SAMARA : Every time a World Cup comes along, an inevitable debate pops up: whether it still is the pinnacle of world football or not. There’s always the side that argues that the kind of football showcased is often vastly inferior to what club sides play. Reasonably so, for one cannot possibly expect players who’ve had two weeks to gel to replicate the kind of understanding that comes with a full season. But the 2018 version of that debate might have been settled on Saturday.
It is hard to counter that argument when they throw England versus Sweden at you. Someone tuning in at the very end of the match, seeing ‘2-0’ on their televisions, and then watching John Stones climb on top of Harry Maguire, might figure that there was little wrong. How bad could such a quarterfinal be? Pretty bad, actually. The start was pretty mundane, with both sides displaying as much interest in each other as first cousins on an accidental Tinder date. The Swede strategy was pretty clear from the start: slow the game down to a stand-still, and get their rivals to break down their defence. England must have seen yellow and imagined Brazil; the cautiousness could only have been to avert being caught out. Except that this was Sweden, and they never looked capable of a counterattack.
Adding to the mundanity was the fact that there were a few thousand (but very vocal) English fans, and a few hundred Swedish ones. The rest of the occupied seats were filled by neutrals, mainly Russians, and they lost interest within 15 minutes. Occasional chants of “Ra- Si-Ya” rang out, and sporadic Mexican waves were born out of sheer boredom. When it finally came, the first goal was off a corner. It would be unfair, though, to not credit some good manoeuvring in the box by English players and Harry Maguire’s powerful header. But instead of jerking the game back to life, the goal rendered it comatose. England had what they needed, and Sweden shed all pretence of purpose.
Raheem Sterling had two easy chances to kill off the game towards the end of halft ime, but he deemed both of them expendable. Things improved marginally in the second half with England upping the ante. Sweden too forced Jordan Pickford to make a couple of saves. But whatever element of doubt that remained disappeared around the hour mark when Dele Alli headed in England’s second. That was the victors’ second shot on target, and they would have no other for the rest of the game; a statistic that would have been justified in a defensive masterclass against a rampaging opponent.
But this was anything but that; England players made 3 tackles in the entire game. England fans won’t care. Their team had made a first semifinal since 1990. But even the staunchest of them would be wishing that they had done it at the end of a proper game. Result (quarterfinal): England 2 (Maguire 30, Alli 59) Sweden 0.