Every time this comes around, it feels like a snapshot in history. I can vividly remember where I was in my life every time. I remember being a child enraptured by football for the first time in 2002. I remember being a moody git as a teenager when Zinedine Zidane got sent off in 2006. I remember being on holiday in Spain when the Spanish won it in 2010, feeling like I had no idea where my life was going in 2014, and starting to get off the ground with writing about football in 2018. The late, great, Grant Wahl said that it’s “not overstating things to say that I measure my life in four-year terms around these tournaments”. The more I do this, the more I feel the same way.

We all know this has been a controversial World Cup for many. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if hosting the World Cup has “worked” for Qatar’s opaque aims. They’ve been getting slated regularly in the Western media, which I doubt they’re thrilled about, but I have no idea how much it matters to them. The fact that they’re so keen on bidding for the Olympic Games after this suggests that, yes, they’re happy with how the World Cup turned out. Does that mean we all failed to hold Qatar to account? Or does it mean that we’re totally powerless? Maybe it’s both, or maybe it’s neither.

At the start of the tournament, I donated to the Alwan Foundation, fighting for LGBTQ justice in Qatar. Today, I donated £100 to Migrant Rights, an organisation fighting for, well, the rights of migrants in gulf states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This World Cup we’ve spent the last month watching was built on the backs of an exploited migrant workforce. I’m not so naive as to think donating to a charity can fix these problems, but it’s at least something, and I encourage you to do the same.

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called ‘The Pledge’. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called ‘The Turn’. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige’.”

— The Prestige (2006, Christopher Nolan)

Lionel Messi is 19 years old. He’s leaving the World Cup making only a few cameo appearances and showing us just a glimpse of what he can do. He’s disappointed, but he needn’t worry. He’ll be back, and he’ll be the main event soon enough.

Messi is 23 years old. He’s leaving the World Cup after Argentina were humiliated 4-0 to Germany in a game that saw Diego Maradona’s side collapse. He didn’t quite get to show everything he can do, but most blame Maradona’s tactical choices. It’s not his fault, and everyone knows he’ll be back.

Messi is 27 years old. This is the one World Cup he plays in his supposed peak years. Alejandro Sabella has built the entire team around being as solid as possible and totally reliant on Messi in attack. It’s not quite enough. Messi has won everything with Barcelona but, for the first time in his career, people ask if it’s ever going to happen for him at the World Cup.

Messi is 31 years old. Argentina are a shambles and his sheer quality is the only thing holding the side together. It all goes wrong as everyone felt it would. Messi had probably missed his chance.

Messi is 35 years old. No one’s life gets measured in four-year terms around these tournaments more than him.

He has ended the debate. As far as I was concerned, he had already become the greatest of all time. Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are jointly the two greatest goalscorers in the history of football, but Messi does everything else. He could have scored zero goals in his career and still been one of the best in the world, because he does everything in attack. It’s not just that he’s the best ever. It’s that it’s not even close.

But still, many people questioned it. Looking at just the goals and trophies, Messi and Ronaldo were similar. Some (wrong) people felt that Ronaldo had the edge in terms of his mentality and big game moments. Those people no longer have a leg to stand on. Messi is the greatest of all time and will be remembered as such by almost everyone. He’s answered the only plausible doubt. It was over for me a long time ago, but we can stop arguing now. He won.

The most remarkable thing about the World Cup final wasn’t that he did it, or that he did it by playing so well. It was that, for about an hour, the world believed it might not happen.

Argentina were brilliant for most of the initial 90 minutes. They played France off the park so much that Didier Deschamps’ team didn’t take a single shot for over an hour. This was arguably the most dominant any team has ever been in a World Cup final.

Ángel Di María beats Ousmane Dembélé in the box to win a penalty. Messi obviously takes the spot kick and puts it in the bottom right corner. Argentina then score a brilliant team goal, with Messi’s cute little pass feeding Julián Álvarez, who slides in Alexis Mac Allister to pass it to Di María for an easy finish. Argentina were tearing France apart. That was ‘The Pledge’. We’d been shown what we want to see.

From there, Argentina were really in game management mode. And they were in complete control. France had done everything wrong and Argentina were cruising. Were they cruising too much? It strikes me as a bit of outcome bias. They were in complete control of the game until France had one moment.

Late in the second half, Randal Kolo Muani drives forward and Nicolás Otamendi, in typical fashion, is too clumsy to do anything other than give away a penalty. It’s not like this was coming. Almost everyone on the pitch had switched off a little bit expecting the inevitable 2-0 Argentina win. But now, Kylian Mbappé stepped up to put the penalty away and give his team a glimmer of hope.

Mbappé had been poor for most of the 90 minutes. He’d probably argue he just couldn’t get into the game, but regardless, the end result was the same. As if by magic, France and Mbappé switch it on as soon as the first goal goes in. Literally a minute after the penalty, Mbappé scores a sensational volley out of nowhere to equalise. Les Bleus had offered literally nothing until for the first 79 minutes, but here they were. Messi’s crowning achievement had disappeared. France had pulled off ‘The Turn’.

From there, it looked like France were strongly in the ascendency. Didier Deschamps deserves some credit for being proactive here. France had swapped out four of their front five (everyone except Mbappé) and looked much fresher than Argentina, as Lionel Scaloni was far too slow to make changes. If I were a manager, I would have always made five of my available six subs by the start of extra time. Scaloni had made just two by that point. It was clear Argentina were sluggish. Messi was the only player really offering anything in a blue and white shirt, getting a very good save out of Hugo Lloris.

Then it twisted and turned. After a goal line scramble, Messi put it just about over the line from a couple of yards out. The star man had won it on the big occasion. But! Mbappé struck the ball straight at Gonzalo Montiel’s arm in the box. Clear penalty. Mbappé goal. As we were. This thing was going to penalties.

I was really relieved that Mbappé and Messi both scored in the shootout. I wanted nothing in the world less than a discourse about one of the two bottling it. Mbappé absolutely brought it towards the end of the match and deserves all the plaudits in the world. I’d feel a twinge of sadness if he didn’t already have a World Cup winner’s medal. But it wasn’t his day. Kingsley Coman and Aurélien Tchouaméni both missed their penalties. It was Messi’s day.

The game showed us Messi’s crowning glory, then it took it away from us. Then, finally, it made his final achievement reappear. Making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. The World Cup final had completed ‘The Prestige’.

Since there’s no question that Messi is the greatest of all time, we’re left with just one thing to ask about him: was he good on the day? Yes, I’d say. He played more progressive passes (10) than anyone else, while also receiving more than any other player (also 10)1. He was both the person making the killer pass and the person getting on the end of everything. He had the joint most shot-creating actions (6, along with the also excellent Di María). I don't think it's one of his career-best performances, but he was still simply better at football than everyone else.

And that’s Messi for you: simply better at football than everyone else. Good luck to humanity for the rest of time trying to outdo him.

N’Golo Kanté and Paul Pogba had been the perfect midfield duo four years ago. For all Pogba’s quality, he’s a little light on the defensive side, and I’ve never seen anyone as good at plugging those sorts of gaps as Kanté. It was a perfect midfield… four years ago. Kanté, while still offering …

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Here are some of the names Messi played with at previous World Cups: Roberto Ayala, Esteban Cambiasso, Javier Mascherano, Hernán Crespo, Juan Román Riquelme, Carlos Tevez, Pablo Aimar, Ángel Di María, Juan Sebastián Verón, Gonzalo Higuaín, Walter Samuel, Pablo Zabaleta, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Éver Banega, Paulo Dybala.

Yet it took until now to make it work.

In 2006, José Pékerman’s Argentina cruised through the group stages with Messi on the bench, before losing that spark in the knockout stages. In 2010, Diego Maradona’s team totally lacked organisation and discipline, getting deservedly thumped 4-0 by Germany. In 2014, Alejandro Sabella took them in the complete opposite direction, trying to make the team as solid as possible but suffocating Messi’s brilliance in the process. In 2018, Jorge Sampaoli got just about everything wrong as the players totally refused to buy into his ideas.

