The Monday Miscellany – World Cup Special

It’s been a sentiment expressed many times in the last couple of days; a World Cup without Lionel Messi and/or Cristiano Ronaldo would be poorer for it.

Maybe, but would Argentina really be such a big miss next summer, playing the way they are under the (mis)management of Diego Maradona?  Peru at home was seen as the banker: the match in which Argentina – however badly they had performed against Brazil and Paraguay – would be certain to put their troubles behind them and rattle in a few goals.  A bit like England playing Andorra in Barcelona under Steve McClaren, it wasn’t nearly so simple.

Football, as they say, is a funny ol’ game.  Argentina dominated the first half but went in at half-time goalless.  Peru played them off the park after the break yet Argentina scored twice and won 2-1.  It is ironic that the one constant worry that Argentina seemed to have solved on Saturday evening was that of goalkeeper; Sergio Romero, the Alkmaar stopper, had a fine second half, touching a Scholes-esque volley from Juan Manuel Vargas onto the bar before doing the same in injury time when Rainer Torres shot straight from the kick-off.

Argentina won the match, thanks to a tap-in from Martín Palermo, the ageing giant few other than Maradona believes merits a place in the national squad.  A draw in Uruguay will see them qualify, barring a five-goal victory for Ecuador in Chile.  Chile have qualified but are managed by Marcelo Bielsa, an Argentine, and are therefore unlikely to acquiesce as Ecuador visit Santiago on Wednesday evening.

Argentina’s worry is that if Ecuador do win in Chile they must themselves avoid defeat to Uruguay in the River Plate derby in Montevideo.  Even against opposition as poor as Peru, they looked manifestly without the necessary wherewithal to avoid losing in Uruguay.  The Uruguayans know that a win will seal qualification, possibly at their great rivals’ expense.  Will Gabriel Heinze and Rolando Schiavi – assuming they retain their place – be able to keep the fine attacking duo of Luis Suárez and Diego Forlán at bay?

Argentina are not playing well.  They are not entertaining.  Lionel Messi, the best player in the world in a Barcelona shirt, looks a shadow of himself in the international theatre.  Would they really be missed?

France are in the play-offs, following a routine 5-0 win over the Faroe Islands in Guingamp, as are Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Ireland and Russia, who lost a World Cup qualifying match in Moscow for the first time as Miroslav Klose’s goal gave Germany the win that takes them to the World Cup as usual.  We may also conclude that Portugal’s immediate crisis is over; only a failure to beat Malta at home on Wednesday will see them miss the play-offs.

Those play-offs, to the chagrin of the Irish, will now be seeded, which is fine and follows precedent.  But why did Sepp Blatter imply at the start of the tournament that the draw would be open?  FIFA have moved the goal posts, probably out of fear that France and Portugal would be drawn against each other.  France, Russia, Portugal and Greece are set to be the seeded teams, with Ireland, Bosnia, Ukraine and either Slovakia or Slovenia in the other pot.

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They limited subscriptions to internet coverage of Ukraine v England to one million in order to avoid a technological crash, but only an estimated 300,000 subscriptions were received, translating to about half a million internet viewers.  Had the BBC or ITV bothered to broadcast the match live, they might have got six or seven million for what was, from England’s point of view, essentially a friendly.

Having the match for free, as a Bet365.com customer, I struggled to receive a constant picture, to the extent that I needed to keep reloading the website.  For many people, the problem is not with the broadcast but with the dreadfully poor broadband signal received in many parts of the country.  However much of a success Kentaro want to make out the experiment was, Britain was not ready for it.  For that reason, we need not worry too much about another England match being off the TV any time soon.  The second half chez Martin was spent watching the rugby league.

There was a serious risk of the match being called off, which would really have screwed Kentaro, after the second round of flare-throwing from the stand behind England’s goal.  Mercifully, the misbehaviour abated and the match reached its conclusion which is always preferable to an abandonment, even if England lose.

The incident, as well as some alleged racist chanting, will only provide further ammunition for those of us who believe Ukraine is no more capable of co-hosting Euro 2012 than is the Isle of Wight.

