World Cup Day 3: Messi Comes Up, Well, Small

6/16/2018

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.

John McDermott

6/16/2018 12:10:41 pm

Spain outplayed Portugal last night. But Ronaldo carried what is a decent but not special Portugal team to a higher level and an important result. Messi today did very little, and when he should have put away a simple penalty kick to win the game he choked and placed the ball within easy reach of the Iceland goalkeeper. Messi is a brilliant player. Just not today. This result could come back to haunt Argentina. I could see Iceland or Croatia winning this group with Argentina fighting for second place. That said, remember how many times Italy went on to play in the Final-and even win the World Cup twice-after struggling to get through a dismal the first round.

Mendel

6/17/2018 01:00:31 am

Your overseas friend, and his son, are without rebuttal for now. Time will tell.

AndyTansey

6/17/2018 12:50:16 pm

There's a man who posts intelligently about soccer here, a former goalkeeper (Jamaica? Hofstra?) who still teaches kids. I am sorry I am unable to remember his name and too lazy to look.

A friend whose soccer expertise I admire once cited a statistical study that 'keepers who do not guess but rather wait and react are more successful than those who guess. The study went on to suggest that, yet, most still guess because, if you don't and the kicker scores, you look really lame.

De Gea guessed. I don't think that Halldorsson did. Who is Halldorsson? He's the Island 'keeper. However, this tournament is all about Messi and CR7, after all. I find myself enamored of the northern European relative underdogs who play with steadfast intelligence. The Island story is so much fun. One of my clients is going hiking there, and she and her companion may well have the place to themselves. What are the statistics about the proportion of the country at the tournament?

And take good care of your teeth. With 100% of humans now belonging to that cohort known as the aging population, we only get two sets of those for which Suarez is known.

I will struggle to keep caught up, as I must avoid spoilers until I watch, rarely live, almost always via DVR. However, it is pleasure to read and a privilege to be able to post here!

George

6/17/2018 05:26:31 pm

Andy, thanks so much. That would be Alan Rubin, ex-keeper for Lehigh, still teaching his craft to youngsters. GV

Brian Savin

6/18/2018 08:01:32 am

Well, there goes the Altice endorsement contract. Not sure his tattoos work so well in underwear in comparison to Rinaldo's current add, anyway.)

Alan Rubin link

6/18/2018 10:34:13 am

Messi also hit the wall on most, if not all of his free kicks. He is terrific when he moves, creates space, draws defenders and opens opportunities for teammates. However, he seems to have difficulty with initiating a set piece.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

World Cup Day 3: Messi Comes Up, Well, Small

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