Yes, they also reached the final in 2014, but that was a less complete side in my view. They made hard work of most of their games, never putting together a single impressive performance like this one.

But this team works, and I don’t think it’s hard to understand why. Argentina have a disciplined midfield with a good blend of hard workers and technicians. Messi has an attacker running in behind to feed in Julián Álvarez. It’s not rocket science. It’s just a fairly decent team plus Messi.

Croatia’s plan was the same as ever: grind and grind and grind until they can hopefully win the game late. That approach can have some skewed outcomes. To be successful, Croatia really had to keep the game at 0-0 for long periods. Once Argentina score, they really could take the game away.

Croatia really did make this work for the first half-hour. They were working the ball through the midfielders and preventing Argentina from creating anything. There’s probably a world in which they pull this off. Considering Croatia were leaving space in behind to stay compact, the breakthrough was always most likely to come from Messi playing a ball over the top for Álvarez, which is exactly what happened. La albiceleste get their penalty and they’re off to the races.

Messi has always enjoyed playing with the sort of striker who wants to run in behind, and Álvarez fits the profile perfectly. You could easily picture him playing the pass to win the penalty for Pedro, Neymar or Sergio Agüero. Álvarez ended the game himself shortly after. Croatia took a corner and were clearly having to push more players forward than they’d like, taking more risks and opening themselves up for that to happen.

Messi put the icing on the cake with his brilliant assist for Álvarez’ second and Argentina’s third. That was that.

Michael Caley was quick to point out on Twitter that, from an xG perspective, this game didn’t look too different to Croatia’s victory over Brazil.

I think I agree with a fair bit of this. We can quibble with some of Tite’s choices but, at the end of the day, Brazil created a lot of chances against Croatia. They do win that match a lot of the time. This match could have easily turned the same way if not for the early penalty that Messi converted. That’s football, and that’s why we keep coming back: because it destroys your soul thinking about how things could’ve been different.

In a situation where Croatia really had to create chances and score, they didn’t impress at all. The chances they created were all pretty low quality. For all those good technical midfielders, Croatia have set up primarily to frustrate rather than create. No one was really interested in the kind of direct through balls Messi was going for. The whole gameplan was about keeping things at 0-0 and they messed up.

Would Argentina have enough to win the final? Obviously it depends on tonight’s result, but my gut feeling would still favour France. I just feel like the French have a much better variation of what they want to do, and Didier Deschamps will have no qualms about sitting deep to stop those balls over the top. It’s a really intriguing contest.

Morocco 1-0 Portugal

Consider me stumped on this one.

Portugal did all the things against Morocco that Spain didn’t. Their attacking plan was all about playing it fast with players making runs in behind. They targeted exactly what Spain struggled to do and lost anyway. Morocco didn’t drastically change their approach. They were still compact without the ball in a mid-block, avoiding getting sucked in too deep when Portugal had spells of possession.

Hitting it fast to dynamic attackers is exactly what I would’ve suggested Portugal do, and it just didn’t work. After Portugal tried and failed to take the initiative, Morocco got ahead just before half time. Diogo Costa did a terrible job reading a cross and let Youssef En-Nesyri beat him to score. Morocco didn’t want half time to come after that, as the goal seemed to spook Portugal enough to let the Atlas Lions take control.

Morocco inevitably sat in a little deeper in the second half as they defended a lead. Portugal took control of the game, but they did a really poor job of turning that dominance into chances. I don’t completely understand what happened here. Portugal just didn’t have any ideas against a reasonably well organised opponent. They threw on Cristiano Ronaldo and Rafael Leão but it really didn’t matter. A team with this many good attackers should’ve had a much better way to create chances than this. It was a really tactically straightforward football match.

Are Morocco legit? One goal conceded in the World Cup so far, from about 4.8 xG. They’ve obviously been getting the rub of the green in terms of opponents not finishing well, but holding Spain and Portugal to one expected goal each is impressive, especially when both sides were spending the entire game trying to score a goal. They rode their luck somewhat to get here, but I don’t think it’s a huge injustice. I’m fascinated to see how they deal with France, who have a much more varied attack than either Spain or Portugal, as we’ll get onto now.

England 1-2 France

Both teams picked unchanged lineups from their Round of 16 wins. This was to be expected from France, but there had been questions about whether England would change shape to a back three. Gareth Southgate resisted that temptation.

He could afford to do that because England’s shape really became a back three at times. Pep Guardiola says formations are little more than “telephone numbers” and this was a good example of that. While left back Luke Shaw would push up higher and take conventional full back positions, right back Kyle Walker would drop in along the centre backs and create a back three. Meanwhile, central midfielder Jordan Henderson would drift right at times to fill the space that a right wing-back might be expected to take up in a 3-4-3 system. England were trying to get the benefits of both systems here.

The reason behind this was obvious: Kylian Mbappé. The Paris Saint-Germain forward is arguably the best in the world right now and has been on fire in this tournament, torching full backs as he attacks that left channel. Walker is the right sort of player to deal with the threat, but even he needs help against Mbappé, so England wanted to give him some help out there. Some might say Kieran Trippier at right wing-back would be the player to do that, but Mbappé is very reliant on one-twos from Antoine Griezmann or Adrien Rabiot drifting to his side from midfield. England needed someone in that space between the midfield and Mbappé blocking opportunities. Henderson was the man for that job.

The plan worked against Mbappé. England cut off the dangerous passes he might receive. In the three previous games he started, Mbappé received an average of 13 progressive passes. Against England, he received two. France just weren’t able to get it to their star man running into space. When he did get the ball, he found it difficult to deal with Walker and Henderson. He attempted just one shot and just never quite connected with the attackers around him properly. England successfully did a job on Mbappé.

But football, the saying goes, is a short blanket. “If I cover my head, I uncover my feet, and vice versa”. England used a lot of their short blanket to cover Mbappé, inevitably leaving gaps for others. Ousmane Dembélé seemed to get the better of Luke Shaw, and Antoine Griezmann really started to get going in the second half from midfield. England could’ve had the back four shift over to help Shaw deal with Dembélé, or have Henderson stay in midfield to deny space for Griezmann, but that would’ve left Mbappé exposed. Choices, choices. France have so many different attacking threats that you’re always leaving someone open.

England did have good moments attacking through Bukayo Saka. In big games like this, where there will be opportunities in transition, Saka and Jude Bellingham are really the perfect players to have. If this World Cup has cemented anything for England, it’s that the core of the national team going forward will be based around Saka, Bellingham and Phil Foden.

(Southgate’s choice to take Saka off was highly controversial. I haven’t seen any confirmations of this, but I’ve heard people say he looked like he was carrying a knock, which probably explains it.)

I’ve put in the race chart above, but this game isn’t a great one for xG. England clearly “won”, but that was almost entirely down to penalties. If you take those out, France have a very slight edge, but they were penalties. Everyone in the world saw that England had a chance to equalise with Kane’s second spot kick. This was a very contested game, with both teams putting together some good moments and finding it hard against an organised opponent. It was decided on Aurélien Tchouaméni scoring an absolute screamer in the first half and Kane missing a penalty in the second.

I don’t know what will happen next, but I think this is a better French team than the one that won in 2018. I never imagined Griezmann could really become a playmaker like this in Paul Pogba’s absence, while having Dembélé down the right gives them much more options than hitting Mbappé every time. I think the France of 2018 would’ve lost this game, but they’ve found many more ways to beat an opponent since then. For me, they have to be considered favourites to win the World Cup right now.

