Wednesday, June 25, 2.00am
Italy 0 Uruguay 1
How do we decide on whose terms any given match is played? If the match is played between two sides of considerable stylistic variance, the verdict is easy to make, especially if we have the benefit of hindsight thanks to the result. But what about when two teams with the same or similar or similar looking styles come together and blur the lines in such a way that they become indistinguishable? Oddly, this game was a boon to both the soccer haters and for the style over substance brigade. As for myself, managing to get up at the right time of the morning, I was both repulsed and engrossed by the game’s unflinching ugliness, knowing that there would be a death today and yet that our lives would somehow still go on much as they did yesterday, indeed, that we needed games like this to balance out the good ones, to accentuate their value. If we didn’t have the horror along with the beauty, if every football match was just one end to end free for alI, why shouldn’t we take up watching handball instead? Italy played for a scoreless draw, believing it could control the narrative of the game like they had done against England and against so many teams across the journey. Why try to openly win the match, when that can only bring risk, and risk brings death? But as a matter of sheer coincidence, this method played right into Uruguay’s hands, and who likes a ‘whatever it takes’ scrap more than the Uruguayans? So as the game regresses into foul after foul, solid challenge after solid challenge, and yet still managing to find no rhythm in that pattern, and in the back of the viewer on the couch’s mind are the words of one of the talking heads on the television, that Uruguay have only had a smattering of shots on target in the first two matches of the World Cup, something like five, but have scored three times. And you start to think that sure this game is going nowhere, but all it takes is one moment, and right there they almost get it, but not quite. And then Marchisio gets sent off – and all the Italian whinging in the world won’t change the decision, and what was his boot doing so high up anyway? – and Uruguay sense that the opening is there, and they take it. The Italians could theoretically point the blame at all sorts of things for why they got knocked out of the World Cup at the group stage for the second time running, but in the end it comes down to one simple thing – the game is about scoring goals. And while there are a myriad of acceptable ways of achieving that objective, you still have to at least want to do that much. Admittedly, any attempt at explaining this match as a sort of moral victory for Uruguay is an argument that needs a lot of work – and that’s before we even get close to dealing with the complicated case of Luis Suarez – but the final scoreline says Italy 0 Uruguay 1, and for this game at least, that’s enough.
Wednesday, June 25, 6.00am
Greece 2 Côte d’Ivoire 1
I am well and truly over the Globish phenomenon which has asserted itself over football over the past decade or perhaps more, of every player in every national team having the name on the back of their shirts in the Roman alphabet. It’s the world game, and it’s surely time to bring back Greek and Cyrillic and Kanji and Arabic and whatever other obscure script that manages to qualify for a World Cup. Greece goes ahead in the first half, but the Ivorians level the game, and it’s not undeserved – and all of a sudden it’s turned into a great game, and yes it’s Greece who’s in a great game – but now my dad who has been fairly quiet throughout the game has begun abusing the Greek players, calling them γέροι, τσομπάνοι and perhaps worst of all, φαλακροί. But the game is not done yet. Very late on, Greece gets a penalty, and at the time I’m undecided as to its legitimacy even after several replays. More worryingly my dad, who always prefaces penalties with either ‘it’s going in’ or ‘he’ll miss’, has no definite opinion on the matter. This from the bloke who said when the Socceroos were 2-0 up in the ’97 Iran game that we’d cough up the lead and lose the tie. That doesn’t mean he’s right every single time of course – and it’s not like I’ve been keeping a tally – but this one time he’s acting out of character by not taking a stand either way. Thank goodness it did go in, not only for the vicarious bandwagon glory that I’ll be attached to, but for making the events in a Χάρρυ Κλυνν movie come scarily close to being actualised.
Thursday, June 26, 6.00am
France 0 Ecuador 0
I get up too late – 6:30am or thereabouts – and the game holds little intrigue, and I am too miserable to enjoy it anyway. The match exists in a hazy blur within my limited field of vision, a background noise to exhaustion and despair. I can guess and can perhaps even see the French dominating in a half-hearted manner, but just for today, soccer can get stuffed.
Friday, June 27, 6.00am
Algeria 1 Russia 1
It starts off with that Seinfeld episode where Kramer gets an intern, segues into the Mythbusters episode where Jamie slaps Adam in the face in the name of science and it’s replayed with a high-speed slow motion camera, and ends up with a half garish, half scientific look at Michael Jackson’s autopsy. If I want to see either of the Ghana-Portugal or Germany-USA matches, I need to go to sleep now to give myself any chance of doing so, but there’s footage of the corpse on a table, like our very own Tutankhamen and so I’m stuffed. I wonder, will future generations be as interested in the King of Pop and the manner of his death as we are about Egypt’s inbred boy king? Jackson had a lot of problems, but what – or who – was the ultimate cause of his death? Sure, it’s easy to point to his personal physician, Conrad Murray, and the courts have settled that matter in the appropriate manner – after all, as a doctor, Murray clearly failed in his duty of care to Jackson. But this half garish, half scientific television show on Jackson’s final hours and the coroner’s report is truly gripping viewing. Jackson suffered not only from the pain of his injuries following the 1980s fire incident, but also from an abject self-loathing, rampant paranoia – and a massive debt. So as culpable as Murray was in Jackson’s death, what about the promoters – and by extension, Jackson’s fans – of his This Is It tour, who expected a 50-year-old man in poor health and with decades long addictions to several drugs perform 50 gruelling shows? By comparison, finding answers as to why the Algeria vs Russia match turned out the way it did, even after getting up at 6:30, is rather easy. The Algerians wanted it more. Sure, wanting it more is sometimes or even often not enough, but in this case it was. Witness the laser being pointed at the Russian keeper during the lead up to what would be Algeria’s equaliser, or the way that the goalscorer performs a massive leap to get over the top of the goalkeeper. The flare lit in celebration. Hell, even the way that the player on the Algerian bench kicks the ball away during injury time, getting himself a yellow card.
