 Charlie Competello at the DMZ, Korea, 2018 It was mid-August of 2008. Charlie Competello had just taken his morning run in the toxic mass that passes for air in Beijing. Now he was clean and dressed for business at the Olympic media center where The New York Times had rented an office for 20 people. The first thing he spotted was a forlorn-looking writer. “My laptop died,” the sad sack began. That was me. Charlie’s job was to provide technical services at big events like the Olympics and visit the bureaus all over the world, or wander around the newsroom, available to the people who write and edit the stories. He was one of us. The paper did not get done if Charlie couldn’t fix the machines and the software. This how it was when I was working. Charlie had colleagues like Walt Baranger and Pedro Rosado and Craig Hunter, who knew our jobs better than we did. (One night in Salt Lake City, after getting bad advice from on high, I was told to write something, at midnight, after the Russians fixed a figure-skating final, if you can imagine such a thing. After I stopped throwing furniture and Queens language around the room, I saw Craig standing next to me. He handed me printouts of wire stories, with all the information that would let me play catch-up ball with a midnight column. “I think this will help,” he said.) The Times had our back, with technicians who were journalists. They would find bugs in our software or frayed connections in our laptops – even schmutz clogging the keyboards. Full service. I worked with Charlie a lot -- a lean, alert guy from my home borough of Queens, who reffed basketball games in the winter, for the fun of it. We learned to rely on him the way the old Yankees would rely on Yogi Berra’s untouchable presence on a storm-tossed charter flight. Charlie was never more indispensable than in Beijing in 2008, the first Summer Games to be fully covered 24x7 on the great emerging NYT web site. We were exactly halfway around the world, which meant Michael Phelps was swimming for medals in mid-morning in Beijing but evening in New York. Any given hour, somebody needed Charlie. On that morning in Beijing, Charlie went to the basement where Lenovo had a store, and he purchased a new ThinkPad and then downloaded stuff from my busted laptop, a few hours of work while meeting all the other needs. After his run, I bet Charlie could have used a more quiet morning, but the way that job worked, there was no such thing. The Times had gone into the computer age in the mid-70’s with Howard Angione, who introduced us to the massive Harris terminals in the office. Sometimes the damn things would eat up an entire story, even if you had saved it, and we (I) would pitch a massive fit. Howard’s motto was, “If I can teach Vecsey, I can teach anybody.” And he could. For nearly four decades, I learned to rely on the Times’ techies, whatever their title was. Then I retired after 2011, and now Charlie is retiring, wisely, much younger than I was, which gives him time to relax and then find some other pursuit, or not. He’s a ref. He always makes the right call. I’m out of it now. I just hope the paper still has the backs of the people who go to wars and conventions and Olympics, fixing machines that break down at the worst possible time. * * * Speaking of valued colleagues, did you see the beautiful photo of Aretha Franklin on the front page of Friday’s paper? Her dignity and soulfulness and even her sound came through. That photo was taken by Tyrone Dukes, back in the day. Tyrone was a friend, a young brother who had served in Vietnam and was now a photographer. He could snap Aretha up close at the Apollo in 1971 and he could follow a looting rampage during the blackout of 1977. He died in 1983, at the age of 37. When I saw the credit on the photo, my eyes misted over– not for Aretha but for Tyrone. My thanks to Charlie and Tyrone and all the others, who were part of us.  Aretha Franklin, by Tyrone Dukes, Apollo, 1971
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I’ve been reading a lot of books lately. I think I know why. My latest has been a gripping history of the first settler to advocate local government and polyglot culture among people he labelled “Americans” -- a new concept in the mid-17th Century. Adriaen van der Donck was perhaps the first “New Yorker” – except that it was still named New Amsterdam in his time. Of course, my discovery is a trifle late. The book, “The Island at the Center of the World,” by Russell Shorto, was first published in 2004. I don’t know how I missed it, until our friends Ina and Maury gave us a copy recently. New Yorkers know the names of Peter Minuit and Peter Stuyvesant, executives sent to the New World to regulate commerce for the Dutch West India Company. Van der Donck, trained in the law, was also sent to New Amsterdam to help the company make more money, but he saw the mélange of Dutch and England, French and Spanish, Africans and Native Americans, and he realized they constituted something far more than company workers. Van der Donck was sent as a lawman to another Dutch region, Fort Orange, now Albany, where he learned Indian languages and encouraged trade and visited their villages. Native Americans were somewhat free to bargain, to visit, to argue and even sue. Why don’t we know more about him, and more about the contribution of Dutch society? For that matter, why don’t we know about the petition signed on Dec. 27, 1657, by 31 English settlers, protesting the persecution of Quakers. (Not one signee was Quaker.) And, while they were speaking up for Quakers, the English protesters proclaimed: “The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sonnes of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe (sow? GV) love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage.” The petition was signed in the Long Island village of Vlissinge, today known as Flushing, the home of the Amazing Mets and a bustling Chinatown and the start of a thriving Korean diaspora moving eastward along Northern Blvd. (the roadway of Tom and Daisy Buchanan.) The Flushing Remonstrance – issued at the end of the time of Adriaen van der Donck -- is one of the great statements in the history of North America. It has rarely been more relevant than now, when “sonnes of Adam” are being separated psychologically, as children are grasped from their parents by agents of an increasingly cruel state. In a way, the current regime led me to read this book about Dutch settlers. The puffy, petulant face of a child tyrant -- as well as his dissonant voice, the President as shrill earworm -- have driven me from the news channels (and the repetitiveness of most commentators, and the commercials for old-age “remedies.”) Lately, I have taken to sitting near the evening music on WQXR-FM and reading books. My wife, as part of her family genealogy studies, just finished “Domesday: a Search for the Roots of England,” issued by Michael Wood in 1986, and also a classic television documentary. One more point about books: one of the heroes of Russell Shorto’s book is Charles Gehring, an American scholar, who has spent much of his career on an un-numbered floor in a state building in Albany, translating historic Dutch handwritten documents into contemporary English. This book adds to my immense respect for scholars like Gehring – and Shorto – and Wood. They help us see ugly times in the 21st Century, in perspective. * * * The Flushing Remonstrance: https://www.nyym.org/flushing/remons.html  I hope the folks at Alamy Stock Photos don't mind; I love this drawing of Dutch settlers arriving in New Amsterdam.  The store, circa 1980. When the lights went out in New York City on July 13, 1977, looters took over many streets, breaking into stores, carrying merchandise away.