The only place to start is the devastating news of Grant Wahl’s death. An American soccer journalist best known for his long stint at Sports Illustrated but more recently of his own newsletter and CBS Sports, Grant was covering Argentina against the Netherlands at the stadium in Qatar when he suddenly collapsed. People have speculated all sorts of things but, sitting here in England, I can’t confidently say anything about his cause of death.

What I can confidently say is that Grant was a brilliant journalist. When the United States held the World Cup in 1994, there were many sneering and parochial responses on this side of the Atlantic to the very idea. When the US will host the tournament again in four years’ time, everyone around the world will take it seriously. That’s in no small part to Grant’s journalism shining a light on how soccer has transformed in America.

Grant was an incredibly courageous reporter until his last day. Many people who went to Qatar this month insisted they did so to “shine a light on the issues”. I don’t know of anyone as genuinely committed to doing this as Grant. He spoke directly to migrant workers to uncover the truth of their experiences, poking around where he was absolutely not wanted by the Qatari government. He pushed and tested the tournament’s supposed tolerance of rainbow symbols. He admitted to feeling quite concerned that he was being watched by the government in Qatar, but that never for a second led to him compromising on his reporting. He embodied the best values of courageous journalism.

He was every bit as good a person as he was a journalist. Looking on Twitter today, it seems like everyone who knew him had a story for a time when Grant Wahl helped them out. I didn’t know him well, but he was always kind and helpful when I did speak to him. He was the best of us, and I will miss reading his work a great deal.

It seems almost trivial to transition into talking about football now, but that’s how it is. I just hope I can live up to Grant’s standards in my own work going forward.

Croatia 1-1 Brazil (Croatia win on penalties)

Neymar has equaled Pelé’s record for the most goals by a man in a Brazil shirt. At 30 years old, he will certainly become the all time leading scorer for the Seleção masculina. His contract at Paris Saint-Germain runs another two-and-a-half years, and he may well keep playing at the highest level for years beyond that. He’ll be 34 at the next World Cup, so there’s still a fair chance he’ll be there to compete for the trophy.

But in another sense, it’s over for him. The dream is dead. A player like Vinícius might well have overtaken Neymar as the team’s biggest star in four years. If Brazil win the 2026 World Cup, Neymar would likely be a supporting player rather than the protagonist. If Paris Saint-Germain win the Champions League, the world will be more likely to credit Lionel Messi or Kylian Mbappé than Neymar.

He will almost certainly retire without winning the Ballon d’Or. Neymar will not go down in the same terms as Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Romário or Garrincha, let alone Pelé. And maybe that’s unfair. Neymar has been at the top of his game for at least eight years now. Someone like Ronaldinho only delivered for half that length of time. But history is written by the winners, and Neymar doesn’t have the silverware to write his version of events.

Did Brazil “underestimate” Croatia? I don’t really believe that any elite level coaching staff and analysis team can underestimate an opponent in 2022. But the vibe I got was that most in Brazil expected another dazzling performance comparable to the South Korea game. I wrote after that match that Brazil would probably need to bring in another midfielder to deal with the Croatia pass-and-grind machine. I voiced that view again on Twitter yesterday, but many in Brazil seemed sceptical. This system, in which Casemiro and Lucas Paquetá were the only genuine midfielders, was seen as enough to deal with Marcelo Brozović, Mateo Kovačić and Luka Modrić. This struck me as obviously wrong. Just check out which players were most involved from the passmaps below. (I wasn’t familiar with Twitter user DatoBHJ before, but they seem to put out cool stuff so check them out.)

Croatia did what they always do and dominated the midfield. You just can’t avoid those three working you in central areas. Brazil resorted to passing the ball along the back four and moving the ball up from the wide areas. This is exactly what Zlatko Dalić would have wanted.

But at the same time, Brazil created a ton of chances. For all that Croatia did things right, there’s no chance they go through unless Dominik Livaković has a brilliant game. I think Brazil could have done more to stifle Croatia’s approach, but should they? The chances were there to win the game.

You can squint and say they didn’t start to cook until after an hour, but Croatia are a good team. Dominating the xG by this much is a good performance! It just didn’t happen for them today. They got Croatia’d, but I don’t think there’s a clean narrative about stoic football beating flair here.

Netherlands 2-2 Argentina (Argentina win on penalties)

Argentina went through in the end and I think it was deserved. But a whole lot of stuff happened along the way.

After a cagey opening Argentina got ahead through the pass of the tournament, as Messi somehow found Nahuel Molina to score. It remained cagey for most of the game, as the Dutch didn’t really try to crank up the pressure and create lots of chances. Yet. The game was supposed to be dead when Denzel Dumfries brought down Marcos Acuña on the edge of the box. Messi hit the penalty perfectly. That should have been that.

Then Louis van Gaal did a Van Gaal move.

“We are playing ball possession play. If, after 70 minutes, we don’t succeed… then I change my playing style and then, of course, with the quality of [Marouane] Fellaini, we played more forward [long balls]. We scored because of that. So, I think it was a very good decision by the manager.”

That was Van Gaal eight years ago at Manchester United in his infamous “long balls” rant, and the approach was exactly the same here. After 78 minutes of a more structured approach, the Netherlands brought on Wout Weghorst, the 6’6 (1.97m) striker who wasn’t technical enough for Sean Dyche’s Burnley. Weghorst scores from a header and then an innovative free kick routine to turn the game on its head.

Argentina turned it on towards the end but the Dutch were really playing for penalties. I think this was a worse game than Brazil against Croatia, made entertaining by the tension and drama. Argentina just had more individual quality about them, and I don’t think there’s a great story of tactical intrigue about this one.

What is intriguing is whether they can avoid getting Croatia’d. Argentina will be more solid in midfield than Brazil (or anyone Croatia has faced so far). But Brazil also simply created a lot of chances in that game. My gut says it should be Argentina’s win, but who knows at this point.

Morocco 0-0 Spain (Morocco win on penalties)

Let’s start with what might be the purest visualisation of Spain’s problems.

It looked almost exactly the same in the previous match against Japan. Big, fat lines between the defenders and some of the midfielders dropping very deep, but almost nothing to anyone in a position to hurt the opposition. This is how it always looks when things don’t go right for Spain: endless sideways passes that don’t get anywhere near the opponent’s goal. You might be wondering whether this is just what tiki-taka looks like when expressed on a passmap. But let’s look at the greatest single performance in that style I’ve ever seen – Barcelona in the 2011 Champions League final – and see which players are the most involved.

Barcelona had Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi making the most passes that day, all in areas high up the pitch. Spain’s passing was dominated by the two centre backs. This isn’t about whether possession football is the right or wrong way to play. This is about a team simply being shit at possession football.

Morocco did a good job shutting down Sergio Busquets and stopping him dictating the game, and it was pretty shocking how much that just stifled Spain’s build up play. This meant Pedri had to drift into deeper areas to collect the ball, which isn’t what you want him doing. I’m shocked that Luis Enrique didn’t figure out a solution to this. Maybe bring on Koke to play next to Busquets in a double pivot, and push Pedri up to a number ten? I’m just spitballing here. Spain should have found a different way to progress the ball into dangerous areas.

They did eventually do something far too late. Spain made a lot of substitutions, but I think the most important were bringing on Álvaro Morata for Marco Asensio and Nico Williams for Ferran Torres. I don’t think either Morata or Williams are particularly great players. But Williams stretched the game in wide areas while Morata stretched it in behind. It was just more varied and interesting. But not interesting enough, and Spain laboured to produce good chances.

What gets me is that Luis Enrique1 was supposed to be the answer to all of this. He was supposed to increase the tempo of the side, maintaining principles of positional play but adding more zip and urgency. Even when Vicente del Bosque’s Spain won the World Cup in 2010, I felt as though they did it with the handbrake on. Spain had access to the Barcelona midfield, the best midfield trio in the history of football, and chose to shoehorn in Xabi Alonso for extra solidity. The Spanish national side often get put in the same bracket as Barcelona, but they always played a more conservative version of positional play. Pep Guardiola (rightly) insists his teams have never played tiki-taka, but Spain do it all the time.

