Argentina and Croatia in a shoot-out for the World Cup Final
World Cup Diaries: Day 20.
World Cup Diaries: Day 20.
Friday 9th December 2022
Act One — Livakovic the hero in a team full to the brim with them
CROATIA 1 (Petkovic 117)
BRAZIL 1 (Neymar 105+1)
Croatia win 4–2 on penalties
My oh my. The favourites are out.
This game fascinated me on a level equalling that of Tuesday’s encounter between Spain and Morocco. Whereas three days ago I was cheering for the footballing favourites and maestros of Spain, this evening I was back in the corner of the underdog and my oh my did they earn and arguably deserve their victory. It’s a rhetorical question and this is a diary entry and whether you agree with me or not is immaterial. What isn’t is that the favourites and seemingly everyone’s second team behind their own country, is going home. Much like those other favourites, Spain.
As with Tuesday’s game and Morocco’s shock victory on penalties, the similarities don’t stop there. There were barely any real clear cut goal scoring chances until extra-time, one goalkeeper was a virtual and distant spectator all evening, the underdogs controlled and dominated large swathes of the game until roughly the hour mark, then the favourites stamped their mark on the game by controlling the rest and of course, the underdogs refused to lie down, didn’t miss a penalty in the shoot-out, and arguably merited their shock wins and perhaps the most important wins in their nation’s respective footballing histories.
Concentrating solely on this evening’s game now, I found the wide battle(s) fascinating and for the first 60 minutes, Croatia won them all. Celtic’s Josip Juranovic was easily the game’s outfield “Man of the Match” for his energy and effervescent overlapping attacking runs from right back and whilst his left sided defensive mate Borna Sosa would have a one-to-one fight with Brazil substitute Antony late in the second half and for the entirety of a fantastic cut and thrust battle of the first period of extra-time, Sosa joined Ivan Perisic in attacking positions as often as he could during the regulation 90 minutes. Here is where Croatia not so much won the game but “won” sections of the field of play, thus allowing captain Luka Modric (always on the ball and outstanding), Mateo Kovacic (everywhere and never stopped running) and Marcelo Brozovic (niggling into tackles, breaking up play and sticking close to Neymar and negating his influence on the game big style) to constantly have control of the ball and especially an opening hour of the game whereby Croatia somewhat turned the tables on their esteemed Brazilian opposition. Sweeping cross field passes, back through midfield, cycling the ball through their oft three man defence (the mainstays and central defensive partnership of Dejan Lovren and Josko Gvardiol were incredible defensively this evening) and back through a commanding midfield led by captain Luka Modric who dictated the pace and direction of the game akin to Brazil. Croatia seemed to want to suck Brazil onto them, but not in a defensive, backs to the wall negative way, more a transitional attack from the middle of the field and exploiting the spaces left behind by the team in yellow and blue.
Here’s the admission: I never saw this performance in this Croatia team and had largely written them off ala the ending of Belgium’s golden generation before them. I felt this Croatian team were, similar to Belgium, too old, too slow and a tournament too far but Belgium’s era ending team could never have produced a performance such as this. Until the substitution of lone central striker Andrej Kramaric (who worked tirelessly without any real attacking service and foraged in the centre of midfield to help the “overload” of Croatian bodies outnumbering the Brazilians) Croatia were largely in control of a game simmering without really threatening to come to the boil.
With the departure of Kramaric, Croatia retreated deeper and deeper and whilst not hanging on or desperately defending, Brazil finally grabbed a foothold in the game and took the honours for the last hour of play, forcing a catalogue of fine reactionary and vital smothering saves from Dominik Livakovic in the Croatia goal. He would soon become the penalty hero of the hour but first he would deny Neymar twice (both assisted and supplied by a subdued Richarlison) as well as comfortable saves from the long range drives of Lucas Paqueta and Antony. Entering injury time at the end of the first period of extra-time, a largely anonymous Neymar found himself with time and space centrally and 40 yards from the Croatian goal. With a bank of players ahead of him, Neymar sharply played a one-two with substitute Rodrygo before another razor sharp one-two with Lucas Paqueta set Neymar free on goal and after rounding Dominik Livakovic, he smashed what seemed like the winning goal into the roof of the Croatia net.
From nowhere, and with only three minutes left of extra-time to play, yet another candidate for a Croatian “Man of the Match”, Josko Gvardiol, made an incredible last ditch tackle as Brazil threatened to breakaway in search of a decisive second goal. Instead, his tackle led to the crucial equaliser. Modric received the ball and pivoted centrally before releasing a perfect pass into the running stride of substitute Mislav Orsic. His whipped first time cross was met on the run by another substitute, Bruno Petkovic, and just the merest of deflections from Brazilian Marquinhos deviated the shot past a helpless Alisson Becker in the Brazil goal.
It was Croatia’s only shot on target in the entire game.
So to penalties and with Croatia scoring their first four penalties it fell to Marquinhos to keep Brazil in the World Cup, and he crashed his penalty off the inside of the post and away to safety.
For his reel of precious saves in regulation play as well as saving Rodrygo’s penalty in the shoot-out, goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic will be acclaimed the game’s hero, but he was surrounded by a mountain of red and white checked shirted heroes this evening.
Brazil are out. My oh my.
Postscript
I may be more than a little biased as I watch referee Neil Oliver every week in the Premier League but he refereed this evening’s game perfectly, with calm decision making, communication and authority. I note this ahead of the chaotic antics and mayhem that surrounded the evening’s later game.