The next morning, Alan Rubin, the owner of an electronics store at West 98th St. and Broadway, posted a sign in his window: “WE ARE STAYING.” Order was restored from the blackout and the general good will of New York returned. Alan Rubin was but one of thousands of small-business operators committed to making a living in the neighborhoods of the city. Now his daughter, Jen Rubin, has written a book about those days, and the feeling for people and the city that many New Yorkers have. Her book is titled: “We Are Staying: Eighty Years in the Life of a Family, a Store, and a Neighborhood.” Rubin, who lives in Madison, Wis., is a regular on the Moth story-telling series. She comes from an accomplished family -- her mother, Sandi, worked for the Jerusalem Foundation, and her brother, Josh, is an attorney for the city. Regulars on my site will be familiar with frequent posts by Alan Rubin. His daughter uses his quotes in 1977 to explain why he stayed: “I’m responsible for twenty-five families—the families of people that work for me,” Alan Rubin said. “What’s going to happen to them if I pull out? As bad as I got hit, there are other guys that got wiped out. What’s going to happen if they can’t reopen? What can the city and government do to keep people like us from leaving these neighborhoods?” And she writes about his feel for his business, then known as Radio Clinic: “Forty-three years earlier his dad, who had run for his life from Russia, put his stake down on this block and slowly built up the business. When Grandpa became ill with cancer, he passed the business on to his son and son-in-law. This was the family’s business, and my dad wasn’t budging.” Alan Rubin kept his store going and retired in 2006. He and Sandi now live in the Berkshires, where he, a former star goalkeeper for Lehigh University, teaches the position to young people, out of his love for the sport. Jen Rubin’s new book is available through her website: https://www.rubinjen.com/we-are-staying--the-book.html  When Cabrera and Granderson Played for the Mets Out of morbid fascination, I peeked at the Mets Friday night. Much better I should have stayed with the news from the Manafort trial – his wardrobe, his cars, his crooked accountant, his toady work for oligarchs on both sides of the Atlantic. Manafort is going away. Poor Jacob DeGrom; he should go away, too – but to a ball club on which somebody other than the pitcher can drive in runs. He deserves it. He has turned 30 and his club has no hope, no foreseeable future. The other day I wrote the foolscap below, hoping the Mets could keep a facsimile of a major-league pitching staff. But watching this great competitor add to his league-leading earned-run average (1.85) but with a 5-7 won-lost record, I realized he has earned time off for good behavior. With the money they save on his salary, they could sign six or eight other washed-up position players, since they don’t have enough right now. Have a fun weekend, with the Yanks and Red Sox acting like the ‘70s. (my previous screed:) I confess, I was relieved when the Mets did nothing heinous on trading deadline. For Mets fans, this is a plus. I always get morose about rumors of Mets trades, particularly for pitchers. There are so many original sins in Mets history that I have stopped counting. I still hear the voice of my 19-year-old son on the phone, over a certain 1989 trade that will live in infamy. (see below) “It stinks,” the voice said. “It just stinks.” Never mind the great deals by Sandy Alderson that got them to the World Series in 2015. Mets fans just shudder at various trade and waiver and salary-dump deadlines. I was already depressed at the selloffs of Jeurys Familia and Asdúbal Cabrera in the past week. Familia pitched his heart out for the Mets and Cabrera was one of the most professional and social players the Mets have ever had. He was a pleasure to watch. I will mourn him the rest of the season. I thought I might be mourning Jacob DeGrom. His once-laughing face has hardened into the stoic mask of a good soldier, but he still jokes with his pitcher pals on the bench. The Mets never hit for him. I won’t blame him if he forces his way out after the season. I can’t stand to watch his games any more – Sisyphus with shorn locks. Then his own teammates roll the rock down on him. So when the front-office troika held on to the four Mets starters, for the moment, I relaxed and decided I could live with the horrors of the rest of this season. There’s always Weeping Wilmer, el hombre de la gente. Then they lost, 25-4, on Monday. My Mets-text pals Pete W and Brad W and David V all decided that the two-game series would be decided by cumulative scores, like some Champions League soccer playoff. Our sluggers could overcome 25-4, we decided. In fact, they lost, 5-3, on Tuesday. It’s all part of the Met-fan psyche. Nothing lasts for long. The Gil Hodges era. Doc and Darryl. Yoenis Cespedes’ heels. Curtis Granderson, one of the best people ever to play in Flushing. Enjoy the day. Things fall apart. One moment you are enjoying Asdrúbal Cabrera, totally into his hitting and his positioning, with his positive impact on his teammates and even opponents, lifting the helmet off the head of Granderson after a home run. Now they are both gone. The Mets ….to put it simply…are the meaning of life. * * * (Just a few horrors, off the top of my head.) Dec. 10, 1971: Mets trade young Nolan Ryan. June 15, 1977: Mets trade in-prime Tom Seaver. June 19, 1989: Mets trade Roger McDowell – and LennyDykstra – for Juan Samuel. Aug. 27, 1992: Mets trade in-prime David Cone for Jeff Kent in a new-age salary dump. (Below: Eternal Met slugger with glorious launch arc but no contact.)   The Lobby You could feel the rumble of power, all through the building. The New York Daily News had the highest circulation in a country that used to read newspapers. I was privileged to work there two summers – 1956 and 1957 – as a copy boy, doing lowly tasks like fetching a liverwurst sandwich and a container of beer for the sports editor, Charlie Hoerter. Every so often, he would lurch back into the department at 9 or 10 PM and fire me or some other hapless wage slave. “He won’t remember,” my mentors told me, and they were right. The building quivered and shook in the evening, as the presses emitted 2-million copies and dropped them onto powerful trucks idling in the bays. Those trucks would speed them out all over the Northeast, put them on trains, delivering salty murder tales and sassy sports articles and snide editorials aimed at bleeding-heart liberals (like me, and my father, who moonlighted a few nights a week in Sports.) We didn’t like the editorial slant but we lived for inside stuff on our Brooklyn Dodgers, by Dick Young, one of the best baseball writers I have ever read. Dick liked my father, and used to talk respectfully to me, a 17-year-old who asked questions, and later he welcomed me to onto the beat. The Daily News had platoons of world-wise reporters, including pioneer women like Kitty Hanson, who could absolutely make my day by sashaying from the elevator to the news room in a summer dress. Oh, my. Every afternoon, just before 3 PM, I would enter through the vast, high lobby, with its gigantic globe rotating in the middle. Tourists were respectfully quiet but not the printers or copy editors, planning a foray to the Old Seidelburg at 41st and Third. One of the better sports copy editors would go there every time the Milwaukee Braves got to town, to fight with Johnny Logan, the Braves’ shortstop. It was their little ritual. Between the late '50s and early '70s, the Daily News morphed into one damn good New York tabloid, along with New York Newsday. I know because I was a metro reporter for the Times from ‘73 to ‘76, trying to match wits with Daily News and New York Newsday reporters who knew all about crime and schools and City Hall and transit. I have told the story of the best newspaper lead I ever read, three times as good as mine: https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/manafort-and-gates-may-have-lucked-out When the federal government chose to stiff New York during a financial crisis, an editor named William J. Brink (patriarch to other newspaper people named Bill Brink) wrote the best headline any of us will ever see: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/02/nyregion/william-j-brink-editor-is-dead-at-89-credited-with-vivid-headline.html To our chagrin, people stopped reading newspapers when they could convince themselves they were learning something from comedians on late-night tv or underwear guys typing blogs in their basements (like me these days.) The Daily News dwindled, with a smaller staff but a keen eye for NYC phonies and buffoons who somehow fooled the people Out There. Now the Daily News hangs on in some anonymous skyscraper, owned by a company called Tronc, a name that says everything about the kind of person who would own it. (Tronc!!! It sounds like a jackass, braying.) On Monday, this Tronc “laid off” half the newsroom. I know a lot of good people who could swear they have been “fired.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/business/media/tronc-daily-news-layoffs.html I also know some good people who are still working for the New York Daily News, as long as Tronc feels like it. The old building on East 42 St. still has the globe, and the name, but the trucks don’t rumble anymore. We have all lost something. * * * (For more on the Daily News lobby, please see) https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/26867  Jackie Robinson and Dick Young: There were giants on the earth those days  Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner: before the flipping began Okay, kids, the World Cup is over.
We’ve seen leaping keepers and flashy strikers and creative midfielders and dogged defenders. Now let’s take a different look at the sport – the FIFA fixers who gave us a rigged election linking this World Cup in Russia and another one in that soccer hotbed of Qatar in 2022, all of it fueled by bucks, illegal bucks. The dark side of the “sport” is presented in a fascinating new book, “Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World’s Biggest Sports Scandal,” written by Ken Bensinger and published by Simon & Schuster. We already know there was a scandal and a fascinating dawn raid on a plush hotel in Switzerland, nabbing big-shots from FIFA. Bensinger has written a gripping detective story about bringing down some of the crooks in soccer. Maybe because digging away on a subject for weeks and months was never my strong point, I have huge admiration for investigators and reporters who finally uncovered the criminality in FIFA. Much of the dog work was done by Americans from the IRS, the FBI and the Justice Department – that is to say, snoops from the “deep state” who keep churning out material for “fake news.” The funny thing is that a major locus of this crime story is a famous building on Fifth Avenue owned by a slippery real estate and casino guy who went into politics. A lot of shady blokes came and went in that building, including Paul Manafort, campaign chairman and good friend of certain Russian and Ukraine interests, currently a guest of the U.S. government. Another resident high in that glittery edifice was Chuck Blazer, an American soccer official who made a rather good living out of the percentages he quietly sliced out of every television and leasing and rights deal he cut while working for soccer federations. Chuck Blazer loved the game and it clearly loved him. He had one apartment. His cat had another apartment. The man lived large – 400 pounds’ worth, or so. It wasn’t easy to crack FIFA, which is based in Zurich, behind thick walls and layers of pomposity. A career IRS official named Steve Berryman