That was supposed to be over. Luis Enrique has been steadfast in ignoring the opinions of everyone else in Spain. This is his team, breaking through the dogmas of his predecessors, and the end result is exactly the same as the last World Cup. I think this might have been more worrying than Germany’s group-stage exit in some ways (though I could change my mind on that tomorrow). Spain produced barely a quarter of an expected goal in the first 70 minutes before changing their approach. So if this isn’t what the manager wants (and I truly believe that to be the case), what’s happening? Is he unable to communicate his ideas and get the players to buy in? Is the squad not good enough in the areas he wants to change things? Is the talent so rigidly suited to this one style that the team ends up playing like this, no matter what?

All of it needs serious reflection. Right now, there are more questions than answers.

Portugal 6-1 Switzerland

It probably stings for the Spanish that their neighbours both to the West and South are so happy.

Portugal obviously made the big call to drop Cristiano Ronaldo, but it was part of a broader set of changes. João Cancelo and Rúben Neves were notably dropped, giving the team a slightly different feel. If Ronaldo’s absence gave the team more mobility in the front line than the other changes did the same across the pitch. Cancelo and Neves are two of the better passers in this Portugal side, but Fernando Santos seemed to want something with more emphasis on fast transitions.

He got it.

It helps that they finished well. Portugal scored their first shot of the game, in which Gonçalo Ramos absolutely smashed the ball hard enough that the goalkeeper couldn’t do anything. Pepe powered a difficult header for the second, and Portugal found themselves 2-0 up from about half an expected goal. Maybe Switzerland would’ve offered more had they not been demoralised like that. But Portugal were still very impressive.

The contrast with Spain couldn’t be more stark. Portugal had just 48% of the ball but moved it quickly every time. Bruno Fernandes and João Felix were either side of Ramos and the dynamic seemed to suit all three players well. I do wonder how this would work against a side happy for Portugal to have all of the ball and deny those transition opportunities such as… oh, say, Morocco. I guess we’ll find out now.

I think Portugal should be ok against the North African side. They have good attackers, obviously, but they also have lots of different types of attacker. If they need to crank up the possession football a little more, they can do that. If they need to put in lots of crosses, they can do that. And if they need to play fast transitions, well, we know they can do that.

Facing Morocco might ensure Portugal maintain a more attacking style. If they win that game, I would think Santos will revert to his sufferball tactics against France or England. That might be what provides the winning ticket for Portugal. This team can adapt to different situations. We’ll see if that makes the difference.

Or they might lose to Morocco and I’ll look a fool.

Japan 1-1 Croatia (Croatia win on penalties)

How do Croatia keep doing this?

When they lost the World Cup final four years ago, I believed this would represent the gradual winding down of Croatia as a serious international force. Half their starting eleven against France in Moscow were over 30 and this is just how it goes. For a country of four million people to produce this many good players is remarkable, but demography has to be destiny in the end, right?

Five of the starting eleven from the final four years ago have retired from international football (Danijel Subašić, Šime Vrsaljko, Ivan Strinić, Ivan Rakitić and Mario Mandžukić), while others are getting pretty long in the tooth. Croatia named the oldest starting eleven in a World Cup knockout game since 2006. If this went to extra time, they were going to get tired, right? They couldn’t just pretend it was 2018 again, surely?

I was wrong.

It really felt like Japan had them in the first half. They were doing a good job of dragging Luka Modrić into wide areas and really blunting his influence. This was probably the star man’s weakest performance of the tournament so far, though he was still very good. But Croatia just keep going and going. Marcelo Brozović really stepped it up here, playing both the most passes (115) and the most progressive passes (9). I’d love to learn more about Croatian youth football, because no country is better at producing these technical midfielders on a per-capita basis. No one else comes close.

Zlatko Dalić and his staff have done a tremendous job of building a style of football around these qualities. They just grind you and grind you with that intricate passing until your legs fall off. They can afford to go into extra time when they’re doing so much of their work with the ball.

Of course, but for a penalty shootout I would’ve written something completely different. I’m overwhelmingly team “it’s a lottery” when it comes to shootouts, and I think most attempts to analyse the meaning behind them are a perfect example of this famous xkcd cartoon.

Having said this, Japan did give us a rare genuinely bad penalty shootout. I have no idea what happened that they forgot how to strike the ball with any power. A bizarre affair that ensures I say lots of nice things about Croatia’s passing instead of Japan hanging on until the end.

Brazil 4-1 South Korea

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France 3-1 Poland

As I said yesterday, some teams are so good that they don’t need to attack.

This was a really competitive game in the first half. Both sides were creating good chances and it was a pretty end-to-end game. I was surprised by how poorly the French dealt with what had been a pretty nothing Poland side up until this point. Didier Deschamps fairly has a reputation as a “sufferball” manager, but that’s not what we’ve seen at all in this World Cup. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Deschamps hated this first half. Then right before the interval, Kylian Mbappé plays a through ball into Olivier Giroud that unlocks the game and gets France ahead going into the break.

The second half was pretty similar. Mbappé scored two incredible strikes from the edge of the box to make it look easy, but France were not great at creating chances. The Poland penalty at the end distorts things somewhat, but xG models called this as a close game.

Does it matter?

Those two Mbappé goals have a combined xG of about 0.15 (per FBRef). But that’s partly down to the choices he made. He, correctly, figured he could score by beating the ‘keeper from relatively low quality shots, but that’s not a decision he usually makes. Had he not gone for it, he could have driven further towards goal and created different kinds of chances for himself or others. The low xG total here is partly a reflection of Mbappé feeling like he just had the beating of Wojciech Szczęsny today. He made different choices than the models would suggest and he got it right.

Of course, you could argue that Poland made it difficult for him and forced him to take on those shots, which he scored brilliantly. But maybe he doesn’t score them on another day. He’s the best player at this World Cup, but no one scores those every time.

I was reasonably impressed by how well Poland dealt with France in their 4-4-2 shape. But it almost doesn’t matter what you do when their attackers are this good. Mbappé decided to turn it on. When you have Mbappé attacking the left channel, Ousmane Dembélé on the right, Antoine Griezmann pulling the strings from deep and Giroud tying the room together as a target man, there’s not much to do if they decide to turn it on.

Which is more than a little worrying from an English perspective.

England 3-0 Senegal

It’s taken a while, but have England found the right balance in the side?

It certainly didn’t look like it for most of the first half. Gareth Southgate’s side found it very hard to find any fluency. Aliou Cissé clearly watched the way USA stifled England by pressing hard in a 4-4-2 shape. England found it very hard to play through the midfield at all, often going back to the defenders and trying to hit it long. Jordan Henderson was particularly disappointing here, using the ball poorly and hurting the way England wanted to build up through the midfield.

Then it all clicked.

Harry Kane dropped a little deeper, and I think that really helps England play through teams. He hasn’t been prolific in front of goal, but I think he’s giving a much more complete performance at this World Cup than he did four years ago. England then benefit from the midfield selection, as Henderson and Jude Bellingham are making runs into the box. Kane plays a through-ball to Bellingham, who slides it over to Henderson to score. It’s one of the first time England really get to break into space and it changes the game for the second half.

The second goal isn’t too different, with Bellingham driving forward through midfield to pick out Phil Foden, who plays in Kane. The third indirectly comes from Kane dropping deep again, creating space for Foden to get down the left and put in a cross to Bukayo Saka.

Henderson does need to improve his pass selection in this shape. He completed 100% of his “short” (5-15 yards, about 4.5-14m) passes, which is obviously as good as can be. But only two thirds of his “medium” (15-30 yards) length passes found a white shirt. Liverpool have some pretty unique passing structures in a 4-3-3 shape, and I don’t think he’s quite adjusted to the different environment of England’s midfield. If he can just concentrate on playing it short rather than pinging it to a nonexistent Virgil van Dijk or a Trent Alexander-Arnold sitting on the bench, England should have the right midfield balance.