Act Two — Chaos reigns as Argentina reach the Last 4
NETHERLANDS 2 (Weghorst 83 and 90+11)
ARGENTINA 2 (Molina 35, Messi 73)
Argentina win 4–2 on penalties
Statistics are dangerous in the wrong hands and normally I shy away from such things, but footballing historians years from now will no doubt christen this game as a “battle” or the “Lunacy at the Lusail” or some other such nonsense and there will be a singular figure to blame for the chaos: a Spanish referee by the name of Antonio Mateu Lahoz. For it was he who brandished 14 yellow cards (and in all honesty it may well have been more) and one red card for Denzel Dumfries I believe after the match had finally concluded and again, during the actual 120 minutes itself, I’m surprised he didn’t dismiss more players. As much as I love the guy, Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk should have seen red for his horrible body check when chaos reigned toward the end of normal time and Argentina full-back Marcos Acuna was also lucky not to be sent off before he was eventually substituted and after he’d put in a stunning performance alongside Rodrigo De Paul in their own version of an Argentinian “Good Cop/Bad Cop” routine throughout the game. Make no mistake, this game turned ugly at turns and threatened to seriously boil over at others, but the referee also lost control of the game for a while as it teetered on the brink of absolute chaos.
14 yellow cards!
1 red card and a thunderous foul tackle total of 48! As I’ve stated, statistics such as these can be dangerous in the wrong hands. One statistic you probably won’t find amongst the plethora available is that after 70 minutes, the Netherlands had a grand total of one shot off target and zero on target. For all of their beautiful, relaxed and expansive football, the team in the memory evoking all orange had a total shot count, on or off target, of one. Seconds later Denzel Dumfries conceded a silly penalty for a challenge on bad cop Marcos Acuna and a minute or so later, Argentina captain and talismanic leader Lionel Messi scored the resultant penalty to put his team and his nation 2–0 up with just 17 minutes left. In a quite unremarkable and even disappointing game up to this point “La Albiceleste” (The White and Sky Blue) had largely controlled a game of differing styles but which was ultimately petering out into a tame 2–0 win for Argentina on a day that had seen their nearest rivals Brazil dumped out of the World Cup to boot, and they were cruising in third gear into the semi-finals.
The game as a contest was as near as damn it over.
With nothing further to lose, Netherlands coach Luis van Gaal ripped up the Dutch playbook and resorted to desperate English style “route one” football of playing the ball long for a big tall central striker to win knock downs, free-kicks and cause generalised mayhem. That player’s name is Wout Weghorst. On the pitch as a substitute for mere minutes, Weghorst’s brilliantly flicked header on 83 minutes flew past Emiliano Martinez in the Argentina goal, and with the Netherlands first attempt on target, they’d scored. From hereon in Argentina wilted and collapsed as they vainly repelled every long hopeful ball thrown at them until their substitute central defender German Pezzella made a rash and clumsy challenge on the edge of the penalty area deep into injury time. Expecting a shot on goal, the Argentina defence was caught flat footed by a brilliant yet simple pass rather than shot inside to Wout Weghorst, and with the last touch of the ball in regulation time, the tall Dutch striker swept his shot past a disbelieving Martinez and into his net. The Netherlands now had two shots on target and miraculously they’d levelled this quarter-final from absolutely nowhere.
With tensions rising all over the pitch as well as on the substitutes bench and amongst the coaches of both teams, rather than going for the Argentine jugular in extra-time, the Netherlands resumed the stale unrewarding tactics of earlier in the game and from a position of real strength and with the wind in their sails, they instead sat back during an extra 30 minutes largely dominated again by Argentina. A Messi free-kick scraped the top of the crossbar, long range shots were deflected inches wide and with arguably the last kick of the entire game pre the penalty shoot-out, Enzo Fernandez crashed a speculative long range shot against the outside of a post.
For the second time today, a World Cup semi-finalist would be decided by the lottery of a penalty shoot-out. The simple statistics state that Netherlands missed two of their five whilst Argentina missed only one, and Enzo Fernandez, so close to winning the game with his last gasp shot at the end of extra-time, rapped home the winning penalty to send the vast hordes of noisy Argentinians in the crowd back to their hotels and hostels ecstatically happy, and dreaming of yet another World Cup final.
So the final statistics show a drawn game of 2–2 over the elongated extra time of 120 minutes and 15 yellow and red cards were shown in an unruly game that saw the game’s dark arts grow ever darker with every passing minute. The Spanish referee lost control in a feverish atmosphere and as usual, Argentina were in the eye of the footballing storm. As penned in previous diary entries here, this is nothing new for the white and sky blue, in fact they thrive on it, and neither is it new for an Argentina team to be collectively good but nowhere near great whilst threatening to win the greatest title in world football dependent upon a single otherworldly genius.
The record books will show a 4–2 win for Argentina on penalties, and that’s the only statistic worthy of consideration on a night such as this.
Thanks for reading. In addition to the delights that can be found within the cave of wonders that is my archives, I’m penning a day to day diary of the World Cup, and here are days 17 through 19:
World Cup quarter-finals, and the “Hand of God”
World Cup Diaries: Day 19.medium.com
Full Moon Fever at the World Cup
World Cup Diaries: Day 18.medium.com
Morocco shake up the world and who needs Ronaldo anyway?
World Cup Diaries: Day 17medium.com