received a tip from a friend that FIFA was involved in suspicious activity, with a lot of it taking place in the United States via the regional soccer federation, known as CONCACAF. Berryman worked with Jared Randall, a young FBI agent, the son of a police officer, and Evan Norris, a prosecutor in the Eastern District of the Justice Department, based in Brooklyn. They contacted Christopher Steele, a private investigator in London (Yes, the same Christopher Steele who has investigated the U.S. election in 2016.) They also contacted Andrew Jennings, a pesky investigative reporter from northern England who was occasionally tossed out of press conferences because he dared ask questions of Sepp Blatter, the oleaginous head of FIFA. The investigators discovered questionable activity up and down the American continent, in comfy little corners of Europe and the island of Trinidad, home of Jack Warner, the shameless head of CONCACAF. I first became aware of Warner in 1989 in Port-of-Spain, where the U.S. played a crucial qualifying match for the upcoming World Cup. There was an overflow crowd because, as it turned out, Warner and his two sons had sold as many 10,000 more tickets than there were places in the stadium – a nice little sideline for the Warner family. We were all lucky that the fans were so kind, and did not riot or stampede. Warner kited money everywhere. He and Chuck Blazer worked together – until they didn’t. Bensinger’s book tells how they were separated by good investigative work by honest people. The work had its price. Berryman, around 50, had to fly home from one European trip to have heart surgery; he got back on the trail as soon as he could. The investigators discovered enough secrets to ruin careers and reputations and illegal livelihoods of dozens of FIFA officials, including Chuck Blazer, already a sick man. He flipped on his old accomplices, which earned him the right to die in a hospital bed instead of a prison in 2017. It is impossible to read about the hard work by Berryman, Randall, Norris and their colleagues and not think about the detail-gathering being done by Robert Mueller and his huge staff, looking into allegations of criminality in the 2016 American election. This fine book gives an insight into what honesty and hard work can discover about too many people who insinuate themselves into our institutions. (Zidane's World Cup final was pretty good, too.) To appreciate what France accomplished, let’s first appreciate what Croatia accomplished. A nation of 4-million battled its way to the finals of the World Cup against a nation of 65-million, with superior training and playing conditions. In the final, Croatia displayed its soccer sense and its tenacity while trailing, 4-1. Croatia’s tough forward, Mario Mandzukic, burning over his inadvertent own goal earlier, rumbled to harass the French keeper, Hugo Lloris, who was being nonchalant with the ball at his feet. Mandzukic stripped him of the ball and plopped it in the goal, and then made sure it was speedily escorted back to midfield, to keep the game moving, to keep hope alive. This was the same mental and physical toughness Croatia had displayed for six previous matches in this World Cup, three of them with 30 minutes of extra time. Croatia never gave up, was chippy at times but with plenty of skill, and was admirable in the 4-2 defeat. Let Croatia’s resolute play be a model for the Third World of football – from the Americas to Asia to Africa. The swelling excitement from Croatian people and players told me there is room for healthy national pride in the World Cup. Teams from Panama, Japan, Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Nigeria came to Russia with hope -- better than many other things any nation could be doing. But the highest achievement in this sport increasingly belongs to the wealthy developed nations of Western Europe, for all their troubles. France, with children of immigrants who left marginal or failing societies, displayed a resourceful, skilled, athletic team of disparate personalities. American fans who love the proud individuals in pro basketball could surely relate to the French faces, the French handshakes, the French jokes going around during the celebration. “Someday, maybe us,” Americans could dare to think to themselves. Now the sport sails into uncharted waters – first in 2022 Qatar, a host of no known soccer asset save for American dollars in unmarked envelopes in the seedy corridors of FIFA gatherings. Then, in 2026, the friendly folks from FIFA will expand the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams, for goodness’ sakes. However, the expansion does have one benefit, as Rory Smith of the New York Times pointed out in his illuminating column: in 2026, the quotas will be expanded for the lesser regions, and just might make room for African nations like Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Ghana as well as that absent western giant, the United States. He’s right – there is no magic cutoff line, based on absolute standards, between deserving and undeserving. Nevertheless, I still hate the expansion. There need to be standards. The qualifying round is more valid when there is a real price for losing. But that is the future. Right now there is an appealing champion, with dashing players all over the formation. People are wondering if this World Cup, with all its upsets and late strikes and departing superstars and new faces, qualifies as best ever. This is a debate I hardly want to enter because everything changes every four years. I covered eight straight World Cups from 1982 through 2010, and have followed the last two around home. Among the highlights: 1982: Brazil might have been the best team I have ever seen in a World Cup – but it lost to seething, under-rated Italy. 1986: Diego Armando Maradona willed and cheated Argentina to the Cup. 1998: Zinedine Zidane, performed ballet in the Stade de France, still the most beautiful final ever played by an individual. 2010: Spain displayed artistic tiki-taka passing – a new era, many of us claimed. 2014: oops, check that: Germany’s system won with its system, its synchronized parts. For that matter, I could make a case for the 1966 World Cup in England, not because of who won but because of the epic film, written by Brian Glanville – maybe the best sports documentary ever made – depicting Pelé and Eusebio, Russians hacking Hungarians, the mysterious North Koreans, and England beating West Germany in the final. The film includes Queen Elizabeth II at Wembley, and ends with the groundskeeper at the end of a long, noisy day: “And at Wembley, Mr. McElroy locks up.” The 2018 World Cup, now over, was pretty good, too.  Only 16 nations -- and an epic soccer documentary  Mario Mandzukic apologizes after Croatia players swarmed over photographer. My pal Gene Palumbo in Salvador recognizes photographer as Yuri Cortez of Salvador. (see 20th Comment below.) This four-day time off for good behavior is welcome. You could watch the third-place match, which I never do, but I did watch one on tv in 2002 -- outsider Turkey beat host South Korea, 3-2 -- two delightful teams -- and then Turkey did one of the nicest and wisest things I have seen: the Turkish players invited the South Korean players to take a victory lap with them. Very cool.
But journalism goes on. I don't have anything smart to say about the final, except that I think France has more weapons and Croatia has edginess and Modric. Over to you. Some colleagues must type, and type. Bloke with the Guardian wrote about the Fox coverage, mostly in studio. Wasn't impressed. And chap with Newsweek wrote about Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated, one of the major voices in U.S, soccer, making a tweet about how Americans asking good questions at the World Cup. (Grant!!!! Tell me you were punked by the creep Sacha Baron Cohen.) To be sure, American writers don't cheer -- when Our Lads make it. But we in the fake-news deep state need to be cool these days. It's so easy to get targeted with the most horrible of all descriptions: Trumpian. We have to be cool til this moment passes. (The links to the two articles, courtesy of my Arsenal pal:) https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jul/13/fox-sports-world-cup-coverage-soccer-criticism http://www.newsweek.com/si-soccer-writer-grant-wahl-mocked-claiming-americans-ask-best-world-cup-1003776 * * * My previous post: If a neutral spectator at home can be exhausted after watching 120-plus minutes, imagine how weary the players feel. Croatia and England ran and jostled and kicked and jostled some more on Wednesday; many of them seemed to be running in quicksand near the end, but the English quicksand was more treacherous, somehow. To the soccer fan, this is the essence of the sport: well-conditioned athletes (just look at them) going hard for two hours. This is why soccer mandates a penalty-kick shootout if the lads cannot break the draw within two hours. That is hard work out there but it is not supposed to be water-boarding. Croatia earned the 2-1 victory by coming from behind and winning its third straight extra-time match. Theoretically, this means Croatia will be more tired than France, which will have an extra day's rest when they meet in the World Cup final on Sunday. I'm so exhausted -- particularly after watching the hideous Mets in person Thursday night -- that I welcome comments, predictions, critiques from out there. Even without a real rooting interest, it is hard work watching these people go at it, with exquisite skills, at full tilt, with the other side whacking away at them. The man-of-the-match (a quaint soccer custom) must surely be the physio who worked on Mario Mandzukic when the Croatian stalwart was lugged off the field in extra time. Somebody pounded and prodded and stretched whatever hurt him, and Mandzukic hobbled back on the field -- and shortly afterward in the 109th minute he came up with the ball near the goal and flicked it in. The other man-of-the-match is the photographer just behind the portable barricades behind the goal. When the Croatian celebration swarmed toward the stands, it toppled onto the man with the green bib. Several Croatian players hugged him and apologized -- and kissed him. Neat. (I thought about my pal, John McDermott, a frequent contributor to these Comments, who was in that World Cup mosh pit for decades. How many World Cups, John?) My England-fan pals have been muttering about Raheem Sterling's lack of a goal for the nation since 2015, but the brain trust had him running the 60-yard dash early and often, getting behind the Croatian defenders. England scored on a gorgeous Beckham-esque free kick by Kieran Trippier in the fifth minute, and Sterling gave Croatia fits -- for 30 minutes. Then England ran out of petrol. The Croatian players were cold and hard and covered Sterling's lanes, and the game turned, and England never got back into any flow. Harry Kane looked like any bloke plodding off to work in the dark and satanic mills. England did not have a playmaker; Croatia had Luka Modric. It was not one of his more spectacular games; all he did was keep the defense in touch with the offense. English legs got thick; so did imaginations. It took 120 minutes -- more like 130 with stoppage time. That is a lot of running. Some musty old Americans still maintain it is not a proper sport because the players don't use their hands. (They do use their hands to tug jerseys. Does that count?) That Croatian physio better get busy from now through Sunday. The English players soon have a few weeks off before next season starts. Tough sport, soccer.
Awaiting kickoff, I thought about our first trip to Europe in 1966. My wife and I started in Brussels, picked up our car, drove south and west.