England were decent against Senegal, but it certainly helps when all three of your good chances go in the back of the net. France did the same thing, which makes this quarter final pretty nicely balanced.

Both Deschamps and Southgate have so far avoided really playing with the handbrake on, but this might be the match when they revert to type. I’ve been wondering whether Deschamps will drop Dembélé for an extra central midfielder to tuck in and make the team more solid. Blaise Matuidi was a crucial part of the 2018 World Cup winning side, tucking in and offering an extra midfield body from his left sided role, perfectly contrasting Mbappé on the right. This time, Mbappé has been moved over to the left, but Dembélé has played as an old-fashioned winger down the right, wanting to take players on and put crosses in. Unless he’s going to completely change the shape of the side (which worked out disastrously against Switzerland in the Euros last year), the most obvious way for Deschamps to go full Deschamps is to bring in someone like Eduardo Camavinga or Youssouf Fofana for Dembélé.

I think Southgate would like to see that happen, because England’s biggest challenge right now is covering all the space across Dembélé’s right flank over to Mbappé’s left. Some have suggested England should switch to a back three, which might be on Southgate’s mind, though I think it would be a big mistake. The question with that shape is whether it more often looks like a back three or a back five. If it’s a three, you risk Mbappé and Dembélé getting around the sides and killing you that way. If it’s a five, you risk getting sucked into your own third for long periods without an easy way to get up the pitch, similar to the Euro 2020 final against Italy. There is a time and a place for a back three, and I strongly believe this is not it. England should be defensive against France, but without sitting too deep and inviting wave upon wave of pressure.

It’s hard to look past France as the favourites for this one when Mbappé is playing the way he is. Still though, this should be a serious test for the French beyond which we’ve seen so far, and both teams should have to step it up to get through this one.

Netherlands 3-1 United States

How much did the Netherlands “deserve” to go through?

In the first ten minutes, it certainly felt like the United States had control of the game. They only turned this into one shot, though Christian Pulisic’s chance was very good. I don’t think he was offside, either, so we’re potentially talking about a very different game. The US pushed the Netherlands right back into their own third here. It was very impressive stuff. For ten minutes.

You know what happened after that. Memphis Depay scored the opener after a delightful passing move. Daley Blind made it two just before half time. Haji Wright scored a weird looping shot to give the Americans hope, but Denzel Dumfries finished it. Easy, right?

Most xG models called it as a very close game with the Netherlands slightly shading it. These were small margins, though. Having watched all the chances back with my own dumb eyes, that feels right to me. I don’t think there was a huge difference in the quality of chances between the two teams.

So, did the Netherlands deserve to win?

“Team USA didn’t adjust, they didn’t adapt”, Louis van Gaal claimed (though not in such a negative tone as implied). “We made our tactical plan based on [targeting the flanks], [which] probably allowed us to win”. It was clear he had a plan for the USA. This wasn’t anything like the dominant possession football one might expect. England tried that against the US and got stifled by the Americans’ pressing game. Van Gaal denied them the same opportunities here.

But still, all that planning for a small edge on xG? Some have suggested game state effects here and I just don’t see it. The Netherlands conceded their biggest chance of the game at 0-0, which would’ve blown up Van Gaal’s strategy had it gone in. Once ahead, they conceded about 1.1 xG for the rest of the match. That’s more than Gregg Berhalter’s team created against either England or Wales. People are trying to credit this game as a Van Gaal masterclass but, sorry, I just don’t see it.

I’m sure Van Gaal will have another plan to deal with Argentina and Lionel Messi. I have no idea what it will look like, but I think it will need to work better than this to deal with that team.

The US exit the tournament at the round of 16, which isn’t an improvement on 2010 or 2016 in terms of pure results. But I would feel much better about this team than either of those. Bob Bradley’s team were much more interested in simply parking the bus in South Africa, which made sense for those players. Jürgen Klinsmann was doing god knows what in 2014, and the side were very fortunate to scrape through some pretty poor performances. That team was annihilated by Belgium despite taking the match to extra time. This team played pretty well despite the scoreline. I know a lot of you are Americans, and I’d be feeling fairly confident in the medium term were I in your shoes. There’s enough here to believe the US will be a more competitive team in 2026. I certainly wouldn’t blow it all up by firing Berhalter and starting over.

Argentina 2-1 Australia

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Group H

Portugal had already qualified and were likely to finish first unless Ghana moved the goal difference needle. South Korea needed to win and hope that either Ghana lost, or Ghana drew but South Korea made up the goal difference.

Ghana, along with the pride of humbling their least favourite man in world football, could go through a draw as long as Korea didn’t score too many. A win would send them straight through. Uruguay had to win and hope South Korea didn’t do the same.

Portugal got things going with the first shot of either game. Diogo Dalot got down the right flank and squared it to Ricardo Horta, who put it straight in the net. 1-0 to Portugal and Korea were in trouble. Ghana had the chance to really take the driving seat in the group after 20 minutes, but Andre Ayew missed his penalty. Uruguay made Ghana pay for this soon after. Luis Suárez’ strike was probably about to float past the line, but Giorgian De Arrascaeta got on the end of it to make sure. Suárez and De Arrascaeta linked up again straight afterwards, after the former played a dinked assist for the latter to smash it in. 32 minutes gone and Uruguay had all but ended Ghana’s dream.

At about the same time, South Korea got their break. After creating nothing in the first half and totally ceding control of the game, they get a corner that Portugal don’t defend properly and equalise. That’s not enough to change the standings, with Uruguay still set to finish second, but it’s half the job done for Korea.

Uruguay vs Ghana turned flat in the second half. Ghana looked broken by conceding two goals, while Uruguay have a strict philosophy of only trying to score when they absolutely need to. Hopefully everyone changed the channel and put on the other game. After looking very poor in the first 45, South Korea started to create more chances. It took them all the way into stoppage time in the second half to do it but, eventually, it happened. Korea broke from a Portugal corner, with Son Heung-min driving up the pitch and feeding Hwang Hee-chan, who didn’t miss his one-on-one with the ‘keeper. Korea had won the game. This started feeding through to the Uruguay players, knowing they were going out, and producing the instantly famous image of Suárez’ tears.

Let’s talk Uruguay’s failure, because I think it’s easiest to parse. Many are up in arms over Edinson Cavani not receiving a penalty late on, and scoring that chance would send Uruguay through on goal difference. I think it could have easily been given but, as ever, I don’t really care about refereeing decisions. Uruguay didn’t score a single goal in their first two matches. They barely even tried to attack in this tournament until the first half against Ghana. Uruguay’s ultra-cynical sufferball approach comes with this risk.

The template for extremely negative World Cup play is probably Argentina in 1986. Carlos Bilardo’s team looked to defend and defend for 90 minutes, trusting that a certain Diego Maradona would do something brilliant to get them ahead and just soak up pressure otherwise. It’s a model that’s been embraced by other nations at times, and can be described as “being so good that you don’t need to attack”.

Uruguay are not so good that they don’t need to attack. They might have been good enough for such a low-variance approach when Suárez and Cavani were in their prime, but they’re not right now. This is a decent squad, not a great one. If they had pushed harder to get the three points against South Korea in the first match, they might have sailed through this group. They’re kind of the flip side of Germany in that sense. Uruguay needed to take more risks and produce more than zero goals in their first two games.

I don’t think Ghana can have that many complaints. Maybe they were good enough for a draw against Uruguay on another day, but I find it hard to believe they “deserved” enough points to see them into the knockouts. They were just in a group with some higher quality opponents.

