A month ago, this 48-team World Cup was billed as the equivalent of 104 Super Bowls. That is a lot of promise for one summer to keep.
It has not felt like the Super Bowl at all. The Journal’s Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg found the better comparison: Cinderella runs, a sprawling bracket, survive-and-advance drama nearly every day. This has been March Madness in July.
Now the part that has never happened before. The four teams still standing are the four best-ranked teams in the world. Robinson and Clegg report that the modern World Cup has never put the top-four ranked teams into the semifinals together.
It is more impressive than it sounds. This was the largest field ever, so each of these teams had to survive an extra round. That is one more chance for a fluke or a bad call to knock a favorite out. It knocked out none of them.
Argentina’s coach, Lionel Scaloni, put it this way: “It’s a privileged space in football, not an easy feat. We will try to make it to the end with every last drop of sweat.”
Two different games
France plays Spain in Dallas on Tuesday, and that one is for the purists. The Journal calls it a chess match between the two most technically sophisticated teams left. France has the tournament’s most overpowering attack and a suffocating defense. Kylian Mbappé has eight goals, and France has gone three straight games without conceding.
Spain’s answer is depth. The paper notes Spain’s substitutes are better than the starters on practically any other team in the world. Spain has allowed exactly one goal all tournament.
England plays Argentina in Atlanta on Wednesday, and that one is not chess. It is a grudge match with 40 years of scar tissue. Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal has gone unforgiven by England fans for four decades.
His successor never got a turn until now. In 20 years at the top of the game, Lionel Messi has never faced England. He called it a special match, the first time it has ever happened to him. He is 39. There may not be a second.
Sweden’s replay ban
Tuesday’s paper carried a second soccer story worth a minute. Jared Diamond reports that Sweden is the only place in Europe’s top 30 leagues that still officiates the old-fashioned way — no video review at all. Fans mounted a resistance during the pandemic. Because Swedish clubs are majority-controlled by their fans, the measure never passed.
Their referees are not perfect. Over the first 10 rounds this season, officials themselves reported five situations where a goal was wrongly disallowed or should not have counted. The fans knew the trade and took it anyway. Waiting ages to celebrate a goal, then having it erased, cost more than the mistakes did.
Meanwhile the machines are intervening more, not less. Four years ago in Qatar, only one goal was disallowed after the 70th minute. This summer, five goals after that mark have been erased — four of them after the 90th. Mbappé once stood around for 3 minutes and 11 seconds while officials reviewed an obvious penalty. After all that waiting, he missed it.
Svante Samuelsson, who runs Sweden’s pro divisions, compresses the whole argument into one line. There is no 100% justice, he says, even with replay — you still have to make a decision when you look at the video.
There is no portfolio angle in a semifinal, and we will not invent one. But carry Sweden’s idea out of the stadium. More review is not the same thing as more justice. Remember that the next time someone wants to re-run a decision that already went fine.