The Good, the Bad and the Argies: What we learned from the first round of the FIFA World Cup

It was all a dream. Well, most people were asleep for a lot of it at least – and not just South Korea v Uruguay, which, thank the football gods, was hidden away late at night.

It might have been a nightmare too, if you’re a Socceroos fan, given the chastening experience at the hands of France.

Anyone who did see most of them is very groggy by now. Either you’ve switched your sleeping patterns or, like me, you’ve gone for the sleep deprivation approach of catching game one, sleeping, then getting game four early on. That six hour gap will catch up with you eventually.

With a full round in the books, we can survey what we have seen before. There’s no structure here, just a grab bag of assorted thoughts cobbled together by a man who should probably go for a nap.

Good Upsets

This was a tournament where we weren’t sure what might happen. The positioning in the middle of the club season meant that we could see the better teams steamroller the weaker ones – individual talents swamping disorganised defences – or we could see big teams with tired elite players misfire.

In the end, what we have seen is that the ‘weaker’ sides that have gone for it have been rewarded. Saudi Arabia and Japan, the causers of the biggest two upsets, were the two who bothered to press their more illustrious opponents, as did Canada, who lost but should have won.

Conversely, those who sat back got battered. Yes, you, Iran. And you, Qatar.

Brazil

There’s a cliché that the World Cup does not begin until Brazil play – and thanks to Gary Lineker for saying it without a trace of irony on the BBC coverage – and we were made to wait a further half of tedium before the samba boys kicked into gear. Look, if Gary can get his cliché in, so can I.

When they did arrive, however: wow. To quote journalist Alex Bellos, who literally wrote the book (Futebol, which you should all read now), Brazil are not Brazil, they are Braaaaazzziiiiil. This was that spirit.

Richarlison’s overhead kick, Vinicius Junior’s dribbling, Neymar probing from midfield, fullbacks shooting from everywhere, Antony having a ten-minute cameo where he tried solely to meg people. This is what the people want. Sure, they might get beat by a more defensive side (it’s going to be France) at a later stage, but until then: Samba, boys, samba.

England

I don’t know if it’s a popular opinion or not, but a good England tends to bode well for a tournament. When England are rubbish, they tend to be really, really rubbish. For what it’s worth, the same tends to go for Italy: they’ll be great or crap and nothing in between.

England can be a horrendous side to watch at times but were refreshingly open and interesting in their opener with Iran. They’re a divisive bunch – not only for those of us with English accents and Irish passports, for whom it is a permanent tug-of-war – because they are so often over-hyped, over-paid and, in the case of their fans, over here.

But this team. They’re nice boys. They have a crack. They bothered to attack. It’s hard to hate a team with Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham and Marcus Rashford in it. Harry Kane was excellent. Gareth Southgate might look like a call centre middle manager, but he has crafted a team that are unhateable. And if you do hate, don’t worry: they won’t win anyway.

Bad Argentina

The narrative here has to be Lionel Messi and his search for vindication. Clicks insist that we have to refer to sport’s most tedious duopoly, but when one half is dominating the media for his own personal agenda, it would be nice if the other half produced something positive for us all to get excited about.

Alas, though Messi scored, his side looked very disjointed. Tactically, they were outdone by the Saudis. Argentina played like ‘give it to Leo’ was the sum of their strategy. Now they run into Mexico and Poland needing something.

There is an upshot: if they stumble and don’t top the group, they could run directly into France in the Round of 16. Wooft.

Socceroos

We gotta talk about Australia, of course. My colleague Tony Harper already made the Socceroos DNA gag – Do Not Attack – and it is certainly worth revisiting.

Australia proved the point made above about pressing that if you sit back and let good teams play, they’ll likely score eventually. The days of that being a coherent strategy are gone.

However, the Pirate Postecoglou, as I shall now call him, taking to Twitter to lambast Australia for being ‘too tentative’ and ‘lacking urgency’ does somewhat bely the structural issues that the Socceroos face.

Not every defeat has to turn into a hand-wringing culture war about the wider state of Australian football, and I doubt better grassroots funding or a National Second Division would have altered the fact that France has a much longer and richer football history, considers it their national sport and also have three times the population to pick from.

One Mosman-based, quadrennial observer might do well to factor this in. There’s a line between not attacking at all, as Australia decided once they scored, and having a pressing system – like Japan and Saudi Arabia did – that can both soak pressure and push back.

Simon Hill, who took FitzSimons to task in the replies, knows much more about football. He knows, too, that Japan and Saudi Arabia both dacked the Socceroos in qualifying, too.

Australia do need to attack more. But had they done so more, err, urgently, they might well have still got battered. Let’s hope they throw back a bit against Tunisia.

De Bruyne’s bizarre man of the match award

KDB’s face was a picture. Not only is he a ginger man who’d just had a long run around in the Qatari sunshine, he also then got given the most undeserved man of the match award of all time. He looked like was on the brink of tears hold the (presumably non-alcoholic) Budweiser trophy.