Korea got the huge benefit of playing Portugal in a partial dead rubber for that team, but hey, them’s the breaks. They pretty much played Ghana and Uruguay level, then got the good fortune to face Portugal on a good day where they really did deserve the win. I suspect Portugal can turn it back on when the game really matters to them, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Group F

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Stats from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

Group F

Croatia just needed a draw to secure their place in the knockout stages, though a loss could potentially be enough. A win would probably secure first place in the group. Belgium could potentially have gone through with a draw, but realistically needed to win the game.

Morocco were guaranteed to go through with a draw. Canada had already been knocked out.

The first half of Croatia vs Belgium was a difficult watch to say the least. Croatia got awarded a penalty early on before it got ruled out for the most marginal of offsides. Had that been given, they’d have been away, but otherwise Croatia created almost nothing in that first half. Belgium launched a few fast breaks that didn’t quite come together. The intent was there, but the execution fell flat.

In all fairness, Belgium really turned it on in the second half. They created many excellent chances while giving up almost nothing. Half time substitute Romelu Lukaku took five shots worth 1.67 xG in 45 minutes, but managed to miss them all in comical fashion. Danny Page’s xG simulator estimates Lukaku scores at least one goal about 90% of the time, so that’s going to sting. I do want to give credit for just how much better Belgium were at creating chances when Lukaku was on the pitch, but it was still embarrassing for him to miss like that. I don’t see anything wrong with their performance against Croatia. But I saw a lot wrong with their first two games.

Morocco just needed a draw, though Canada presumably felt the need to play for pride. Morocco got ahead early through a stupid goalkeeping mistake, then doubled their lead through Youssef En-Nesyri within half an hour. Canada pulled one back with an unfortunate own goal, and that was the end of the excitement.

I think both sides would’ve been happy to end the match at half time. Morocco had the win they wanted, and Canada just wanted to go home. This was not a great game. Canada “won” the xG, but we’re talking a game of eleven shots between both teams here. That’s a comically low number, and a couple of big chances from Canada skew the figures in their favour. Maybe they could’ve scored one of those, but they weren’t in control from the flow of the game.

And so it was that Belgium were sent home. Roberto Martínez announced he was to leave in an era where he’s been pretty much ok. Yes, they didn’t win anything, but I don’t think they’ve played a tournament where they were the single most talented team. The “golden generation” probably peaked in talent before Martínez arrived, and he’s spent his time dealing with ageing players. Whatever opportunity was there has gone now, and I don’t think Belgium will be among the favourites for a World Cup or European Championship for quite some time.

Group E

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Stats from FBRef unless otherwise stated

Group D

France were already through and almost certain to finish top as long as Australia didn’t manage a huge goal difference swing. They just needed to avoid getting hammered. Tunisia needed to beat France and hope Australia didn’t win, or Denmark didn’t win by enough to qualify on goal difference.

A win would guarantee qualification for Australia. A draw would be enough as long as Tunisia didn’t beat France. Denmark needed to beat Australia, and hope Tunisia either didn’t win or didn’t do so by a bigger scoreline than the Danes.

Owing to France’s safety, Didier Deschamps heavily rotated. Only two players kept their place from the win over Denmark: Raphaël Varane and Aurélien Tchouaméni. This was a very Deschamps sort of selection, going heavy on extra midfielders with Eduardo Camavinga at left back and Mattéo Guendouzi in the front three. I don’t know whether Deschamps was looking at potential approaches for the knockout stages or not.

Either way, he can’t have been impressed by what he saw. I don’t think it matters, but France were extremely flat for most of this game. Kylian Mbappé had more touches in the Tunisia box than any other French player and he only came on after an hour. Thankfully, we’ll never see France play another lineup anything like this for the rest of the tournament. I’m sure the regular starters will benefit from the time off.

Tunisia created one big chance in Wahbi Khazri’s goal, in which it felt like the entire France side just switched off. That was the only really good chance they produced, after which point France got their act together and exerted some control over the game. We could’ve had a whole debate about Antoine Griezmann’s late goal getting ruled out as he came back from an offside position, but the events of the other match spared us this.

Why were Denmark so poor in this tournament? This team has been performing excellently for the last two years, then the World Cup comes along and they can’t get out of first gear. I wish we could know what the players are saying privately, because it’s fascinating that this team just didn’t turn up. In previous games, they were bailed out at times by the quality of their set pieces, but that didn’t even happen here. The Danes only managed two shots from set plays, worth a combined xG of 0.03. There were several times where Christian Eriksen’s free kicks and corners just didn’t go anywhere dangerous.

Australia scored from what was just basic sloppiness as Denmark got caught up the pitch. That’s just the fundamentals of organisation and concentration. The Danes put a lot of pressure on in the second half, but it never led to anything substantive. I don’t quite know how they’ve done it, but Australia are through. They have the third worst xG difference in the tournament so far. A few bounces of the ball go right and they’re into the knockout stages. Now, who are they playing? Oh, right…

Group C

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Group A (Netherlands vs Qatar, Ecuador vs Senegal)

The Netherlands against Qatar was pretty much a banker and it delivered no surprises. The Dutch needed a win to confirm their place atop the group and did it in a pretty straightforward manner. This might’ve been the derby for Dutch legend and Qatar shill Ruud Gullit but it wasn’t, as he would call it, “sexy football”. But they did enough. Cody Gakpo scored again, taking him to three goals from four shots taken so far. I’ll leave you to make up your mind on that. Frenkie de Jong scored from about two yards out in a scramble in the box to end things, and ensure nothing happened for most of the second half. This was a gimme, and they passed the test.

Senegal meanwhile had more to do. Ecuador were good with a draw and set out as such. The South American team took two shots in the first half, one from a free kick and the other a pretty poor attempt. Look, I have no problem with sides being defensive. But if you’re going to be defensive and play for a draw, you’d better defend well. They didn’t. Senegal targeted Ecuador’s right flank again and again, and Ismaïla Sarr ran Angelo Preciado so ragged he had to be taken off at half time. Senegal got ahead through this route: Preciado panicked and brought Sarr down in his own box, costing a penalty that Sarr put away delightfully.

Ecuador manager Gustavo Alfaro clearly realised he got it wrong and made a double change at half time. Ecuador were much better after this. They got their equaliser through a smartly worked corner kick, taking advantage of Senegal’s man on the post to mean that everyone was still onside in the second phase. They were just as sloppy defending their own free kick, though, and Senegal were through. I did feel like Senegal had more ideas and willingness to attack, so no complaints from me about this outcome.

Group B (Wales vs England, Iran vs United States)

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Cameroon 3-3 Serbia

Can’t say I saw this one coming.

Yeah, I don’t know, a draw seems fair? This game was drunk. Serbia’s quality is in the front three of Sergej Milinković-Savić, Dusan Tadić and Aleksandar Mitrović. The Fulham striker in particular was really involved today, missing some chances along with the one he scored, and proving just a general pain in the backside for Cameroon. My love of big strikers being a nuisance might be the most British thing about me. I don’t know how to analyse a game as ridiculous as this one. Bad defending!

Vincent Aboubakar scored that wonderful scoop to get Cameroon back in the game before Eric Choupo-Moting tapped in an equaliser. Serbia were comically open towards the end. You’re winning! Defend!

Either of these teams need to win their last game and hope the other result breaks right for them. Cameroon have a bit of a mountain to climb with Brazil, even if it’s a dead rubber for the Seleção. Serbia maybe have more hope against Switzerland, though I would put them as underdogs. If the two countries’ only real contribution to the World Cup is this absolutely ridiculous game, then that’s more than enough.

South Korea 2-3 Ghana

I must admit Ghana have completely taken me by surprise. They were not impressive in the most recent Africa Cup of Nations, heading home in the group stage. They won their World Cup qualifying group on goals scored ahead of South Africa, which sent them to a playoff game against Nigeria that they won on away goals. And here they are with a great chance to make it into the knockout stage.

