Natasha Chahal
The football games we obsess over are the ones that tell a story and this World Cup has been full of stories. I made it till after midnight waiting for England v. Mexico at 1 a.m. but when it was announced that kick-off would be delayed an hour because of the weather I decided to call it a day and watch in the morning. I not only managed to avoid all other media until I had seen the match but resisted the temptation to skip forwards even at the tensest moments.
A yellow card for Declan Rice in the opening minute suggested the game would live up to the excitement promised in the build-up. Some teams play and some teams fight: Mexico wanted us to feel harassed and pressured, and their pace was exciting to watch. England’s Anthony Gordon, the people’s winger, had the game of his life; Jordan Pickford made some excellent saves, jumping around like a plastic frog from a Christmas cracker; and Jude Bellingham scored twice in five minutes – echoes of Maradona at the Azteca in 1986, though Bellingham’s header really was a header.
Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez brought Mexico level but England, despite being a player short for a nervy last thirty minutes after Jarell Quansah was sent off, secured a place in the quarter-finals with a penalty from Harry Kane. Jordan Henderson spent the entire game on the bench but still managed both to get booked and to be carried off on a stretcher, having broken his arm trying to clear an advertising hoarding. And yet England is still not the tournament’s most embarrassing nation.
That accolade is reserved for the USA. Donald Trump phoned his new best friend, Gianni Infantino, to get Folarin Balogun’s one-match ban – he’d got a red card against Bosnia – overturned. This is an exciting new low for football governing bodies. In an unprecedented move, the ban was rescinded. Balogun has distanced himself from the decision. Belgium’s appeal against the appeal was dismissed. ‘I didn’t know that 5 July was like 1 April at Fifa,’ their manager said.
Trump thought Belgium should be pleased with his intervention. ‘We’re going to have a full team,’ he said, ‘and Belgium is going to have a full team, and you know what? If they beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us … I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020.’ Belgium won 4-1. The team celebrated their fourth goal doing the Trump dance, and not in a Pulisic way. ‘Overturn this,’ they posted on Instagram.
If Mexico had beaten England, I would have wanted them to win the entire tournament. I’m not sure anything could humble Trump but I’d have enjoyed seeing him hand Mexico the trophy on US soil.
The Mexican goalkeeper, Guillermo Ochoa, announced his retirement immediately after the game, as he’d said he would if they lost. He’s forty, older than Lionel Messi but younger than Cristiano Ronaldo, who may have played his last World Cup match losing 1-0 to Spain on Monday. He’s ruled himself out of the tournament in 2030 – the only 45-year-old to have played in a World Cup is the Egyptian goalkeeper Essam El Hadary – but Portugal will be one of the host nations, along with Spain and Morocco, and I wonder if Ronaldo will be able to resist the opportunity, assuming he’s offered it, to make his last World Cup appearance on home soil.
Two players filed in the #NotAllMen section of my brain are Bellingham and Norway’s Erling Haaland, who played together at Borussia Dortmund and both show a refreshing lack of bravado. Asked about France, Haaland said: ‘They are probably going to win against us, they’re probably going to win the whole tournament.’ His strength on the pitch is matched by a gentleness off it. He likes to match his hair ties to his shirt colours and has a penchant for Hermès bags. When a fan asked him on Snapchat if he was a boy or a girl, he replied: ‘My dad is a boy and my mom is a girl. I am a mix.’
Bellingham often uses his post-match press interviews to lift up the opposition players. After he was awarded Man of the Match against Ghana he said one of their players deserved it more. Bellingham and Haaland will meet when England play Norway in the quarter-finals on Saturday. Nice guys don’t always finish last.
Source: London Review of Books