Sunday, June 29, 2.00am
Brazil 1 Chile 1 – Brazil win on penalties
In the Elizabethan ‘Great Chain of Being’, there’s a place for everything and everything is in its place. God rules above all; Kings rule the rest of humanity, having being placed there by God; then it’s the Church, the rest of the nobility, the merchants and finally the peasantry; the lion is the king of the animals, the rose the uppermost of flowers, the oak the highest ranking tree, gold the most worthy of minerals. Had football as we know it today existed back then, the Elizabethans and their Renaissance counterparts may well have had a place for that, too, in their rigid order and if so, would likely have had Brazil at the top. Brazil, football’s artists, aesthetes playing with creativity and joy, merging results with entertainment; or so the myth football likes to tell itself goes. And if Brazil is at the top then Chile are, if not quite part of the peasantry, still well short of the nobility; and thus for Chile to defeat Brazil, even a Brazil without a striker of recognisable and appropriate talent – Fred was poor and Jo, well, Jo was somehow worse – nor anything resembling a more than workmanlike defensive line, that would assuredly disrupt the divinely ordained natural order of things. As it was, Chile put up a damn good fight, conceding the opening goal but capitalising on a horrendous series of Brazilian mistakes; deep in their own left back corner, David Luiz’ lazy and probably illegal throw in – but why bother being pedantic about that, when of all the atrocious foul throws in this World Cup only one has been called, in the Algeria vs Russia game, and if we’re not going to call it why bother having the rule as it is now at all? – was lazily flicked back by Hulk, only David Luiz had inexplicably vacated the space where the ball was aimed at, where he should have been. It was something straight out of the VPL it was that semi-pro. The Chileans swooped and made the most of it, and though Brazil probably had the better of the rest of the game, it was the Chileans who could have pinched it right at the death, but alas the woodwork denied them. The penalty shoot-out was prefaced by a very unusual SBS panel discussion, which happened to have Zeljko Kalac on board. As the resident goalkeeper, it seemed only fitting to ask Kalac about the strategies a goalkeeper may use in penalty shoot-out situations. Kalac went on to provide a convoluted answer which seemed to start off on one point and then end up at its opposite argument, but I didn’t really give it much of a second thought. But it was on the day after the match, while watching Mark Schwarzer continue to prostitute himself and his reputation for the sake a betting company and more money, because that non-leper infested Hawaiian island isn’t going to purchase itself – portraying himself as a man not only emotionally distant from his (played by actors) friends, but especially as someone who can’t help but keep track of his bets at all times, and a person for whom mobile computing and communications technologies serve only one purpose; someone who can’t even focus on cooking food on a barbecue without wondering about his wagers – that it struck me as so completely obvious. Shouldn’t the roles have been reversed? Kalac is apparently fond of a bit of a punt, and Schwarzer has a knack for making clutch saves in penalty shoot-outs. Anyway, the Great Chain of Being manifested itself at the end of the game and Brazil won the shoot-out, preserving for now at least the divine footballing hierarchy, which I suppose is the important thing.
Sunday, June 29, 6.00am
Colombia 2 Uruguay 0
The removal of Luis Suarez could have turned Uruguay from one of the most insular teams of world football to something more outgoing, more expressive, less predictable; in their own eyes, less themselves perhaps, but nevertheless still a version of themselves. Instead they became even more insular, collapsing upon themselves, their ‘us against the world’ mentality on this occasion crippling them rather than energising them, forgetting that perhaps the removal of that one specific supremely talented individual could allow the rest of the team to breathe. Uruguay employed the tactics that worked so well against England – and really, who are England anyway? – and Italy, albeit an Italy that is far less capable that perhaps we would like to admit; an Italy that suffers enormously when compared to its great teams, teams that even recently were filled with talent and came from a strong league, and which knew how to shape up for the big occasion – but failed. That Uruguay would attempt to employ these tactics against Colombia – admittedly a team in good form, but more or less existing on the same second tier of South American football as Uruguay, one step below the big two, but above the also rans of Peru and Venezuela, and here’s the kicker, the game wasn’t even played at altitude – spoke volumes. Uruguay has a World Cup history that has outshone anything that the Colombians have ever achieved – not only the two World Cup wins in the mundial’s antiquity, but a semi-final appearance just four years ago. To be fair, their tactics were working in this match; working that is until James Rodríguez intervened with two goals: the first, the one that’s already become beloved around the world; the second, the result of almost equally exquisite teamwork. In response Uruguay finally came out of their shells, and even occasionally looked dangerous, but by that point it was too late. A group of reasonably talented individuals petrified by fear – fear of what, it’s hard to pin down at the moment – lost against perhaps an overall lesser team, but one who dared to win the game from the start, and who won’t die wondering.