When Ghana took their chances, they absolutely carved South Korea open. Their first goal was from a set piece Korea made a complete mess of, while the second was from a deeper cross that in some ways had the feel of a set piece from open play. Ghana are a menace in these situations. The third came from a cross, as did both of South Korea’s goals. It’s not often that you see five goals in a game and they all come from crosses. Korea attempted an obscene 35 crosses in the game.

As you can see from the race chart above, South Korea certainly could’ve got an equaliser late on. They created slightly more xG than Ghana. But here’s the weird thing about expected goals: a few big chances are better than a lot of small chances, even if the total value is the same. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t totally understand the maths on this, but I’m told it works out that way. Check out this if you’re better at maths than me. We’re not talking a huge effect here but, while South Korea created an extra 0.2 or so xG, the sides’ chances of winning were almost identical, with Ghana very slightly shading it at 36% to 35%.1

That late period chasing an equaliser was especially quantity-over-quality. Cross after cross is not an efficient way of scoring a goal. I don’t quite understand why Korea aren’t trying to get Son on the end of these chances. He took just two of their 22 shots and seems glued to that left hand side. He’s one of the cleanest finishers out there. In situations like this, get him in the box more often.

Ghana would probably be fine with a draw against Uruguay to go through. FiveThirtyEight has their chances at 42%, which is largely just a reflection of how much the model thinks Uruguay are the better team, which isn’t very nice. Korea need to beat Portugal, then hope Ghana mess up against Uruguay (without Uruguay running up the goal difference too much). That’s a harder ask.

Brazil 1-0 Switzerland

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Japan 0-1 Costa Rica

Content warning: maths

International football often doesn’t produce a lot of good chances per game.

Japan’s defeat to Costa Rica was a good example of that. Japan “won” the expected goals but, depending on the model you’re looking at, only created 0.6-0.9 xG. When looking at the FBRef model and feeding it into Danny Page’s xG simulator, you can see the problem. They score at least once 60% of the time, but that obviously leaves 40% of the time where they don’t find an equaliser.

Japan created 89% of the xG in this game, but the model estimates that they would only win from those chances 56% of the time. So, despite clearly dominating, the data predicts they’d go home disappointed nearly half the time. What gives? There are so few events in the game. It’s the law of large numbers in action. The fewer chances there are total in a game, the greater the odds that the team which didn’t create as many can win the match. If we double the chances each team took in the match, Japan’s win probability goes up to 78%. If we quadruple them, the Samurai Blue win 93% of the time, despite still only having 89% of the xG.

So should Japan have been more aggressive in their strategy? Yes, but I don’t think it’s a matter of simply turning up the sliders. Japan have spent recent years becoming more solid and hard to beat. They conceded just twice in eight qualification matches. This is a Japan team probably better suited to giving superior sides a tough time, but we saw the flip side here of a low-variance approach. That might be useful in the knockout stages, but they’re now only at a 20% chance (according to FiveThirtyEight) to make it through.

Belgium 0-2 Morocco

Belgium are Eden Hazard’s most famous feature in this tournament.

Roberto Martínez at least seemed to accept this in moving to a 4-2-3-1 shape. Axel Witsel and Amadou Onana made at least some sense as a double pivot and could have offered better protection to the back four. Youri Tielemans was poor against Canada, though he feels like someone who Martínez should be working to get more out of. But the attack didn’t make sense to me. I’m not sure what Eden Hazard does that makes more sense as a ten, and Kevin De Bruyne on the right just limits his involvement. I would’ve gone with a 4-3-3 and used De Bruyne as a central midfielder.

Belgium were fairly positive early on, getting a few decent chances, but then it felt like they just succumbed control of the game to Morocco. This is another good case of xG not quite lying but failing to tell the whole story. Could Michy Batshuayi have scored an early goal? Yes. Did Belgium do a good job of controlling the situation after that? No.

In the first 20 minutes, Belgium led the xG by 0.46 to zilch. In the rest of the game, Morocco led the xG by 0.58 to 0.24. So Belgium created the majority of their good chances in the first 20, then produced very little for the rest of the match while Morocco were gradually turning up the heat. This was something of a smash-and-grab, but Belgium didn’t exactly do enough to definitively put their stamp on the game. Yes, on another day they’d win this, but it’s hard to argue they were remotely good.

Everyone’s talking about how old they are and I agree. But they’re still trying to play like a younger team. Is it not time to drop into a lower block? Martínez doesn’t have to give up his principles in possession, but he needs to protect those ageing centre backs better than he typically does.

This result now puts Morocco as the favourites to qualify from Group F, at 91% according to FiveThirtyEight. A draw against Canada would guarantee it, but there is still a chance of going through even if they lose. Belgium conversely are down to 33%. It’s very likely they’ll need to beat Croatia to do it. That could definitely happen, but one in three feels about right.

Croatia 4-1 Canada

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Tunisia 0-1 Australia

The Australians I spoke to all told me this team was terrible, and here they are.

Turns out that early goal was enough to hang on. I’ll be honest, it’s a good job that the early kick-offs have not been great games, because staying up late to write these articles has meant I’m not at my most focused when those matches are being played. But hey, good win for Australia.

A win against Denmark would definitely see Australia through, while a draw would do as long as Tunisia don’t pull off what would be one of their greatest ever football triumphs by beating their colonisers. FiveThirtyEight sees it as little more than a coin flip between Australia and Denmark to go through, and believes it would take a miracle for Tunisia. I think it’s a little better than that from a Tunisian perspective, as France can now play a weakened team. It’s heading for a big showdown on Wednesday.

Poland 2-0 Saudi Arabia

Poland were quite poor against Saudi Arabia, except when they weren’t. I don’t know if that makes sense outside my own head, but that was the game.

Saudi Arabia were controlling the game well for the most part, dominating possession as well as the shot count. They continued with a pretty high line and looked to play positive and fluid football. Their passmap showed that they were doing a good job of getting lots of different players involved in the game.

But when the big chances came, Poland just crushed it. Saudi Arabia were better across most of the pitch, but Poland were better in both boxes. Robert Lewandowski assisted the first goal and scored the second, giving a pretty basic lesson in the “stay fairly organised and rely on one match-winner” theory of international football that dates back to at least Argentina’s 1986 title. It worked. They didn’t create many dangerous situations, but they were extremely effective at turning those situations into chances.

A draw against Argentina would definitely see Poland through. If they lose that game, they’ll have to rely on Saudi Arabia not beating Mexico and some favourable goal difference. I’d rather be Poland than Saudi Arabia right now, but it looks like we could have a pretty dramatic ending in Group C.

France 2-1 Denmark

France just absolutely cooked Denmark.

All the things that worked against Australia kept working here. Theo Hernandez is perfectly suited to overlapping Kylian Mbappé on the left. Ousmane Dembélé is brilliant at holding a wide line on the right, allowing (in this case) Jules Koundé to stay as a solid defender. Aurélien Tchouaméni can cover for Adrien Rabiot, who’s free to concentrate on making surprisingly dangerous runs into the box. Antoine Griezmann then drops a little deeper to become a crucial playmaker. Olivier Giroud is doing his thing as a link-up target man. Didier Deschamps might have stumbled onto it, but this team just works.

Denmark really struggled to contain France and offer anything from open play. Once again, their best attacking threat was from set pieces. The Danish Superliga became heavily focused on set piece goals during the 2010s, led by FC Midtjylland and then widely adopted by other sides. There was a big focus on specific routines, and this mentality seems to have filtered to the national team. It helps when you have Christian Eriksen, but I think that’s far from the only factor. This is an obvious area where a more limited team can do well at international level, and Denmark are reaping the rewards.

But you just can’t stop France when they play like this, and you certainly can’t stop Mbappé. He’s been unhappy that Paris Saint-Germain play him as a striker, but this role on the left close to Giroud is absolutely perfect for him. You just have to pray he has a bad game for some reason. France are now mathematically through and almost certain to finish first, so expect them to heavily rotate against Tunisia. Denmark need to beat Australia and hope Tunisia don’t pull off a miracle. It’s far from secure, but I’d back them to do it.

