What next?

Well, hats off to Fluminense! I have made the classic mistake of dismissing - or at least undervaluing - someone's chances without sufficient information. I now realise they are one of the very few teams (the only one in the last eight) that I hadn't seen in action for at least one full game in this tournament. Watching only the extended highlights and reading multiple match reports just aren't an adequate substitute for your own 'eye test'.

The other games played out much as I expected: Real winning fairly comfortably against a lacklustre Dortmund; PSG and Chelsea also progressing, but in much tighter contests.

It was a disappointment that Al Hilal, after their sterling performance against City in the quarter-final, just didn't turn up for this one. It might have been an emotional reaction, a heavy comedown from the high of that achievement; and some of their players might have had their heads taken out of the game by the sad news about the death of Diogo Jota (his Portuguese teammates Joao Cancelo and Ruben Neves were, of course, particularly emotional; but the whole team looked very shaken during the moment of commemoration before the start of the game; poor Neves, a very close friend of Jota's, was in floods of tears). Or maybe it was just the physical toll of having had to play extra time in such suffocating heat and humidity in the previous match against City. That drain of extra time in extreme weather to get past Benfica might have been a problem for Chelsea too, who dominated comfortably for the first 20 or 25 minutes and took an early lead, but then unaccountably took their foot right off the gas to let Palmeiras walk all over them for the next two quarters of the game.

Al Hilal can also feel rather ill-served by the officals in their match. I've long had reservations about Danny Makkelie's competence for top-flight refereeing: he strikes me as one of those somewhat arrogant, prima-donna-ish refs who are perhaps insufficiently self-reflective.... and hence prone to being wildly erratic in some of their decision-making. Perhaps his unfortunate reputation for major errors in high-profile matches is just a function of the fact that he gets put in charge of so many high-profile matches; but it seems to me that with such a long record of controversy now, FIFA really ought to be downgrading him a little bit, not putting him in the firing-line quite so often (maybe they thought they were giving him a low-pressure assignment by allocating him to the tie with the two least glamorous teams remaining in the competition?). To be fair, he was perhaps a bit unlucky that, in a hard-fought game, there was an exceptionally high number of close calls: challenges where he thought there wasn't any contact, but there was; and challenges where he thought there was contact, but there wasn't - or not enough for a foul. And it probably is just an unfortunate coincidence that very nearly every one of these bad calls was to Al Hilal's detriment. 

And the three most contentious decisions - the three penalty shouts turned down - in effect rested with VAR rather than him (or at least, they should have done; maybe the off-field team felt hamstrung by the 'clear and obvious error' nonsense; although in the first instance, they did direct Makkelie to take a second look - which prejudiced him towards reversing his onfield decision when he probably shouldn't have). Admittedly the victim 'went down easily' in all three cases; but in all three cases, there definitely was contact - in the middle instance, full-on wrestling. I do not see how that 'possible holding' cannot have at least been worth a second look. For the last one, replays from behind the goal showed that the defender clearly trod on the attacker's heel - which Makkelie probably couldn't see. That kind of thing is given as a penalty 99 times out of 100; and it was certainly worth the referee having a second view of it. The victim going to ground somewhat theatrically should not disqualify him from receiving the penalty. (And with that kind of foul, it takes a moment for the pain to become noticeable and start to spread; indeed it may create a chronic sorness at the base of the Achilles, which you won't fully feel until you try to push off on that leg - and then perhaps suffer an awful moment of panic that you have have suffered a tear to that tendon. Collapsing a second or so after an impact like that is quite a natural reaction, not necessarily forced, exaggerated, 'play-acting'...) And for the first one, where Makkelie reversed himself, he came up with the - to me - bizarre justification that the incident had been just 'a normal football contact' - which smacks of him inventing rationalisations that don't necessarily accord with the rules. I am not aware of that phrase occurring in the Laws of the Game, certainly not as a defining criterion for contact fouls. The defender caught the attacker's heel with his foot, and it unbalanced him, brought him down; it doesn't have to be deliberate - it just has to be causally decisive.

If a team has three such solid appeals for a penalty in a game, they usually get at least one of them! So, in that regard, Al Hilal may feel they were robbed. But honestly, while the dubious refereeing cast a shadow over the match, it probably wasn't really decisive. Fluminense were much the better team on the day, and well worthy of the win.

PSG and Real clearly have much the strongest squads in the tournament, but... neither have really showed their best yet. Ousmane Dembélé is only just back from his injury, and while he looked very sharp in his 20-minute cameo at the weekend, it seems unlikely he's yet ready to start a game. Ditto Kylian Mbappé, returning as a late impact sub after a debilitating spell of stomach illness. I would favour PSG to prevail in that semi-final - but it's really a bit of a coin-toss: one or two moments of genius from one of the several outstanding talents on either side could turn the match on its head.

And whoever comes through that 'de facto Final' could still face an unpleasant surprise in the actual Final. The two giants of Europe might have the star-studded rosters, but it's the teams in the other semi-final, Fluminense and Chelsea, who seem to have got some momentum going for them in the tournament. I've been really impressed by how Chelsea, despite suffering potentially devastating setbacks in their last two games (an unjust last-gasp penalty award against them in the Benfica game, and then a wondergoal [or 'outrageous fluke'.... or yet another Sanchez cock-up.... depending on your persuasion] from young Estevao Willian in the Palmeiras clash). bounced back confidently to power through to victory anyway. But Fluminense are looking like the best team in the tournament; not the best club or the best squad or the team with the best players, but the team that is playing together best as a team.... and hence 'punching above their weight'. Without any 'big names', they are just functioning superbly well as a unit, consistently showing themselves well-organised, hard-working - and giving up very few chances.

The odds are, I fear, that either of these two will choke when they face such a daunting and glamorous opponent in the Final; but they are potentially good enough to win it, if they can hold their nerve and concentration. But I haven't a clue who will win their semi-final against each other.

With all three of the remaining games in this Club World Cup probably being too close to call with any confidence, where does that leave us with selections for the Fantasy game?

Well, as I said the other day, I think we just have to hedge our bets a bit, by not taking too many players from any one club. (Even in a tournament where one of the ties does look very one-sided, it's still a huge risk to go all-in on a team by taking 5 or 6 of their players. An upset result could devastate your prospects in the subsequent round.)  I should try to put together a separate post on tactics for knockout tournaments in a day or two.

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!!!