We then had a return of stealth highlights.  You may recall that Setanta chose to show highlights of England’s 4-1 win in Croatia unencrypted – ie, free to anybody with digital television – but so few people knew about it Setanta chose to flog a highlights package on the Thursday to ITV for a song.  On Saturday, the BBC acquired a highlights package at the last minute but were contractually prevented by Kentaro from publicising the fact until the match was over.  Therefore many people will have paid £11.99 to watch a match they believed they could never see for free.

That said, the picture was of a superior quality to those of the Argentina-Peru match once the tropical storm began during the second half.  We were peering through the gloom by the last minute, wondering if our eyes were deceiving us when Hernán Rengifo appeared to have headed Peru’s pyrrhic equalizer.

Then there was the sight of Diego Maradona’s extraordinary celebration of Palermo’s winning goal.  What he meant to do was slide along the sodden ground in a spectacular show of delight and relief.  What he actually did, thanks to his recently increased girth, was resemble something invented by Sir Barnes Wallis.

Had the downpour and high winds come in the first half there would have been serious doubts about whether the match could be completed.

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If Channel 5 – sorry, Five – want a nice schedule-filler on 14 November they could do worse than ring the Egyptian FA for the rights to their final qualification match against Algeria.  Hard hats and earplugs will be required and be sure to take that fragile vase of flowers off the top of the television beforehand.

The match is nearly twenty years to the day from the infamous match that saw Egypt qualify for Italia ‘90.  Then, the first leg of the final round tie had ended goalless in Constantine, before Egypt won the second leg 1-0 in Cairo.  That match, though, was so controversial that only earlier this year did Interpol drop the international arrest warrant taken out against the great Algerian midfielder Lakhdar Belloumi for an assault at a post-match shindig that resulted in Egypt’s team doctor being blinded in one eye.

Said doctor was persuaded, upon Algeria and Egypt being drawn together and each country realizing a home match would have to be staged without trouble lest they incur the wrath of FIFA and a potential points deduction, to drop the charges against Belloumi over nineteen years after the incident, with a hefty compensation payment made.

The last time the sides met before this qualifying campaign was in the 2004 African Cup of Nations in Tunisia, a suitably neutral setting.  That match was won 2-1 by Algeria, courtesy of this sensational winning goal by Hocine Achiou.

One outcome FIFA are desperate not to happen is a win for Egypt by a two-goal margin which would result in both teams being absolutely level in the final Group 3 table.  Assuming FIFA do not still settle such impasses with a glorified rattle – such as the one which separated Holland and Ireland in the second round of the 1990 World Cup, giving Jack Charlton’s side a match with Romania while condemning the catatonic Dutch to a tie with West Germany in Milan – a play-off must then be arranged.  Ideally, such a fixture would be a one-off on neutral territory out of harm’s way.  Saturn, perhaps.

Egypt, though, are struggling for goals and any victory would represent an improvement on their capitulation in Blida earlier this year, when Algeria recorded a 3-1 win.  Of late, established strikers such as Emad Moteab, Mohamed Zidan and Mido have been out of favour or fitness and Amr Zaki has struggled for form.  Egypt’s talented pool of midfielders, particularly Mohamed Aboutrika and Hosny have been the source of goals but they have been against Zambia and Rwanda.

Both countries have talented sides and magnificently boisterous support and would enrich Africa’s first World Cup.  Often it is easy to think only of West African sides bringing colour and verve to a World Cup but with Tunisia looking like qualifying at the expense of Nigeria – who are still alive thanks only to a 93rd minute winner at home to Mozambique on Sunday – and Egypt winning the last two Cups of Nations, could the balance of power be shifting back towards North Africa?

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Qualified Teams (World Cup): Australia; Brazil; Chile; Denmark; England; Germany; Ghana; Holland; Italy; Ivory Coast; Japan; Mexico; North Korea; Paraguay; Serbia; South Africa; South Korea; Spain; United States

Qualified Teams (African Cup of Nations): Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Tunisia