PHILADELPHIA. If you rip and tear, slash and beat, film and destroy and sacrifice just about everything you have to stop France…?
Nah.
This time, at least the men in blue know that they have played a game. But they still don’t know what it’s like to even come close to losing.
Absolutely no one can say they didn’t do absolutely everything.
Paraguay tried all the old thieving tricks in the rascal’s playbook, and invented quite a few new ones as well. They themselves knew what the odds and conditions looked like, but thought to take them in their teeth and tear them to pieces.
France would get no free passage this time.
After the brushing away of Sweden, Didier Deschamps sat down in front of the press and urged: “Allez-y, trouvez des problèmes! Come on, find some problems”.
It could be interpreted as a statement with a certain amount of arrogance – “Come on, send here a reasonably worthy opponent who will at least force us to make an effort” – but that was not the idea.
Deschamps was not talking about France’s opponents, but about the dynamics in his own dressing room. And what he was after was a little friction, a little adrenaline, a little smell of blood. “Everything can’t be all sunshine and rainbows,” reasoned Deschamps.
This can also be the concern of a confederation captain who, for twelve years, has been able to take World Cup quarter-finals for granted.
But okay, Monsieur Deschamps – now that you wanted a problem, a natural phenomenon of problems would be sent your way.
Fanned frantically by the thousands
There is heat, and then there is weather warning heat, heat dangerous to health.
I have played football both at the equator, in the desert and in the tropics. I have hardly ever experienced a heat like this. Almost 40 degrees in the air and baking sun. So hot that it triggered that special kind of rush. Open arena, no shade, nowhere to hide.
The audience looked like they were jointly and collectively fending off mosquitoes at Färnebofjärden. The organizers had distributed a kind of paper sheet that could be used as fans, and they were fanned frantically by the tens of thousands.
Down by the pitch it was said to have been 43 degrees at kick-off – possibly the highest temperature a World Cup match has ever been played in – and although the sun was slowly setting, no more than a fifth of the pitch was shaded.
So yes, the heat was a problem, although it affected both teams.
Another problem…? Paraguay. The single-minded, uncompromising Paraguayan warrior spirit, which they themselves trace back to the Triple Alliance War at the end of the 19th century. It was then that Paraguay lost upwards of 90 percent of all men of fighting age, but the nation still survived.
Since Argentine Gustavo Alfaro took over as national team captain, he has deliberately used a bombastic rhetoric that plays on these strings. His team is the barefoot team of the red earth playing for the flag rather than some fine-tuned ball-carver gang.
Now they went into this game as if it were a Libertadores final. They played it their own way, the South American way, powered by La Garra Guaraní.
Here there were elements of point marking, of sack defense, of defensive tactics from the past.
And for that matter: Here there were large buckets of backsliding, burglaries and provocations.
Weird Uzbek judge
For – for example – a Swedish national team, this type of spiky, cynical, hyper-vigilant low defense play is still a foreign phenomenon we fumble with. For Paraguay, it is mother’s milk itself.
After just over a quarter of an hour, they had hit 19 passes, compared to France’s 150. They weren’t in the offensive penalty area at all for the entire first half, but were perfectly fine with the turn of events nonetheless.
Their opportunity was microscopically small, but the Paraguayans at least knew what it looked like.
If the strange Uzbek referee could consistently refrain from warning them, they could themselves keep a clean sheet against overwhelming opposition.
And sure.
Almost at the second water break – the game’s three-quarter mark – the Blues had still created very little. But this is France, this is the sharpest and broadest offensive armada we can remember.
It only takes one small slip, one untimely situation.
After an hour, Didier Deschamps tired, threw in Desiré Doué and reaped the rewards after just a few minutes. Diego Goméz went the wrong way in the wrong situation, and in VAR times you can no longer get away with the kind of things you could limit yourself to past 1998.
Penalty. Ousmane Dembélé kept the ball warm for the shooter, and was surrounded by eight Paraguayan players trying to thresh out the penalty spot itself.
By now the desperate Paraguayans were almost caricatures of villainous figures. Kylian Mbappé laughed, shrugged and rolled in the winning goal.
“If we need to dip our hands in shit, we’ll dip our hands in shit. We can play dirty foosball too,” Mbappé told French television right after the final whistle.
They didn’t need to beat themselves up, but they certainly needed to make an effort, to feel like they were playing a World Cup play-off rather than an exhibition tournament. It was hot, it was uncomfortable, it was Paraguay.
Didier Deschamps got his long-awaited problems. France still won.
