Croatia, Cast in Underdog Role, Has the Look of a Champion
By Rory Smith July 15, 2018 MOSCOW — Something was bothering Croatia’s players and staff members as they reflected on the game that had brought them to the brink of greatness, and on the month that may culminate in what would — by most estimations — be the greatest achievement in World Cup history. Luka Modric, the captain, suggested his team had been “underestimated” by the British news media in the days preceding Croatia’s semifinal win over England. He advised that, in the future, journalists and television analysts should be “more humble, and respect their opponents more.” A perceived lack of respect was something of a theme. Coach Zlatko Dalic, who would scarcely have been recognized in the streets of Zagreb before being handed the reins of the national team when qualification for this tournament was in doubt last year, picked up on it, too. “Maybe England, or the English media, did not show enough respect to the Croatian team,” he said. “We deserved it, especially when you look at the clubs our players play for. Maybe this gave us extra motivation.”
Cristiano Ronaldo produced one of the great World Cup performances as his dramatic late free-kick earned Portugal a draw with Spain in a classic encounter in Sochi. The Real Madrid forward's 88th-minute swerving set-piece soared into the top corner to deny the Spanish a much-needed victory at the end of what has been a painful week for them in the south of Russia. Their build-up had been dominated by the shock departure of Julen Lopetegui as boss two days before the tournament started but by the final whistle at the Fisht Olympic Stadium there was only one name on everyone's lips. Ronaldo. Who else? He had got the opener, too, a penalty in the fourth minute after Nacho felled him in the box, before Diego Costa's bullying low finish dragged Spain back into the match when they were at their most vulnerable. But just before the break David de Gea made a terrible and uncharacteristic error, fumbling a zipping Ronaldo shot through his gloves and over the line. Another dose of adversity for Spain to deal with. Lopetegui's hasty replacement, Fernando Hierro, saw his team respond through Costa again, the Atletico Madrid striker smashing in from Sergio Busquets' knockdown nine minutes after half-time, before Nacho redeemed himself with a stunning volley from the edge of the area that crashed in off both posts and seemed to have given Spain victory. But, as so often, Ronaldo would have the last word. Portugal's captain had spent large parts of the second half as a spectator, powerless to halt Spain's recovery, but he emerged from the shadows of this fascinating spectacle to define the game's result and in doing so become just the fourth player to score at four World Cups. It was a titanic performance, a one-man show from one of the world's best, on the biggest stage of all.
World Cup 2018: France and the Triumph of Negative-Capability Football By: Brian Phillips July 15, 2018 5:10 PM Playing what felt like negative football while looking like a team on the attack was the weird miracle of France’s World Cup run, which culminated in their 4–2 win over Croatia on Sunday. The first goal is the one I think I’ll remember. It wasn’t the pretty one—that would be Paul Pogba’s, which came in the fifty-ninth minute, after a long pass from Pogba to Kylian Mbappé, the visionary precision of which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. And it wasn’t the jaw-dropping one—that would be Mbappé’s own, a few minutes later, when he blasted the ball almost casually into the net from twenty-five yards out. No, the goal that most neatly symbolized France’s World Cup-winning 4–2 victory over Croatia, on Sunday—and, for that matter, Les Bleus’ brilliant, contrary, insolent, dazzling World Cup campaign—was the one that shouldn’t have counted. It was the one they didn’t score. This was a team, after all, that thrived by making beauty incidental. No team in the World Cup possessed more lethal attacking talent. No team scored more gasp-inducing goals. Benjamin Pavard’s screaming volley against Argentina might have been the goal of the tournament. The sight of Mbappé warping down the pitch on the counter, moving so fast that he looked like a trick of the light—like an artifact within the camera lens—might have been its most indelible image. But the impression France gave, in match after match, was that these were weapons it would rather not utilize. Sure, Didier Deschamps’s tactics seemed to say, we can unleash a thousand dragons;
we can turn the world into fire. But why should we? Why, when it’s easier and more confounding to pack the back of the pitch, frustrate you, confuse you, let you wear yourself out, and then tesseract past you when you’re too maddened and tired to expect it? The weird miracle of France’s run through the World Cup was that the team played what looked like negative football while visibly retaining the high-alert, supercharged-ions look of a group that’s on the attack. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was as if José Mourinho had devised a game plan for the Harlem Globetrotters. To appreciate what the French players were doing you had to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. It wasn’t negative football. It was negative-capability football. And it worked.
For that reason, though, it’s hard to imagine that this French victory will transform soccer tactics in the way that Spain’s victory in 2010 did, or Germany’s in 2014. Anyone can copy a style of passing, or a disposition toward pressing on defense. How do you copy a self-negating philosophical principle? France’s tactics looked less like a diagram of movement and more like the realization, on the pitch, of a book of paradoxical koans. You shall triumph when you overcome that which would allow you to triumph. Only by embracing limits will you ever truly be free!