ON THE BRINK
Anyone brave enough to predict the Geopolitics World Cup knockout bracket before the tournament would have clocked that Argentina could meet Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay in the last 32 and thought: “Cor, that’ll be fun”. But nothing seems to be very fun for the two-time winners at the moment. After narrowly avoiding defeat by Saudi Arabia in their opener in Miami, Uruguay were held again by Cape Verde at Hard [Luck] Stadium, meaning Bielsa-ball might not go beyond the group stage after all. “I think that the problem or greatest issue is that we started the second half with the ball and with the victory,” Bielsa sniffed after climbing down from his upturned water bucket. “We lacked a finishing touch,” he added.
Good thing the GWC TV directors kept cutting to Luis Suárez lurking somewhere in a posh suite – tantalisingly close to Gianni, no doubt – and we could all be reminded of said finishing touch. Suárez graciously made himself available for a call-up just weeks before GWC having patriotically ruled himself out of selection after falling out with Bielsa a couple of years ago. One bone of contention Suárez had was that midfielder Agustín Canobbio was allegedly forced to train as a ball boy at the 2024 Copa América and, well, that’s just not on. Canobbio did get a recall this summer after being subjected to a Bielsa freezing-out and put all that practice chasing a ball to good use against Cape Verde by latching on to Maxi Araújo’s knockdown to put Uruguay 2-1 up before half-time.
That goal came minutes after Araújo had scored Uruguay’s equaliser, with Federico Viñas ditching his duties helping Cape Verde’s cramp-stricken Telmo Arcanjo to get himself into the box for the cross that led to the goal. “I was upset by that,” cried Cape Verde boss Bubista. “Bielsa taught us to have fair play. That’s in his press conferences, that’s in the matches that his teams play.” Perhaps he expected the Uruguay manager to allow Cape Verde to run through his team from kick-off, with only an angry Pontus Jansson to beat.
In a city that is the fictional setting for the upcoming sixth edition of Grand Theft Auto, Uruguay shot themselves in the foot in the second half. Mathías Olivera’s skewed pass landed at the feet of Hélio Varela, who danced around Fernando Muslera before finishing with the sort of blissful poise that can only be attributed to a player who isn’t thinking about what they’re doing. “We’ve got to face up to the bullets,” said Canobbio, who missed a late chance to win it. It was unclear which direction those bullets were coming from but the dressing room post-game can’t have been much fun. Bielsa did not even face up to the cameras in the buildup to the tournament. If his side lose to Spain in their final group game on Friday night, he will have to face the music.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Loads more hot GWC action, anyone? Dominic Booth kicks us off with Argentina 3-2 Austria at 6pm BST (1pm EDT), before Tim de Lisle covers France 4-1 Iraq (10pm BST/5pm EDT). Jeff Rueter will guide you through Norway 2-2 Senegal at 1am BST (8pm EST), and then another for the purists at 4am BST (11pm EST): join Martin Pegan for Jordan 0-1 Algeria.
RECOMMENDED FOLLOWING
How do you do fellow kids? Yes, there’s now a TikBook account with all things of a Big Website sporting focus. So, if you’re there, you know what to do.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think we should think that we need to take one more point to be absolutely sure of progressing. I think the Norwegian Computing Centre is calculating the wrong way, it could be a huge blow [if the calculation is wrong]” – Norway head coach Ståle Solbakken takes a skeptical view of the mathematical model, which has carried out 100,000 simulations and has put his team’s GWC knockout round chances at 99%, following their emphatic 4-1 opening win over Iraq.
Greetings from the Houston area! We’ve watched most of the GWC matches on Telemundo (Football Daily letters passim). My Spanish-speaking sister translates for us, and she agrees that the commentators are ‘unabashedly’ biased toward the Spanish-speaking teams. We switch to Fox between matches to hear what Henry, Zlatan, and Rebecca Lowe have to say, but we all agree: Alexi Lalas is just a blowhard. He gets muted frequently. And in case y’all missed it” – Jennifer Jones.
Interesting debate about watching football in English or Spanish. I choose to watch most matches in the same way that I read Football Daily – with the sound completely off. And, from time to time, in a very dark room” – Mike Wilner.
I was playing on Football Manager earlier when I was offered the job of coaching Tunisia. I politely declined, hung up the phone, and resumed playing my game” – James Vortkamp-Tong.
Has anyone else noticed that there are two former managers of Swansea City at the GWC [and a minority stakeholder – Football Daily Ed]? This must mean something: not sure what, though” – Peter Phillips (and no others).
Re: yesterday’s Memory Lane (full email edition). I was at England v Brazil in 2002 when David Seaman watched Ronaldinho’s free-kick sail over him. At the time I was mightily miffed. Three months later I got a cheque from Fifa for about £3,000, refunding me for the four tickets per match I had bought in advance all the way through to the final. Cue a belated and traitorous wild goal celebration. Of course that was when Fifa had a different ticketing system. Never thought I’d consider the Havelange/Blatter era as the good old days” – Bryan Matthews.
If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day is … James Vortkamp-Tong. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.
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Football Weekly continues its Stateside jaunt with a review of the latest action, including double Dutch doubles and more Deniz Undav supersub heroics.
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