At lunch time, we stopped in to a country restaurant. The squawking we heard in the courtyard soon turned into poulet à la cannelle – chicken with cinnamon. My wife thinks it was in France. I think it was Belgium. We giggled to ourselves because we were in Europe; in a way we had come home. As the teams entered the field, I began thinking in duplicates. Georges Simenon from Liege wrote endlessly about a police inspector -- in Paris, where he lived for many years. Jacques Brel from Brussels wrote songs from his Flemish background ("Les Flamandes," "Marieke") -- but when his songs were adapted into the immortal English cabaret version, the title was, mais oui, "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Living in Paris." https://masterworksbroadway.com/music/jacques-brel-is-alive-and-well-and-living-in-paris-original-off-broadway-cast-recording-1968/ France had been to two finals, splitting them. Belgium had never been to a final. Before the match, an embrace between Didier Deschamps, French coach, and Thierry Henry, Belgium assistant, comrades from 1998. They’ll always have Stade de France. So much talent on the field -- a vast markup from the quarterfinals. Each team fielded a giant engine, worthy of the train line, the TGV -- Très Grand Vitesse, very high speed: Kylian Mbappé from the Paris suburbs, father from Cameroon, mother from Algeria; Romelu Lugaku from Antwerp, of Congolese ancestry. In the first half, I saw two familiar Premiership foes grappling: Paul Pogba of France and Manchester United; Vincent Kompany (with his Master’s in Business Administration) from Manchester City. The battle of Lancashire, alongside the Neva. Early in the second half, time froze. Samuel Umtiti of France, a defender, moved forward on a corner kick and got inside Marouane Fellaini, the tallest man on the field, for a header into the corner of the goal. They played out the match, ancient neighbors, joined at the hip. At one point I saw alert, versatile Antoine Greizmann of France battling for the ball against alert, versatile Eden Hazard of Belgium. I retrieved a memory of visiting my relatives, Jen and Sam, in southwest France, where they have a home alongside a working farm. (The cows walk outside the windows on their morning forage.) Sam and Jen introduced me to the farmer, who discussed the rules and inequities of the European Union. I heard the farmer say “Bruck-cells!” like a man spitting on the ground. The match ended with a 1-0 victory for France. Deschamps and Henry found each other and embraced again. One Belgian player pumped his arm and shouted “On y va!” to the fans. Let’s go. I hope country restaurants still serve poulet à la cannelle on the border between the two nations. It seems like yesterday but it was 20 years ago last Sunday when Slava Bilic did his corny little death rattle on the lawn at Stade de France.
He had been tapped lightly on the upper chest by Laurent Blanc of France but he fell to the grass like a man hit by a baseball bat – clutching his forehead. That’s how badly the pain was radiating. The ref went for it and showed Blanc a red card, which meant the steady French defender would miss the next match, which, as a result of the French victory, turned out to be the World Cup final. Blanc was on the sidelines, agonizing, when Zinedine Zidane played the most beautiful final in World Cup history in a 3-0 victory over Brazil. In those days, FIFA executives were so busy stuffing their gunnysacks that they had no time to update their product. Nowadays, the ref would hear a voice in his earphone and would trot over to the little VAR unit at the edge of the field to see for himself that Bilic had faked it. That was the last time Croatia was in the semifinals. On Wednesday they will be playing England in the second half of the all-European Union semifinal, after France meets Belgium on Tuesday. Floppers beware. The two men were familiar figures in world soccer. Both played and coached all over the place, intersecting on occasion, like 2011 when Bilic coached the Croatian national team and Blanc coached France and they met in a friendly. The men chatted amiably, but if Bilic has ever apologized, it is between the two of them. At the time, Bilic – a lawyer, by education -- said he was afraid he would get a yellow card for faking, and miss the final, so he exaggerated his motions. After that match, he said he told Blanc he was sorry for causing him to miss the final. “I guess I should have hit him right there,” Blanc said. Flopping is still a plague on the sport, but enlightened physicality in the scrum is done by everybody, both sides. (Where were the Croatian defenders on the late header by Russia on Saturday? All flat-footed, as if stricken by Putin nerve gas.) Bilic employed the tactics of the sport, for better or worse. In the age of VAR, he just might be rewarded with a card for bad acting. Even FIFA, with its Qatar World Cup and its threat to hold a bloated 48-team extravaganza in 2026 gets something right, once in a while. My 1998 column on the Bilic flop is here. It begins: "I once met a man who had died 100 times." https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/10/sports/sports-of-the-times-in-soccer-flopping-is-an-art-form.html For other information on the Bilic-Blanc meeting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaven_Bili%C4%87#West_Ham_United_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Blanc http://www.goal.com/en-india/news/2292/editorials/2011/03/29/2416207/it-was-laurent-blancs-fault-he-missed-the-1998-world-cup https://dailyfootballshow.com/remembering-belgium-france-england-and-croatias-last-trips-to-the-world-cup-semi-finals/
So many loyalties, bouncing around on Saturday in the forlorn USA. We all have our ethnic ties, our favorite superstars, the teams that caught our fancy, our memories of World Cups past. At a family gathering, one bloke from Deepest Pennsylvania wore a t-shirt honoring home-boy Christian Pulisic, who just might be the next Ryan Giggs, the next George Weah. (You know why.) One wannabe scugnizzo in our group wore an Italia 2006 t-shirt, in honor of the Year of the Head Butt. It's all we had. Then all of a sudden in the second match, there emerged a deep and nearly universal feel for the homeland -- well, somebody's homeland. Croatia! Yes, I was surrounded by people rooting for Modric, for Raketic, for the hamstrung keeper. Because I am a little slow, I needed an explanation. I couldn't muster up any hard feelings for Russia, having spent three weeks in Moscow during the Goodwill Games of 1986 and feeling the warmth and passion and generosity and culture and history of the people. It's not the people, I was told. It's Putin. Or more specifically, his new best friend. A cheer for Croatia was a thumbs-down for Trump and his man-crush on the swashbuckling bare-chested heckuva guy from Russia. So here are my reactions to the last two quarterfinal matches: England 2, Sweden 0 The team that kept Italy out -- no hard feelings -- and then beat South Korea, Mexico and Switzerland in the World Cup -- did not have the disruptive force against England. England, disparaged by its own fans for fielding many second-raters from Premiership squads, does have Harry Kane, the hardest-working man in show business (homage to the late James Brown.) Kane is more of a constant threat than many of the superstars now resting at beaches and cottages around the world. Harry Maguire seems able to stick his noggin into the scrum at the right moment, the right angle. It's fun to watch a squad blend on center stage. Croatia 2, Russia 2 (Croatia, 4-3, Penalty Kicks) Russia went as far as it could, on the stimulus of being the home team.When the players encouraged the home crowd to cheer louder, they were acknowledging the lift they got from the noise. Never mind the jokes about Putin fixing the World Cup. There was no poison smeared on umbrella tips or somebody's home doorknob. (That we know of.) Credit the players -- and the fans, who reminded me of emotional people I met in my three weeks there. Croatia's play is a tribute to the ability of small nations (Belgium included) that can nurture skilled and superior athletes and then blend them when they regroup for national-team play. I am increasingly a fan of Luka Modric, the quiet, roaming general who plays back, then arranges the pattern, and often takes the shot himself. He grows on you. On to the semifinals. I assume Trump harbors grudges against all four survivors, for something.  The hostess had a certain motif for the decor. I was watching the England-Colombia match with three friends, all of whom root for England. (Two for Arsenal, one for Chelsea, a whole history of very Brit jibes, way above my head.) The match teetered without a score, and I could hear the misery atoms starting to collide, when one of my pals burst out with: “Meat pie, sausage roll, “Come on England, give us a goal.” Say what? Yes, my friend said, they sing that at England matches. I’ve done most of my sports-watching in England in the media tribune at Wimbledon, listening to English writers supply dialogue (most of it scabrous) when satellite members of the Royal Family hand out the hardware for a championship, chatting up ball persons and line officials and groundskeepers and other commoners. This little lyric was classically English, like London cabbies, with The Knowledge, all addressing each other as “John,” or Ringo, trapped at the bottom of the sea in “Yellow Submarine,” muttering, “I want me mum.” My friend didn’t know all the lyrics, but I found a video featuring Grandad Roberts and his son Elvis, glittery costume and all. The lyrics indicate that the singers slur the second line, into: “Come on England, gi’s a goal.” It also appears that the chant began with supporters of the Oldham club.in Lancashire (My wife and I recently discovered our family lines both have some roots around Oldham. Maybe footy doggerel is in my genes.) This song, if you want to call it that, proves to me that no matter what disaster awaits this current England squad – 1966? Oh, come off it – England will always be hunkering in the ruins, in the Underground, in the rain, defiantly singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” or better yet, “Meat Pie, Sausage Roll.” * * * As for the quarterfinals, my feeling is, you can root any way you want, but whatever happens will be all right. I like France over Uruguay because of Kylian Mbappe coming of age, but as an old guy myself, I appreciate the 71-year-old Uruguay manager, Óscar Tabárez, using a cane because of neuropathy or Guillain-Barre syndrome. I’m rooting for Belgium because of my mother’s two Irish-Belgian cousins who gave their lives in the Belgian Resistance. But their opponent is wearing the same kit that Sócrates and Ronaldo wore, and that works for me. Who really roots against Brazil? Ever? I like Croatia because wiry Luka Modric’s expressive features and offensive flair