Day 2: Plucky Egypt: Winning Hearts, Stayin’ Alive.

6/15/2018

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.

Brian Savin

6/15/2018 07:24:37 pm

Every once in a while you see a sporting event that captures your heart and thrills you to the bone and you can’t wait to see if the sports writer of your favorite newspaper can capture it and help you relive it all over again. This is it. Pure, unadulterated red meat for the fan. Documenting the moment perfectly! Great read.

John McDermott link

6/16/2018 01:53:31 am

I was really happy to see Tabarez on the Uruguay bench. He is one of soccer's great gentlemen. I met him in early 1990 in Miami, working on a World Cup preview for De Telegraaf, the big Amsterdam newspaper, with our friend Jaap DeGroot, who is now the paper's sports editor. Tabarez was wonderful-unbelievably kind and generous with his time. And of course he's a very good coach. He's been through a lot of tough things lately and it's great to see him there, and to see the affection his players have for him. That said, Egypt is one of "my" teams in this World Cup and I was sorry to see them lose, though the score was a fair reflection of the game. But isn't that Egyptian goalkeeper something?!

bruce

6/16/2018 02:29:34 am

george,

missed the egypt game but caught the iberian match.

whew.....

ronaldo caught a break when gea let a ball thru his legs and spain caught one when pepe took a dive and the guy he tried to sucker the referee into calling the foul scored.

think pepe is famous for his flops, but the italian ref wasn't buying it. i'm sure he's seen enough flopping in serie A to spot that pathetic display from a few stadia away.

if he'd just jumped instead of lying mortally wounded and then getting back into it, i thought he might've been in time to prevent the goal.

a few beauties in the six of 'em.

bruce

john mcdermott

6/16/2018 02:39:39 am

Bruce-good call on Pepe, an elegant thug. How many forearms has he dished out in his career? The ref got it absolutely right. And did you see Pepe take his revenge later with a foot stomp on Costa? Should have gotten a yellow for that.

bruce

6/16/2018 08:53:44 am

john,

yeah. I saw the stomp. got away with one....

i enjoy soccer and follow a few of the major European leagues.

also Essendon a bit in aussie rules footy.

my antipathy for all the diving in 'the beautiful game' makes it not so beautiful at times.

when you grow up watching hockey and north American sports in general where it's a matter of pride not to show you've been hurt it's tough watching that faux stuff.

have you seen the video of the French league soccer coach being hit by a paper airplane vs barrty trotz of the Washington capitals after taking a puck square in the middle of his forehead during a game while coaching?

priceless.

bruce

Andy Tansey

6/16/2018 01:22:12 pm

There was another player worthy of attention in the Iberian Derby, no, not Ronaldo #9 of Brazil 1998 and 2002, but CR7. The video assistant referee showed only that the ref was not clearly and obviously wrong in awarding the penalty and the game-winning* free kick. However, Ronaldo was looking for them and went down far too easily.

I thought Spain clearly better all around and am excited to see them continue. Their telepathy seems to be working again.

However, the free kick was pure artistry unless DeGea was being complicit in some Real Madrid-related plot by remaining rooted to the spot. (He does not make mistakes like his earlier muff.)

* Yes, I know, but after the match, Portugal were acting like they had won.

Not to get geopolitical, but a number of fans I know are boycotting Fox and watching on Telemundo.

bruce

6/16/2018 01:57:24 pm

andy,

the free kick was well placed.

I thought it nipped a Spanish player on the way in as well.

spain definitely had the best of the play.

i notice that four of the five top scorers in la liga weren't Spanish and six of the top 10.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Day 2: Plucky Egypt: Winning Hearts, Stayin’ Alive.

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