World Cup 2018

I have tried a few times in recent years to recapture my childhood passion for football, mostly because loads of my friends are obsessed with it and I'm curious as to what I'm missing, and jealous of the passion, and jealous of the bantz. I might try again with this world cup thing.

I will get sucked in as with every big tournament. However after the Euro 2016, which was a rather boring event football wise, my hopes are not too high. That coupled with the plague of current popular sports - namely the focus of reporting more and more on those useless "celebreties" and "VIPs" surrounding big sporting events like flies - will keep me very seelctive.

I yearn for a Mexico 1986 but we're never going to get it again. The Champion's League final will be better than the entire World Cup; watch that and save yourself a month.

I spose Messi's inevitable failure to lift the WC will provide a decent sideshow though, and endless is he is the best player ever now arguments. France will prob win it - Griezmann, Mbappe and Dembele is a Champions League winner-level forward line (even though they can't all play together, probably).

Quality is poor, definitely. I thought Italy-Spain in the last European Champs was the best international game I've seen in ages. Conte obvs a good coach.

Messi - lack of intnl success seems to tarnish him a bit among Argentinian fans. Unfairly really. I guess the suspicion is still that he flounders/would flounder a little outside Barcelona. Doesn't mean he's not the best, but means he'll always leave it open to doubt.

Cruyff was far more memorable/effective at international level, even if he didn't win the prizes.

That's true about Cruyff, Holland 1974 were better than almost anyone ever. And yep, Messi's performance vs Ecuador (?) was epic. But maybe the complaints vs Messi are more that he never put in a Finals performance like Maradona's against England and Belgium, as much as not winning the Cup.

Not WC but pretty epic too https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/may/31/zinedine-zidane-real-madrid-manager-steps-down Zidane is a master of knowing when, both on and off the field. Jumps well before he's pushed, foils the Real sacking machine, only Real manager in living memory to outwit Perez.

...on the other hand, international football is so deeply corrupt one shouldn't support it - from an ethical point of view.

I hate to be a buzzkill - I may well sit and watch a game myself when it starts - but the Russian airforce is still carrying out daily massacres in Syria. I posted what was the most recent one in the Syria thread, and am just now reading details of another one which happened yesterday. There's a photo circulating of a kid with his head blown off.

This is a timely piece: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...to-beautiful-game-but-fifa-world-cup-is-toxic

'If you wonder how you would have reacted to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics, look at how you are reacting to Putin’s 2018 World Cup and learn something about yourself and the nature of sport.'

Being moralised at by Nick Cohen is a bad place to be, so I'll forget the article and take the point directly from you.

And of course it's a good point. The World Cup should never have been held in Russia, but the game (as with all sport, but most particularly FIFA and the Olympic Committee) is deeply corrupt and amoral. 2014 in Brazil was pretty damn controversial too, given events of the year before and the execution mentality of the Brazilian police.

While I completely agree with your point re the insanity of holding a WC in a country that is murdering civilians in Syria on a daily basis, then what winds me up about the article is the projection of racism so that it is the property solely of other cultures/countries which happen to be politically opposed to 'us'. Of course Russia is an incredibly racist place, but if we are serious about racism then should sporting events be held in America, or Italy (though the ways in which racism manifests may be different - not so much in Italy tho)? No they shouldn't. I can't stand the one-eyedness of the article - it isn't hard to be equal-handed about these things.

Things would only realistically change if the individual football associations took a stand and withdrew their teams- which for different reasons, it briefly appeared vaguely possible that the FA (obviously dealing with lots of racism scandals of its own at home) might do earlier in the year. The World Cup could lose millions of fans and still run quite happily, given that 1 billion watched 2014's final, but if a couple of the really big teams withdrew (England and France?) it might start looking much less viable.

And the bit about Danny Rose - it's all very well for Nick Cohen to bring Danny Rose's safety up in a vacuum where the only racists live in Russia, but the fact is that England's black players don't have the luxury of deciding whether to go to the World Cup or not. Given the persistent racism meted out by the English media to Raheem Sterling at every available opportunity - in England - can you imagine what might happen to any black English player who decided not to go on the very reasonable basis of safety?

It's just more complicated than 'Russia is bad' - England itself has a very bad racism problem, which makes dealing properly with the (even worse) racism of foreign nations virtually impossible.

I don't disagree....



More here of a similar sort:

"Football star @MoSalah with the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov (r), infamous for torture & extrajudicial killings. #WorldCup hasn't even begun & it's already being used to boost the most vile of criminals."

That's bleak. Football really is irredeemable. I'd be interested to know if Salah was aware of who Kadyrov was at the time of the photo.

Apparently (as you'd expect), Fifa were asked to withdraw Grozny as a base for the Egypt team back in February. Nothing happened. Egypt's own record on LGBTI issues involves cases of torture, seems to be getting even worse recently https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/22/more-arrests-egypts-lgbt-crackdown-no-international-outcry

incredibly bizarre move by the Spanish football federation

looking like the biggest fix in WC history already

i guess you'll have seen by now! A Russia outfit with a combined age of 1953 winning 5-0 against a Saudi team that some 'highly regarded' computer simulation or other tipped to reach the last 16...

I've just realised/remembered that it used to be (til 2006) the champs who would play the first game, not the hosts....was better that way

Ronaldo is an Olympian.