Canada played Belgium off the park – the Red Devils get our bad award for winning very much in spite of their performance – and somehow didn’t score.

I’ll preempt the data nerds by acknowledging that single match xG is nonsense, but Fotmob had this one at 2.63 to Canada and just 0.77 to Belgium. If you’re asking WTF that means, it means that Canada missed a lot and should have won and Belgium got one chance and scored it.

The actual man of the match was Thibaut Courtois, the Belgian keeper, followed by their centre back, Toby Alderweireld, then about six Canadians.

To de Bruyne’s credit, he knew it was a farce. “I don’t think I played a great game,” he said. “I don’t know why I got the trophy. Maybe it’s because of my name. Credit to Canada.”

Ugly Concussions

As readers of The Roar, you will be likely aware of other sports. The ones with lots of concussions, like the rugby codes and AFL, for example. Maybe you’ve even heard of the NFL, which I hear has a bit of a problem there, and even cricket, where getting a projectile slung at your Kerry Boustead at 150 clicks an hour is the sort of thing that is taken seriously.

Football, though? Nah. The scenes in multiple games have brought this to the fore. Iran’s goalie was absolutely wiped by his own teammate and lay stricken on the floor for a good seven minutes – but was allowed to resume play.

It was only his own intervention, presumably because he was seeing several balls at once, that lead to his substitution. Iran, and the ref, and the rules, would have let the most obviously concussed man in Qatar play on.

FIFA love a rule, as the farce of VAR handballs and offsides amply demonstrate, but when it comes to concussions, they have sat on their hands for a long time. No special concussion subs, no independent doctor, no 15-minute sit down.

Ironically, Iran now have to sit keeper Alireza Beiranvand down under concussion protocols – but only after the game. Anyone who knows anything about these injuries knows that it is repeat concussions in close proximity that are the most dangerous.

FIFA

Look, we’re going to turn the Ugly section into an extended rant at FIFA. The armband stuff is a disgrace, and not just because of the nuts and bolts of it.

It’s the Streisand Effect: if they’d have said nothing, let the various European FAs perform the most perfunctory of gestures of solidary with the LGBTQI community, nobody would have cared. In fact, they’d probably have had a go at the Europeans for being as milquetoast as they were.

Instead, everyone now looks bad: FIFA look like autocrats, Qatar are autocrats and the Europeans look weak. Of course, the actual oppressed people lose, as per.

Germany players pose with their hands covering their mouths as they line up for the team photos prior to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Group E match between Germany and Japan at Khalifa International Stadium on November 23, 2022 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

Qatar

In the 2015 Men’s World Handball Championships, also hosted by Qatar, quite a funny thing happened. Well, horrific, but funny if you don’t really care about team handball.

“The competition was marred by numerous controversies throughout,” reads a line up the top of the Wikipedia page, and boy howdy, does that undersell it.

Qatar naturalised an entire team of foreign players, then were widely accused of cheating their way to the final by Poland, Austria and Germany through bad refereeing.

Honestly, that controversy might have been preferable to what they fairly served up on Sunday. Qatar were comfortably the worst team of the first round, not just because they lost meekly, but who they lost to.

Costa Rica were poor, but they played an exceptional Spain side. Iran, too, didn’t cover themselves in glory, but England turned it on. Qatar didn’t try a leg against Ecuador in the biggest game in their football history.

If there’d been a mad reffing controversy, or if they’d naturalised the best XI dudes not to get in Brazil’s team, we wouldn’t have had to sit through two hours of that. There’s a good reason not many people watch international between Qatar and Ecuador when they’re not the opening game of a World Cup.

Starwatch

Messi

As mentioned above, he was Argentina’s best, probably, but Argentina were very bad.

Ronaldo

He’s been the topic of conversation throughout and will love that. Everyone else on his team probably hates him. Scored a penalty and thus created a lot of very tedious social media content for teenagers.

Robert Lewandowski

Missed a penalty and still hasn’t scored at a World Cup. In fairness, he hit the Great Wall of Mexico, Memo Ochoa, both a Memo and a meme.

Neymar

Was pretty good, but it turns out that getting kicked from pillar to post isn’t great for your ankles and now he might be injured.

Luka Modric

I would say he looked a bit old and slow in Croatia’s 0-0 draw with Morocco, but I’m a Celtic fan and he absolutely destroyed us about three months ago in the Champions League, so let’s say he’s still really good.

David Beckham

A late inclusion for D Becks, who retired from international football almost a decade ago, but has been in the news after taking a huge pile of cash to shill the Qataris at this tournament. British comedian Joe Lycett has been taking him to task on Twitter about it and recently shredded a copy of Attitude, the gay magazine, for whom Beckham was the first footballing cover star in the early 2000s.

Andrea Pirlo

I’ve not forgotten about you, Andrea. Pirlo is also shilling Qatar on the YouTube bumper ads when you watch the highlights. I hope he’s squeaking ‘it’s a living’ in Italian, like the put-upon bird in The Flintstones.

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