A column written on the day Lionel Messi completed his 39 steps has to start there. So much has been written on the superstar that this space will limit itself to a couple of aspects not seen elsewhere by this scribe. The first is that no less than two-thirds of his record-breaking 18 World Cup goals were scored since turning 35, usually retirement age in the sport – in other words, Messi at the age of Papi Fútbol is deadlier than in the prime of
youth. And the second is not Monday’s two goals but the missed penalty (Messi’s multiple records include fluffing more World Cup penalties than anybody else). The thesis here is that the miss was at least subconsciously deliberate – in this columnist’s opinion, the penalty call was debatable (both Austrian defenders were going for the ball, as was Lautaro Martínez running into them), the occasion was historic as surpassing Miroslav Klose’s previous record and Messi did not want to pass into history with a dodgy penalty
rather than the superb goal which did carry him into legend. An even more dubious penalty also missed against Poland in Qatar already installed the idea that Messi’s sportsmanlike instincts lead him to shun cheap advantage. In a word, Messi and everybody should be grateful that the penalty miss enabled him to break the record in the style he did. Today’s column will survey the World Cup at the end of the second round of the group stage, since the third will still be in
progress when this is read. Firstly, this column’s yardstick of reporting results by continent rather than nation. In the 48 matches of the first two rounds (141 goals), European countries have won 15, drawn eight and lost nine with a positive 66-40 goal tally; South American republics have six wins, four draws, two defeats and an 18-10 goal total; the host region has five victories and defeats alike with the other two matches draws and a slender 17-15 goal surplus; Africa has five wins, seven
draws, eight losses and a 19-31 goal deficit; the world’s most populous continent of Asia is also the feeblest so far with just two wins, five draws and nine defeats and goals scored less than half of those conceded (16-38, to be exact) while Oceania accompanied a win and a draw with two losses, scoring five goals while receiving seven. Of the 48 participants, Argentina was joined by only four other nations on maximum points while at the other end of the scale only eight
countries finished the second round without points, thus pointing to a competitive tournament. Fully 10 participants came to North America with no World Cup points to their name but half of these (including the mini-states of Curacao, Cape Verde and Qatar, as well as the world’s second-largest country, co-hosts Canada) have already ended that drought. Only half the 48 participants managed to win at least one game in a tight tournament with 13 matches ending in draws although only three countries failed to score with
three matches also goalless. Enough of number-crunching, time to resume a potted World Cup history from where we left it last week at the other end of a Second World War whose horrors only seemed to confirm football’s value as a sublimation of international conflicts. Everybody knew in advance who was going to win the first two post-war World Cups in Brazil (1950) and Switzerland (1954) – the Brazilian hosts and the 1952 Olympic champions Hungary – except that they did not, which is the
beauty of football. Instead the “Maracanazo” upset extended the prewar Italo-Uruguayan monopoly in 1950 while the “Miracle of Bern” in 1954 humbled the “Magnificent Magyars” toppled by a rustic West German team from a country still traumatised by military defeat. Quintuple winner Brazil has never won on home soil despite hosting the tournament twice but they went on to bag three of the next four World Cups after Switzerland around the inspirational figure of Pele. The exception was, of course, England becoming the first post-war
host to win the trophy in 1966 – the only triumph so far for the cradle of football, often disparaged on the grounds of Geoff Hurst’s goal allegedly not fully crossing the line but people need to be reminded that the final score was England 4, West Germany 2. That tournament also produced perhaps the first serious challenge from outside the dominant regions of Europe and South America – North Korea, of all people. This series also aims to focus on the hosts in order
to highlight the brutal regimes often favoured by FIFA but the worst examples are not to be found in this period. The Brazilian president in 1950 was Eurico Gaspar Dutra, a military backlash to Getúlio Vargas (Brazil’s equivalent of Juan Domingo Perón as the father of Brazilian populism and president for no less than 15 years, although never the national obsession in the seven decades since his death which Peronism continues to be here). As for Switzerland, who could name its political leader today, never
mind 1954 (Rodolphe Rubattel then, Guy Parmelin today, according to Google)? The 1958 host was the eternal Tage Erlander, Sweden’s Social Democrat prime minister from 1946 to 1969 and architect of the Scandinavian welfare state. A Chile still recovering from the devastating 1960 Valdivia earthquake was an odd choice for the 1962 World Cup, even with 16 countries (unimaginable now) – its government back then was perfectly constitutional under the presidency of the respectable conservative Jorge Alessandri. World Cups are generally not electoral game-changers (just
ask Alberto Fernández if any doubts on that score) – vox populi has it that England’s 1966 triumph gifted Harold Wilson his landslide (with an overall majority of almost 100 seats) except that the spring election preceded the tournament by some three months. Finally, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Mexico’s president in 1970, was a typical product of the PRI one-party state running from 1929 to 2000. The 1974 and 1978 World Cups had home country triumphs and “Clockwork Orange” Dutch finalists in common but there could
hardly have been a greater contrast between the hosts – West German Social Democrat Chancellor Helmut Schmidt only a month after succeeding a Willy Brandt doing so much to consign his country’s Nazi image to the past and Argentina’s brutal military junta going far towards importing that image here. The World Cup should not be underestimated as a factor in the dictatorship’s atrocities – it both accelerated them in order to have all the dirty work out of the way before the rest of the
globe started arriving here but also placed them on the world map when atrocities were occurring elsewhere. Argentina’s World Cup was the last with 16 countries – with space rapidly vanishing, perhaps best leave the 11 expanded versions to next week.
Lionel Messi, World Cup, missed penalty, Miroslav Klose, World Cup 39 steps, Argentina, continental results, Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Harold Wilson, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Helmut Schmidt, FIFA