable exceptions to this, but none of them that recently; if you exclude a couple of very high-scoring games in the 1980s, when the face-offs between France and Poland and France and Belgium were arguably better than the Finals, only 4 of the last 16 (14) games have produced more than 3 goals, and the median scoreline across those tournaments is actually slightly lower than that in the Finals. (A lot of people who don't understand statistics have just noted a high number of overall goals, and hence 'average goals', for this fixture and concluded that it is always a very high-scoring game; it is not.) Yet the game doesn't usually see many clean sheets either: only 3 in the last 12 ties - so, it's not a great prospect for points from keepers/defenders. Moreover, it's just incredibly hard to predict the outcome, since neither side tends to be very motivated for it, and coaches usually put out mostly their second-string players. 

You could in theory wait until the team sheets are published an hour or so before the kick-off (this tournament treats the kick-off of the first game in the MatchDay as the deadline for Fantasy selections, rather than having the 'early cut-off' of 90 minutes before first kick-off that we've grown used to in Fantasy Premier League), so that you know what the line-ups for the Third Place match are going to be. But that's not very practical for many of us (it's a 4am or 5am kick-off in East Asia!); and I am always wary of trying to make selections in the last hour before a deadline, because peaks in site traffic easily crash the game website or leave it glitchy and apt to 'unsave' changes you've tried to make.

Moreover, you know very little about many of these back-up players who might now suddenly be starting; you certainly don't have any idea of their form or confidence (because most of them have played only short minutes thus far, if any at all) or how well they're going to play together (because, really, they never have before!). And there are additional dangers, such as that the two previously unused goalkeepers might be rotated at half-time. Or that the coaches will eventually decide they'd rather not lose this game (Deschamps, because it will be his emotional farewell to the national team after an astonishing 14 years in post; Tuchel, because it might be his one chance of saving his job, after the disastrous defeat to Argentina) and sub off many of these second-string players for their more illustrious counterparts quite early in the second-half. So, even if you can hang on to find out who's going to be starting in this match, you have no idea if they're also going to be finishing it, or how well any of them are going to do. 

If you still have your Wildcard to play, you might consider taking a few players from the Third Place game (Doué, Cherki, and Mateta appeal to me; and maybe a keeper...?). But if you don't, you're far better off concentrating your scant allotment of 6 Free Transfers on optimising your squad for the Final. That will be a super-competitive game, and it might well go to extra-time; several of the top players in it might produce some worthwhile Fantasy points. I really wouldn't touch the Third Place game with a bargepole - unless you have the luxury of the Wildcard to allow you to make unlimited changes. [But, since the quarter-finals and semi-finals have gone much as anticipated this year, many managers probably do still have their Wildcards in hand. This year - something of a rarity - might see a fair amount of differentiation achieved in the final Fantasy round through making a few good picks from the Saturday game.] 

One further appeal of the Third Place game is that many of the players starting in it will be relatively less expensive, and might thus be useful 'budget enablers' to help you afford an extra premium player amongst your roster from the Final. But again, you're probably better off sticking with the 'budget enablers' you already have, even if they're not playing (it's quite a smart move to retain one or two of your cheapest players after they get eliminated in the quarter-finals, just to stretch your budget for the core of your squad a bit), than taking a punt on unknown quantities in a meaningless Third Place match; at least, if you only have your regular Free Transfers to work with.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!