remind me of Mike Bossy, the great wiry marksman of the old New York Islanders of Stanley Cup glory. (Bossy was a class act when I covered that club.) On the other hand, Russia’s surprising team with its hard work and clutch skills, has forced politics out of the conversation. Finally, I think Sweden has a way of nullifying other teams, and could surely do it to England. I’ve seen Lineker and Gazza and Beckham and Rooney all fall short; hard-working Harry Kane could disappoint, also. But it’s hard to ignore dogged fans who stand in dismal weather and chant foolishness like: “Meat pie, sausage roll, “Come on England, gi’s a goal.” * * * Then there's this: The other Arsenal fan -- whose family actually worked in the arsenal - - sent it. (Vindaloo is an Indian curry, popular after closing time.) France 2, Uruguay 0: The keys to the match were, as Tony Meola pointed out so well on Fox, the fingertip dive by Lloris near the end of the first half and the flub by Musler of Greizmann's knuckling cannonball early in the second. But....the other key was the man who wasn't there, Edinson Cavani, so potent earlier but not able to go because of a calf injury. His absence reduced Suarez to a spectator, out for a jog, not even able to muster up a decent flop, or a bite. France has such a complex and varied team. The World Cup audience, perhaps unfamiliar with most French players, can appreciate them more, game by game. Je me souviens de 1998. J'étais là. Belgium 2, Brazil 1 Maybe the fuss with Neymar is only a sideshow. Beyond the grappling and the histrionics, Belgium was the better side – more stars, more options, more skill, more composure. Even when Kompany and others looked gassed, they held together. Surging teams are fun to watch in any extended playoff. As for Neymar, there is a tendency -- in basketball and hockey, at least – to protect the stars, keep a control on the goonery. But what do you do when some soccer stars have incorporated diving and feigning into their vast skills? He seems to have psyched the officials into suspecting he is faking it all the time – not a great result in a sport in which defenders know how to send an attacker sprawling, with the right use of speed and weight and martial-arts tactics. Neymar should go back and look at the great documentary of the 1966 World Cup -- the Soviet Union hacking away at Hungary, North Korea hacking away at Portugal. (Make your own jokes.) Anyway, the flopping and hacking seem normal to old World Cup hands; to intelligent new eyes, it may seem like pro wrestling. (Paul Gardner is my personal Johnny Appleseed for soccer; he brought his love and knowledge and blessed testiness to this savage land, and continues to write brilliantly in Soccer America. I hope I am allowed to reproduce their work; this is what Soccer America does....every day.) https://www.socceramerica.com/ Monday, July 2, 2018 VAR totally fails to seize its chance for glory by Paul Gardner If ever there was a tricky soccer situation that was waiting to be solved by VAR, surely it was the problem of goalkeeper movement at penalty kicks. Rule 14 is sharp and clear and brooks no misunderstanding: “The defending goalkeeper must remain on the goal line, facing the kicker, between the goal posts until the ball has been kicked.” The goalkeeper must stay on the goal line. He is not allowed to move forward (though he can dance alongthe goal line if he wants to) until after the kick has been made. The difficulty with that is that it requires one person -- the rules give the job to the assistant referee -- to be aware of two actions taking place 12 yards apart at the same instant. Already a difficult assignment, the rules then make it virtually impossible by positioning the AR on the goal line, where -- by looking straight ahead of him he has a clear view of goalkeeper movement, but at best only a slight marginal view, at the fringe of his field of vision, of the penalty kick taker. The AR is being asked to do the impossible. So a compromise has been adopted by the referee and his AR. The goalkeeper is allowed to take one step forward without being penalized -- simply because the AR -- with probably only one second at his disposal -- cannot hope to judge whether that step forward was made after the kick was taken, as it was taken, or before it was taken. Like any compromise, it is far from perfect, but it has one over-riding advantage: it is practical, it works. And like all compromises it is open to abuse. Once goalkeepers know they will not be penalized for that first step, their instincts tell them to make the step as early as possible. This they have done, and by and large they get away with it. No call. (No special shame attaches to goalkeepers over this -- it is, I think, part of every player’s nature to push the rules to the limit, and beyond, to find out just how far they can go). Three major European titles have been won in the past decades by flagrantly illegal goalkeeper movement during shootouts. Not even the defeated teams have protested. The compromise has evolved into a conspiracy of silence. What was once acceptable has become objectionable. A compromise to make the rules work is now a subterfuge to undermine those rules. Now arrives VAR, with everything necessary to set things aright. An immediate review of replays showing both kicker and keeper at the exact crucial moment. One can say, with total truth, that for this situation, VAR has rendered the AR totally irrelevant. His viewpoint is not needed now, VAR can quickly do everything. During the Croatia-Denmark game, it had the perfect opportunity to do just that. It failed calamitously. So atrociously comprehensive was its failure that I can’t even say it made a mess of things. Its failure was simply that, given the perfect opportunity to prove its value, it failed to do anything at all. The game had been a rather grim, frustrating affair. Croatia, capable no doubt of playing the better soccer, rarely managed to do so. Denmark played the spoiler role to perfection and obviously rattled the Croatians. The game lumbered into overtime and with just four minutes left, referee Nestor Pitana of Argentina awarded Croatia a penalty. Luka Modric stepped up to take the kick -- and Denmark’s goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel moved early. But this was too early, too noticeable. Sitting here in New York I was immediately sure this was excessive. Not just me -- I have checked with journalist colleagues watching in England, in Italy, and the USA -- all three tell me that their immediate reaction was the same as mine: Schmeichel had moved way too early. Schmeichel made the save and was duly praised for being “brilliant.” Neither referee Pitana nor his AR saw anything wrong. No appeal was made to VAR. The official FIFA “VAR Handbook” specifically refers to “Penalty Kicks and Kicks from the Mark,” stating that “The Referee can initiate a review for an offense by the goalkeeper or kicker which directly affects the outcome of the penalty kick and thus whether a goal is scored. If an offense is clearly identified, the necessary discipline action must also be taken.” The failure of the VAR to get involved here defies belief. Schmeichel’s movement was so blatant (I’m using that word from the rulebook, which says that the AR must wave his flag “if the goalkeeper blatantly moves off his line before the ball is kicked”) that it didn’t really need any technology to spot it. For once the human eye served very well. (Incidentally, I suspect that the number of people, never mind goalkeepers, who have actually seen a VAR wave his flag on these occasions is minuscule -- I have never seen it, and I watch out for such events). My feeling that I had seen things correctly from merely watching the live action was confirmed by repeated viewings of the replays -- see below -- which show Schmeichel with both feet off the goal line, his left foot about a yard forward as Modric is about to kick the ball. Thus Schmeichel went unpunished -- a “clear and obvious error” by the referee and his AR -- precisely the type of situation that VAR is designed, and is fully equipped, to recognize and to correct. VAR should have been immediately involved here. The penalty kick should have been retaken. Schmeichel, as stipulated in Rule 14, should have been yellow-carded. VAR was given a wonderful opportunity to shine, to bring long-needed clarity to a murky area. It failed -- abysmally -- to seize the moment. (By Paul Gardner)  Schmeichel on the move. Photo, with thanks to Soccer America.  It's 2018. This is Kylian Mbappe Russia always did defend well. Napoleon found out after his Grande Armée spent five months, two weeks and six days in Russia in 1812. And the Siege of Leningrad in World War Two lasted 872 days and cost a million Russian lives, but the visitors went home.
So was that really a shocker that a Spanish team, far from its prime, far from home, fumbled around for 120 minutes on Sunday, inducing an own goal by a stalwart Russian defender, coughing up one penalty kick goal, and ultimately failing via dreaded penalty kicks? Russia did what it had to do, letting the visitors complete over 1,000 passes in two futile hours, and waiting for the deluge and the amped-up crowd to take over. That’s an upset? By the same token is it really so terrible that Germany, the defending champion, in name, anyway, could not get out of the group stage, and Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – “the two best players in the world today,” as the saying goes – went home after Saturday? La Liga starts on Aug. 18. Buen descanso, senores. Better teams, hungrier teams, younger teams, faster teams, are staying in Russia for a while. How bad is that? Spain did not resemble the squad that charmed in the 2010 World Cup, playing tiki-taka while the Dutch, from a nation that once invented Total Football, resorted to thugging it up. But that was eight years ago. Spain on Sunday seemed to be a rewrite of the Pirandello play, “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” This one was, “Ten Field Players in Search of a Striker.” The Spanish manager did not start Andrés Iniesta, perhaps because of age or injury, or perhaps to avoid having the giant Artem Dzyuba beat up on him, but as soon as Dzyuba came clumping off the field after 70 minutes or so (and one PK), here came Iniesta. Spain began moving the ball better around the periphery, but Iniesta could never establish his rhythm, could never pick the lock. The shootout? Skill and nerves and luck. Sounds like any great sport, to me. Reminder: every World Cup exists on its own. Don’t listen to the “experts,” or even dilettantes like me, who see patterns, reminders of old days. The only thing that exists is 2018, with Kylian Mbappe of France out-racing a relay team of Argentines on Saturday, then turning the corner from the future to the present. It must be nice to be 19, and run like that, and smile like that.
