Coping with World Cup withdrawals has forced us to try to, rather unsuccessfully, fill the void that was football with ordinary prime time soap operas.
As we gradually return to normalcy, and a full night’s sleep, let us look back at the past month and reflect on the remarkable, the cruel, and the technical.
The Remarkable Team at the 20th Spot
Although a country of only 4 million people, labelled the underdogs, Croatia had the support of football fans all over the world ahead of their FIFA World Cup final vs France on 15 July.
Croatia first announced their arrival in their Group D match against Argentina, when they beat Messi’s men 3-0, and gave the football community something to talk about. As fate would have it, three weeks later, the Croats were facing France in the final and their captain, Luka Modric, was awarded the golden ball that had previously been won by Messi in 2014.
After their impressive win over Argentina, and sailing through the group stages top of their group, Croatia’s knock-outs journey was slightly bumpy. They beat Denmark on penalties in the pre-quarters and found themselves in a similar situation against hosts Russia in the quarters, narrowly surviving.
Their semi-final match against England was no child’s-play either. England led from the fifth minute, till Croatia’s equaliser finally came in the 68th minute.
Come extra time, and in the second half of ET, Croatia scored the winner and escaped the dreaded penalty shoot-out, booking their place in the final.
What mattered though was not that they barely made it to the final, but the fact that they made it. Because it always comes down to the number of times you find the back of the net. And that is probably the only area where they did not fare as well as France in the final.
In a match where they dominated possession (66 percent), and had double the number of shots (14 vs France’s 7), they found the back of the net on fewer occasions and that was the only thing of consequence.
The Cruel Curse of Kazan
Croatia weren’t the only thing that took us by surprise this World Cup, as there was also the string of shocking defeats. Three of the top 5 ranked teams, Germany (1), Brazil (2), and Argentina (5), all crashed out on the same field – Kazan Arena.
In their last group match against South Korea, defending champions Germany found themselves prey to a double curse. One they probably knew about at the back of their minds and one that had recently debuted, and was about to be confirmed by them.
The ‘Curse of the Champions’ has seen the winners of the previous World Cup be eliminated in the group stage of the following one. It happened to France in 2002, Italy in 2010, Spain in 2014, and Germany this time around. The ‘Curse of Kazan’, which was just being established, meant that lower ranked teams would upset higher ranked ones in the Kazan Arena.
The curse was inaugurated by Spain (ranked 10), when they were stunned to a 0-1 defeat by Iran (ranked 37) in their Group B game. In their Round of 16 clash, fifth-ranked Argentina suffered defeat at the hands of seventh ranked France (who eventually won the Cup), with a score-line of 3-4 and a week later, in their semi-final encounter, third ranked Belgium snatched victory from second ranked Brazil 2-1.
The Technical VAR and Dead-Ball Situations
When the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) was introduced for the first time in a World Cup this year, it was anticipated that it would make the outcome of the match more fair by improving accuracy in game-changing situations. Implemented diligently in the box, the technology led to a record number of penalty kicks being awarded.
At the end of the Round of 16, the number of spot-kicks had already hit 28 – 10 more than the previous record of 18 in the 2002 edition of the tournament.
This World Cup also witnessed a significant number of goals coming from dead-balls. The exact number of set-piece goals was 68 goals out of the total 157 scored, before the semi-finals.
In fact, most of semi-finalists England’s goals were scored through set-pieces. These set pieces, in the form of corners and free-kicks, in turn, meant an increased number of headers and even own goals.
Since the VAR mostly came into play inside the box, it seems unlikely that the two are related. Nevertheless, they were both characteristic of this year’s competition, and only time will tell exactly how technology will change the beautiful game.
With that thought to ponder over, we bid au revoir to Russia, and resign to the inevitable four-year-long wait to witness the biggest sporting event once again.
(The author is a young writer with keen interest in sports.)
(For complete FIFA World Cup 2018 coverage, click here to visit our special WC page.)
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