I am not even a little ashamed to admit that I was wrong about the third-place decider.
If it wasn’t obvious before, I think the match between Argentina and the Netherlands laid to rest all doubts about the importance of the referee in a football match.
I must say that I did never much hold to the World Cup’s third-place decider.
French winger Ousmane Dembele was one of the luckiest men in the world on Wednesday. While his team made it to the final of Qatar 2022, he had come away from the match against Morocco without making any meaningful contribution.
The World Cup in Bangladesh is most fun when both Brazil and Argentina fans have some real skin in the game.
Carlos Javier Mac Allister played with the great Diego Armando Maradona. His son, Alexis, is playing with Lionel Andres Messi. Only one other father and son duo, Diego and Gio Simeone, can make the same claim. Like millions of other families, the Mac Allisters have long engaged in the inevitable and endless debate about which of the two greats is better. Carlos obviously leaned towards his close friend and teammate Diego, while Alexis swore by Leo, but only till recently.
There is alliterative appeal in talking about Messi, Mbappe, Modric, and Morocco, and each of the four does present a strong story for the semi-finals. I do, however, want to take some time to talk about a certain Didier Deschamps. This is a man who has won both the World Cup and the Euros as captain, and the Nations League and the World Cup as manager.
For me, the best thing flowed on the internet yesterday was footage of Morocco’s Sofiane Boufal dancing on the pitch with his mother in celebration after his team’s famous victory over Portugal in Saturday’s quarter-final game. The short clip encapsulates so much of what is good about the sport in general, and this World Cup in particular.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup is turning out to be quite the edition for the underdogs. After only four days of football, we have already witnessed two major upsets.
It is undoubtedly sad that the reigning Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema was ruled out of the World Cup, given this might have been his last chance to shine on the biggest stage. It does not, however, have to be so for Les Bleus.
So today’s big story obviously is Senegal and Tunisia’s spirited performance against their much higher-ranked opponents,
We are into the second of day of the greatest show on Earth, and so far the best thing we have seen on the pitch featured camels,
Yesterday marked the beginning of the quadrennial global circus that is the men’s football World Cup.
My first distinct memory of Baba and photography is from 1982. It was my Khala’s (Aunt) wedding, and Baba was taking pictures. He had recently gotten his hands on the 400 ISO colour film that time, and I remember him telling someone “this is a very high-speed film. 400 ASA!”
Ziauddin Tariq Ali was known to others as a freedom fighter, a cultural activist and a founder trustee of the Liberation War Museum.