When I was covering the World Cup -- eight of them -- I always welcomed the day between rounds as a chance to sleep, move on to the next town, get laundry done. Stuff like that.
Watching at home, there is an empty feeling to the one-day space between the group stage and the knockout rounds. While sizing up the teams that survived, I want to take one more day to think about the teams that gave me pleasure but have now gone home. I already miss the two African teams that supplied so much energy and charisma, but could not hold on for 90-plus minutes. I will miss the field leader of Nigeria, John Obi Mikel, and the manager of Senegal, Aliou Cissé, who roamed the sidelines with his Richard Pryor eyes, the only African manager of the 32. Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia are also gone. Egypt was the biggest loser of all, making its base in the wild-east Russian province of Chechnya, with its opportunistic leader who glommed onto Mohamed Salah, the pride of Egypt, the star of Liverpool. Being used so blatantly by a regional lord (a friend of Putin) and the moronic Egyptian federation apparently nettled Salah so badly that he is considering not playing for his homeland any more. Nice going. I’ll miss the two vecinos – neighbors of the U.S. – Costa Rica and Panama, who managed to qualify ahead of the hapless soccer giant of the north. And I’ll miss the tireless and combative players of South Korea, who took Germany down in the third and final game. Will I miss Germany? I slobbered all over them after their reflexive comeback against Sweden in the second match, but ignored warning signs that their expiration date had expired. * * * So much for the departed. Of the 16 survivors, I am rooting for two more vecinos, Colombia and Mexico. (How can I not love El Tri, with its opportunistic star nicknamed Chucky, from the movie character with the fiendish grin?) I always love Brazil, going back to the great, failed team of Sócrates in 1982, and I love Spain and Andres Iniesta, trying to hang on, plus France, just because, but also in homage to the glorious final of Zidane in 1998. And then there are the two survivors from Thursday’s last group: England has more energy than I’ve ever seen from an English squad, and Belgium won its third match with its three offensive stars all being rested, and a sub made a jitterbug goal that sunk England. I was conflicted with England-Belgium. My mom, part Irish, was born in England. There’s that. And she mourned her two Belgian-Irish cousins from Brussels who died young after being caught participating in the Resistance. So there's that. I’m rooting for Belgium because of the family connection, and because they have never won, and because I got to see Vincent Kompany, one of my all-time favorite defenders and soccer adults, who was honored with a quarter-hour cameo on Thursday, playing on knees “turned to sand,” as one of my Euro pals put it. * * * Who else won in the group stage of the 2018 World Cup? I’m choosing the Fox broadcasting team of J.P. Dellacamera and Tony Meola, because (a) I know them, and (b) because they are soccer people who do not talk too much. J.P and Tony let the game breathe, like many European broadcasters. They don’t feel the very American need to blather every personal fact about every player that was discussed in the pre-game production meeting. Meola has grown into this profession, dissecting the game, not just the keepers. (And he was a good one, playing in 1990 and 1994, and a backup in 2002.) Honorable mention goes to Jorge Perez-Navarro and Mariano Trujillo, totally bilingual and working in English, who supply just enough Latin flavor to make it different, and enjoyable. Trujillo, a former player from Mexico, has the charming tendency to excuse some players who try something that fails. "But that’s all right,” he says, transmitting the enlightened optimism of players who keep trying stuff and fail, until something works, which, come to think of it, is the essence of this grand sport. Now, on to the knockout round.  Messi before 2014 final; in his own world  Jaime Penedo, Panama I've kind of gotten hooked on the strange little ritual of the World Cup, when both teams line up in the tunnel, side by side, shuffling around for a minute or two before marching on to the field. I imagine what the players are thinking – planning their best I’m-mortally-wounded dive, or discreetly eyeing their opponents. (“Look at the muscles on that dude.”) On Tuesday I saw John Obi Mikel of Nigeria (6 feet, 2 inches) and Lionel Messi (5 feet, 7 inches, at most) exchange what looked like an authentic hug, between two captains, two No. 10s. I assumed they go back a ways – and they do. But I really got into the lineup sideshow a few days ago, watching the Panama keeper, Jaime Penedo. One of the features of the lineup is that each player marches onto the pitch accompanied by a child. (You guessed it, it’s a promotion, for the fast-food empire that has contributed to the fattening of children, adults, and a chief executive who appears to be neither. The company recruits kids from all over the world to march in this brief ceremony before the lads start whacking away at each other.) Penedo, a stranger to me, turned to a young girl of maybe 10 or so and began chatting, just like a real human being, not a sports star. He was talking and smiling, and as they marched onto the field, the little girl glanced up at the man in the gaudy outfit, as if thinking, “Did he just talk to me?” I looked him up – 36 years old, been everywhere, including a few years with Bruce Arena and the Los Angeles Galaxy, now at Dinamo Bucharest. I don’t know what language he spoke to the young girl; one article says he speaks some English, not fluently. jamesmontague.com/2018/01/27/tifo-interview-with-panama-goalkeeper-jaime-penedo/ If there were such a thing as reward for grace in this world, Penedo would have turned in what the British soccer writers call “a clean sheet” – a shutout, that is. But life is not like that. Penedo was peppered early and often in a 6-1 loss to England and Panama's first World Cup ever will end on Thursday against Tunisia. As for Mikel and Messi. It’s true, they go back a ways, to 2005, in the World Youth Tournament, when Mikel seemed to be outplaying Messi for the Golden Ball, as best player in the tournament, until they met in the final, and Argentina won. “Yeah, Messi stole the Golden Ball off me,” Mikel told the Guardian recently, raving about Messi as not being human. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/25/mikel-john-obi-lionel-messi-nigeria-argentina-world-cup They have co-existed at the top tier of European football for more than a decade, with Mikel having a long run at Chelsea (he’s now playing in China) and Messi a lifer at Barcelona.  Mikel, Messi,another time On Tuesday, Mikel gallantly held his team together (and calmed a few younger teammates.) But Messi took a gorgeous pass and found the upper corner of the goal to put Argentina ahead in the 14th minute. Nigeria tied the match, needing only a draw to advance, but could not find a more conservative gear for spreading the ball around the pitch, killing seconds off the clock.
I realized I had seen this match before – 1994, in Massachusetts, when Roberto Baggio saved Italy (remember Italy?) with two very late goals against Nigeria. Twenty-four years later, the very same lack of patience cost Nigeria all over again, in the 86th minute. So Messi advances; Mikel’s World Cup is over. More players will line up in the tunnel, escorting a child onto the field, maybe finding the grace to smile and chat.  Thanks to Hannah Mckay of Reuters for this gorgeous shot That's exactly what I said in the final frantic minutes of Germany-Sweden.
Like watching some great beast of a thoroughbred like Secretariat turn on the burners into the home stretch. You know it is in there. Like watching Bill Russell lock eyes with K.C. Jones with a few minutes left. (Sorry for the dated references, but I have my sporting examples-for-life.) 'They never give up. They never get an attitude.' I said that to my wife in the TV den on Saturday afternoon, watching the defending champions play with a man down -- dumb foul by Boateng, but they did not let it kill them. I am doing my watching in our den this week; no pubs right now, no crowds. My wife watches with me, here and there. She witnessed Zidane's final in '98, in the Stade de France, down low, at that end, for his two headers; that would make anybody a fan for life. Germany was in desperate condition Saturday, down by a goal. A draw would barely keep it alive, but then Germany scored in the 48th minute, and then attacked in the final 13 minutes of regulation and stoppage time, one man down, going for it, going for it. And Toni Kroos put in a perfect curling shot from a hard angle on the left side. Talent and will. I've seen them over the last nine World Cups -- relentless, talented, smart, with only one really nasty play that sticks in my mind -- Toni Schumacher's ugly mugging of Patrick Battiston in 1982. World Cup soccer should be viewed beyond old national stereotypes. I've watched them win a World Cup in 1990 as West Germany and another in 2014 as Germany, and do not equate the team with ancient history or the admirable western democracy it is today, with its beautiful anthem, music by Haydn. The football pitch is a place onto itself. In the modern imbalance of soccer talent and expertise and confidence and money, Germany is the old New York Yankees, with Yogi swinging from his ankles, the old Montreal Canadiens (who still ought to be seeded into the finals of the Stanley Cup ever year), the old Notre Dame. They may lose, even to relentless and physical South Korea on Wednesday. But don't ever count them out. Not when they are a goal down, or a player down. Like a horse race: "Here...comes Germany."
The benign man-in-the-moon face of Andrés Iniesta has aged, showing new crevices and patches of gray through our telescope. He has already left Barcelona, to play a stint at Vissel Kobe, which is in Japan, not Catalonia. He is leaving a calling card in this World Cup, the knack of completing passes and creating goals at the height of competition. Take a good look at Iniesta, before his lunar orbit takes him across the world. Iniesta – 5 foot, 7 inches – has been the engine of one of the great clubs of the world, playing a few matches for Barca in 2002-3 and becoming a regular in 2004-5, and also helping make Spain the World Cup champion in 2010, with his goal in the 116th minute, four minutes from the dreaded shootout. Iconic players do not always win World Cups, even players of great style and imagination. Just a few names off the top of my addled brain: Sócrates, Platini, Baggio. Any given World Cup can be the Last Chance Saloon in the western movies. In that chippy 2010 final, Iniesta stopped passing for a moment and poked a goal past a Dutch keeper. In a game or five he will bid adios (or adéu, in Catalan) and go to Japan. But first there is this World Cup. Iniesta helped Spain make 803 passes in its first 90 minutes against Portugal, a draw because of Cristiano Ronald. Iniesta then helped Spain make 789 passes in a victory over Iran. One of those passes found Diego Costa in front of the goal, and with the help of a pinball exchange with a frantic defender, Costa scored. Iniesta then came off early, to rest his 34-year-old body. Spain plays Morocco on Monday. The best way to appreciate Iniesta is to see what Lionel Messi is not, without him. Messi is one of the great players of our time, a scoring weapon, who intelligently finds the right spot, or has the right spot find him. However, to appreciate Messi, one must also appreciate the player who was almost always there in his club years at Barca. Messi first played for Barca in 2004-5 but became a regular in 2006-7. Many of his goals were set up by the tiki-taka style, with its Dutch roots, adopted by Barca and also the Spanish national team. On the current Argentina team, there is no dark Maradona will to cheat and win, no style, and no Iniesta. Argentina went down hard, 3-0, to Croatia on Thursday. Croatia came out nasty, and Argentina had no answer but to get nasty back. In all that foot-stomping and spine-jangling, poor Lionel Messi looked lost. His most definitive move all day was bolting off the field and into the runway after the final whistle. Argentina’s next match is Tuesday against Nigeria. Barring some statistical madness, Argentina and Messi will then be done. He turns 31 on June 24, and this could be it for him in the World Cup. Lionel Messi will always have Barcelona -- and, dare I say it, Andrés Iniesta. * * * A very knowledgeable and layered look at Messi and Argentina, from Rory Smith, the British expert now writing for the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/sports/world-cup/argentina-lionel-messi.html  Two continents have essentially been outsiders at the World Cups, going back to 1930 – Asia and Africa. Both continents had reason to celebrate on Tuesday, with Japan beating Colombia, 2-1, in the first match and Senegal beating Poland, 2-1, in the second. Russia steamrollered Egypt, 3-1, in the third.
All three matches had defensive breakdowns – a Colombia defender stuck out his arm to block a shot in the first match (bad instinct), a Polish defender was struck by his teammates’ deflection (bad luck) and an Egyptian player ran into a brick wall named Dzyuba and a ball deflected off him (bad choice of brick walls.) I enjoyed seeing Senegal back in the World Cup for the first time since 2002, when it stunned France, the defending champion, in the opening match in Seoul. Fast and powerful, Senegal was hailed in 2002 as the arrival, finally, of Africa as a factor in the World Cup. Then again, we have heard this before – about Nigeria, about Cameroon, about Ghana, about several nations from northern Africa. Who can forget Roger Milla, as ancient as his continent, coming off the bench for Cameroon in Italy in 1990, scoring four goals, and then dancing, each time? I hear reasonable people worry about the nationalistic aspect of the World Cup. My position is, what better reason to chant and cheer for a nation (or an entire continent) than a mere football tournament? Get it out of the system. Plus, nationalism is infectious. One becomes an instant citizen, like me hearing the beautiful anthems of Canada, France, Germany, Russia. On Tuesday, the green-clad Senegalese lined up at midfield for the anthem, called “Pincez Tous vos Koras, Frappez les Balafons.” I looked it up: “koras” (a harp-lute) and “balafons” (a xylophone-type instrument) are native to Senegal, and can be used in the playing of the anthem. The composer was Herbert Pepper and the words were by Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. The English translation: Everyone strum your koras, strike the balafons. The red lion has roared. The tamer of the savannah Has leapt forward, Dispelling the darkness. Sunlight on our terrors, sunlight on our hope. Stand up, brothers, here is Africa assembled. Fibres of my green heart, Shoulder to shoulder, my more-than-brothers, O Senegalese, arise! Join sea and springs, join steppe and forest! Hail mother Africa, hail mother Africa. I was doubly touched when I spotted the Senegalese manager, Aliou Cissé, who played on that 2002 team that stunned France and reached the knockout round. He (amassed two yellow cards along the way.) Cissé is the only black manager among 32 in this World Cup, and, pecking around on the Web a bit, I cannot find another black leader in previous World Cups. I was also delighted by gents wearing white body paint and tricolor pants and soft caps, with S-E-N-E-G-A-L painted across their chests. I flashed back to waiting in railroad stations in France and Korea, cheered by the sweetness of African fans. However, Africa has not become a power in the World Cup -- merely the supply line for the great leagues of Europe. (These Senegalese players earn their living mostly in England and France.) Cissé worked the sideline sporting dreadlocks and eyeglasses. The Senegalese players ran and jostled, with Ligue 1 and Premiership skills. May their numbers increase. After a long day came the delayed debut of Mohamed Salah of Egypt, recuperating from a shoulder injury. The star of Liverpool scored a late penalty kick, solemnly kissing the ball and the earth and praying to the heavens, Muslim style. His first World Cup match. His first World Cup goal. More to come. But we say that every four years. Anthony Scaramucci went to the same school as my kids. He was known for his doting family, a block or two from the Main Street School. They made sure he was well-fed and well-dressed and prepared for the day in class. Their love and attention gave him a disciplined start that led him to a great education and business success. I don’t know when the Scaramuccis and Defeos came to the United States, and from what part of Italy. Not important. But I do know the prejudice and social barriers that Italians faced – pretty much the same faced by people from Ireland. (I can say that; along with my beloved American passport, I carry an Irish passport, courtesy of my maternal grandmother.) I have run into Scaramucci a time or two since he made a success of himself – well-spoken, polite, adult. I cannot process that with the profane, preening Trumpite I saw in his raucous 10-day cup of coffee in the White House. Maybe I am hallucinating, but something in Anthony Scaramucci’s upbringing just may have clicked in over the weekend, when he strongly criticized the current policy of President Trump to separate Latino children from the adults who have run into migration laws. Yes, yes, I know, the main issue began as stopping illegal migration, a valid goal, but now the world has seen and heard children, ripped from their protectors, crying in cages. And the world has seen the President of the United States as a movie villain, straight out of James Bond. I watched Trump on Monday, cruelly maintaining that this hurts him as much as it hurts those illegal kids, and I thought to myself, "This guy is enjoying himself immensely." (Somebody I know thinks it is Trump's obsession to destroy anything connected to Barack Obama.) "It's an atrocious policy," Scaramucci told Alisyn Camerota on CNN. "It's inhumane. It's offensive to the average American." Apparently still lusting to get back into the White House, Scaramucci blamed Trump “advisors” for steering him wrong about putting crying children into makeshift holding facilities. Was Scaramucci being political, trying to give Trump an out by blaming those silly little advisors to whom he listens so regularly? Or was he feeling some twinge of vestigial compassion, so out of fashion in this regime, when scoundrels like Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders quote the Bible to justify separating adults and children? "The immediate, remedial need is to change this right now," Scaramucci said. People on Twitter and elsewhere have savaged Scaramucci for getting into this dialogue. Others have praised him. I cannot read into his heart. I don’t know how often he gets back to Port Washington, where a lot of his family still lives. (See Laura Vecsey’s chat with Anthony’s mother and uncle in our town.) I bet Scaramucci gets back often enough to see the number of Central American people who work and pray and socialize and play – and send their children to the wonderful public schools, the same way Scaramucci’s family did with him. Three of my grand-children have been going to the local high school in recent years. I see some of their classmates – kids with jobs in their mid teens, excellent use of English, some of them heading for college, just like previous waves of newcomers. Only Anthony Scaramucci knows why he chose to urge the president to change the “policy.” (As did all five living First Ladies.) I hope he might see it as living up to the way he was raised, by his family and by the community. -------------------------------------------------- Want to cite the Prophet Isaiah and others about this hostage-taking by Trump? Here is a message from the Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, general secretary of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church: https://www.umcjustice.org/news-and-stories/a-shocking-violation-of-the-spirit-of-the-gospel-697 ------------------------------------------------------------  Mexicanos visitan el corazón de Moscú In any World Cup, I would be rooting for nuestros vecinos in the first round. This time around, that means Panama and Costa Rica and Mexico, plus Colombia, which is not in our federation, but surely part of our world. Mexico had a memorable opening match on Sunday, scoring early and holding on for a 1-0 victory over Germany, the defending champions. On the television, I saw a throng of green-shirted fans, from the large comfortable class of that complicated North American nation, rooting for the spirited, well-coached Mexican squad to round out the upset. The knockout rounds will take care of themselves. The old champs are always with us, or usually. I have a strong feeling for the players from the Americas who resemble guys who live and work in my suburb outside New York, whose sons and daughters are going to school with my grandkids – plus, I think about my late doctor, Ken Ewing, former defender and captain of Guatemala back in the day. Mis vecinos. Plus, these are not normal circumstances. Not since I witnessed the President of the United States rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of building a wall, and holding children hostage to his scheme. Not since I witnessed the garden-gnome of an attorney general quoting the Bible to justify ripping infants away from the breast of their mothers, to teach those people a lesson. I am rooting for my neighbors because I am ashamed of the way the current rulers of my country are using them as instruments of prejudice and retribution. The squads from Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean do not normally need extra motivation against the U.S. They come to every match with jaws out, eyes glaring, as if they were making up for the cruelty of the major fruit companies, or the invasions in the Mexican-American war, or Landon Donovan urinating on a bush during a practice session. Mexico keeps qualifying for the World Cup – FIFA has a generous quota for qualifiers from the region – but does not fare well in the knockout rounds. The Yanks humbled El Tri, dos a cero, in the round of 16 in 2002 and Mexico has never quite regained its swagger in that rivalry. For this World Cup, the U.S. has backslid right out of the field. Panama will play Belgium (my long-range hope to win it all) on Monday -- a tug of rival loyalties. On Sunday Costa Rica lost to Serbia, and later Mexico held steady against a Germany team that seemed to regard the match as a tuneup. What a sight in the end: the mobile keeper, Manuel Neuer, roaming upfield to join the desperate scrum for one extra head or foot on a stray ball, which never happened. The success by El Tri in far-off Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow will not affect the hardened heart of the cruel pharaoh. Little brown children remain separated from their parents. Not that it helps, but until further notice I am rooting for mis vecinos to keep going. * * * (Enjoy the great Andres Cantor calling the goal by Hirving Lozano. Watch how Lozano evades Mesut Ozil at the end of a stunning counter-attack. Golllllllll!)  Bad day at the office Bad timing by Leo. On the day after Cristiano Ronaldo made three goals to draw against Spain, Messi had to take a penalty kick against Iceland, the smallest nation ever to play in the World Cup.
It was the same day that my friend Jeffrey Marcus, in his World Cup site called The Banter, picked up an article from Bleacher Report that explained http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2764081-why-leo-messi-is-so-good-at-free-kicks-but-so-average-at-penalties. It was only a few days since I was questioned by the son of an American friend now living overseas about my general feeling that Messi is not the great transforming player like, well, I could name Ronaldo or Maradona or Zidane. All that was floating around Sparta Stadium in Moscow when Messi stepped up to take a penalty in the 64th minute. Wearing his lime-green shoes and his humble stare, he plopped the ball well within range of the Iceland keeper, who swatted it away. Everybody – the fans, the American broadcasters, and chubby old Diego Armando Maradona, holding a cigar in the stands – knew the deal. Leon is 30. (Of course, Ronaldo is 34.) Maradona would have done something. Feigned a cyber-attack by Iceland. Fell clutching various parts of his body. Demanded a do-over. Punched the ball -- harder now with the unobtrusive and useful VAR instant replay. Messi is a beautiful player and strategist, gliding through traffic, seeing the flow, emerging from nowhere to uncoil like some exotic tropical serpent. But from the penalty line, not so great. Other great players have hated to take penalties – Roberto Baggio and Mia Hamm, to name two. In the soon-to-be-discarded four-team group format, Argentina lives, and so does Iceland, which has a magnificent point from its first World Cup match, ever. Its players were sturdy and intelligent and incessant, schooled in the leagues of Europe. Argentina has had bad openers before. A leaper from Cameroon beat them in the first match, as defending champions, in 1990. But they mauled and clawed and dove their way to the final, anyway. The World Cup is a long haul. The first match, the group stage, a familiar pace, is for charming outsiders, while superstars struggle to establish themselves. I stand by my evaluation of Messi a week or two ago. Onward. The Sunday Metropolitan section of the Times asked me to write about watching the World Cup in New York. With the help of some very good editors, I have this piece in this Sunday's section:
www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/nyregion/watch-world-cup-new-york.html The Metropolitan section on line is also listing places to eat and drink and maybe even make merry, depending on the score, during this month-long World Cup: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/13/nyregion/where-to-watch-world-cup-nyc.html  Mohamed Salah: Saved Shoulder, Wasn't Bitten, But Witnessed Late Header Back a decade or three, American sports fans (and, dare I say it, the flower of the American sporting press) used to characterize soccer (a/k/a The Real Football) as an un-American pastime reeking from scoreless ties (plus the reliance on feet, how grubby.)
However, on Friday, Americans watched a match that was scoreless for 88 desperate minutes – and I think it was impossible to miss the drama. For the breakfast show, direct from Yekaturinburg (where the last tsar and his Romanov family were executed in 1918, but I doubt the sportscasters made much of that on Friday), Egypt tried to salvage a draw against Uruguay, a perennial World Cup qualifier. This was a classic World Cup opening match, when panic and caution often collide – four teams playing in their own little playpen, to eliminate one or two teams from the next round. Uruguay expected to win the match and the group; Egypt wanted to survive, perhaps with 1 point for a draw. This is the format that has produced some yawners between teams that did not want to lose, but this match had a sub-plot: Egypt will then play the two other teams in the group, Russia and Saudi Arabia, not as good as Uruguay. Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive. I need to add that this four-team group format is about to be scuttled by the friendly folks from FIFA, when they expand their quadrennial jamboree from 32 to 48 teams (worth perhaps an extra $1-billion) when the 2026 World Cup is held in Canada, Mexico and the land of the Big Mac and the infamous 32-ouncer. For this World Cup, some teams may seem to waltz in the group stage, but nobody wants to play their hearts out and then lose in the 89th minute as Egypt did on Friday, winning hearts but blowing the 1 point. One yielded free kick, one leap by a Uruguayan player above two defenders, one exquisite header, and Egypt lost the point – but kept a hopeful goal differential – and most likely fans will now root for them to score and win against Russia and then Saudi Arabia. (I am leaving all snarky geopolitical comments out of it.) Another subplot was that the two managers were geezers – Oscar Tabarez of Uruguay, age 71 and leaning on a cane because of Guillain-Barre syndrome, and Hector Cúper of Egypt, age 62. Cúper had tantalized fans with talk that Mohamed Salah, the superstar for Liverpool, whose shoulder was tactically mauled by Sergio Ramos of Real Madrid early in the Champions League final, would be ready Friday, but Salah never even warmed up. Perhaps Cúper was keeping Salah away from Luis Suárez, the Hannibal Lecter of footballers, who has bitten at least three opponents over the years. Suárez flashed his choppers; Salah watched in tears as Uruguay scored late. The touch-by-touch drama made for compelling soccer, even here in the States. And in the familiar four-team group format, the drama and the tactics are just beginning.
(I am thinking of leaving this World Cup match post up for a while. Please feel free to chime in, whenever. The NYT is doing a great job from Russia. And my former Times soccer pal, Jeffrey Marcus, now free-lancing, has his own learned World Cup newsletter. To sign up: http://jointhebanter.com/about/) June 14. Russia 5, Saudi Arabia 0. Knowing nothing about either team, I put on Fox five minutes before kickoff. I noticed that Russia had a defender named Fernandes (from Sao Caetano del Sur, Brazil) and a defender named Ignashevich whose face looks like hardened cement and who does not sing the beautiful Russian anthem. (Turned out, he’s 38, hasn’t played for the national team since 2011, so he may be out of practice for singing the anthem. Or his lips don’t move.) Then I noticed a lanky midfielder named Golovin, with a Lyle Lovett hairdo, who reminded me of one of the most charismatic and talented leaders I have ever met, Mrs. Gollobin, the director of the Jamaica High School choir and chorus back in the day. She once snapped at me, “George, be a mensch,” and I straightened right up, in her presence, anyway. I decided to root for Aleksandr Golovin. Good choice. He set up the first three Russian goals for adept passes through the gaping Saudi players. I looked him up – 22, and being scouted by Juventus. He showed his youth by picking up a pointless yellow card in the final minutes. By the time he curled a free kick into the corner in the closing seconds for the fifth goal, Golovin had surely confirmed his ticket to Torino. Mrs. Gollobin would be proud of him. Having covered eight World Cups for the NYT way back when, and having written a book about them, (https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2014/0530/Eight-World-Cups-by-George-Vecsey-decodes-international-soccer-for-newbies,) I tried to compare this day (on the tube) with openers I attended: The fans were a classic World Cup mix; could have been anywhere -- international types who could afford a ticket. Pretty woman in a red and white folk dress; guys with goofy headgear. One other observation: how nice it is to hear old World Cup hands, J.P. Dellacamera and Tony Meola, working for Fox, and confirming that one does not need a British accent to call a match for U.S. television. How was your first match? |
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