Argentina 2-0 Mexico

I thought Argentina actually played very well against Saudi Arabia in the first game and should have won. In the first half especially, they were creating high quality chances at will, even if they got marginally caught offside. It was a really positive performance that convinced me this was a very serious side, even if they didn’t get the three points.

So, inevitably, they got the win over Mexico in a game where I was much, much less impressed.

Argentina were atrocious in the first half. This set up was asking Lionel Messi to be the all encompassing number ten. He’s supposed to be the guy both making the decisive pass and also getting on the end of things. Part of that is because Lautaro Martínez just wasn’t at it today and Ángel Di María looks like he’s coming to the end. But they were asking Messi to run the show when speculation exists that he’s carrying a knock. So there was no one who could really stretch Mexico or force them to defend uncomfortable situations. It… wasn’t great.

Were they better after the second half? Not really. Across the 90-something minutes, they had just six touches in Mexico’s box. By comparison, they had 25 touches in Saudi Arabia’s box on Tuesday. This really wasn’t about a second half in which Argentina came roaring out. It was about Messi and Enzo Fernández both scoring screamers that took the game away from Mexico. That was more than enough, but it really was it.

Mexico set out to nullify Argentina in a low block, but it really shouldn’t have been that easy. Tactically speaking, they didn’t do anything particularly interesting. I was much more impressed by how the US shut down England than this. They just hung on in there until Argentina scored two worldies. It wasn’t an impressive spectacle for the most part, even if the tension and two brilliant moments made it an enjoyable watch.

Argentina are now at 78% to go through according to FiveThirtyEight. They need to beat Poland, or draw and hope Mexico get something from Saudi Arabia. 78% feels about right for those odds. Comparatively, this is the worst Mexico team I can remember watching at a World Cup. I don’t watch Concacaf football very often (you should read if that’s your thing), but there’s just nothing that excites me watching Mexico. They’re so nothing-y. To go through without relying on Argentina losing, Mexico would have to beat Saudi Arabia by a lot of goals. I don’t feel good about that.

Wales 0-2 Iran

It took a while, but an actual football match broke out in this one.

Iran found a better balance in their tactical approach this time. Against England, they were incredibly passive for the opening period, and decided to go a bit more aggressive before England’s goals just took the game away from them. This time, they were still defensive but more on the front foot.

Both sides were cagey in the first half but Iran really stepped it up in the second. Wales were so passive, just happy to sit in and invite pressure. With the ball, they again had no real way of moving through the midfield and into attack. It’s a big problem that Aaron Ramsey looks like he can’t run anymore. Add in a 2016 version of Ramsey bursting a gut to get in the box and this is a different team.

Mehdi Taremi was a problem. Both Taremi and Gareth Bale each received eight progressive passes (per FBRef), but Taremi turned those into eight shot-creating actions to Bale’s two. The narrative around Wales has been that this is an emerging football force, but you look at those players and they look like they’re coming to the end. If Wales want to keep making a name for themselves, they’re going to need new star players to emerge from somewhere.

Iran have pushed themselves up to 58% to qualify from the group, according to FiveThirtyEight. I don’t love their methodology on this, but it’s clarifying. If Iran get a draw against the United States on Tuesday, they will be through as long as Wales don’t beat England. Knowing Carlos Queiroz’ track record, Iran could make that game one of the worst you’ve ever seen.

Wales now need a miracle, with FiveThirtyEight putting their chances at 5%. They need to beat England and hope for a draw between the US and Iran. Considering they’ve shown virtually no attacking intent in the two games so far, I’d say those chances are slim.

Qatar 1-3 Senegal

So, Qatar got knocked out. Please try to hold back the tears.

But they were actually ok in this game. Senegal scored their three goals through good finishing more than anything, creating a fair number of chances but none all that special.

I’ve been pretty disappointed in Senegal so far. This was a team that played Egypt off the park in both the AFCON final and the World Cup playoff. Here, they really struggled to create decent chances against Qatar. Is it all about Sadio Mané? I don’t think so. Senegal have the players to be better than this. They very likely need to beat Ecuador to make it through to the next round, and I’m just not confident based on what we’ve seen so far.

Netherlands 1-1 Ecuador

Speaking of a team that has disappointed!

The Netherlands were really bad against Ecuador. They blagged a point. They got their goal – a screamer from Cody Gakpo – then stopped playing.

Some of this was probably from Louis van Gaal’s instructions. He’s never been against slowly circulating the ball to kill a match. Some of it is about the quality of attackers. For the second game running, the front three just couldn’t get involved or show much understanding between each other. Even Gakpo, for his two goals in the tournament, hasn’t exactly been a consistent menace.

But that doesn’t explain the defensive collapse. The equaliser came from Ecuador nicking the ball pretty easily in midfield then launching a fast counter. The Netherlands are awfully soft at times. We know Teun Koopmeiners and Frenkie de Jong aren’t exactly N’Golo Kanté or Casemiro, but surely the point of playing three centre backs is to compensate for that thusly. The understanding between the three seems to be poor, and Nathan Aké played Enner Valencia onside as Virgil van Dijk was trying to hold a line. In trying to engineer a solution to the squad’s shortcomings, the Dutch got caught between the worst of all possible worlds in this game.

Fortunately for them, they’re pretty much through. Van Gaal has time to think of a solution to these problems. Ecuador meanwhile should be clear favourites to join them in the knockout stages. They’ve looked to have much more about them than Senegal so far.

England 0-0 United States

It’s funny how cyclical football tactics can be.

For a long time, almost every club in England played some version of a 4-4-2 system. That changed almost instantly when Chelsea hired José Mourinho in 2004. He saw a clear weakness in English football: space between the lines. He realised he could have a huge advantage against Premier League opponents just by playing a pure 4-3-3.

“If I have a triangle in midfield – Claude Makélélé behind and two others just in front – I will always have an advantage against a pure 4-4-2 where the central midfielders are side by side”, Mourinho explained. “That’s because I will always have an extra man.”1 Mourinho had legitimately stumped a lot of British managers with this change. Within a few years, everyone would be playing an extra man in midfield. It was the only way to control the space and avoid getting exposed between the lines.

And as everyone adapts, the space opens up differently. England played a fairly narrow 4-3-3 not totally unlike Mourinho’s first Chelsea side. Declan Rice was sitting at the base of midfield with the game in front of him, while Jude Bellingham and Mason Mount were box-to-box. Harry Kane was supposed to drop deep and create space for Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling to run into. It was all at angles and “between the lines”.

How did the USA stop it? By playing a 4-4-2, of course!

This was the kind of 4-4-2 where the space between the lines was nonexistent. They pressed in a mid-block but kept the gap from back to front as small as possible. They were compact and able to shut down a lot of England’s cute passing lanes. This probably caught Gareth Southgate off guard, as the US previously played a 4-3-3 shape. But what really frustrated was how he didn’t see the clear answer.

Every football team leaves space somewhere. Eleven players cannot cover every blade of grass at once. Against the US, the space was in the wide areas. Going to a 3-4-3 shape and pushing the wing-backs right up would’ve solved that problem. Even just telling Sterling and Saka to switch sides and hold a wide position would’ve helped. But it never happened. England’s subs were about trying ever harder to force a way through without looking at the obvious way around. Because there was no space through the areas England wanted to play, they ended up passing the ball across the backline more than anything else. They didn’t have a way of getting the players who could actually hurt the USA into the game.

I think Southgate suffers a tactical affliction shared by other English managers around his age (Frank Lampard and Eddie Howe are particularly bad offenders). They seem to believe that a back three is just automatically what you do when you want to play “more defensive”, and a 4-3-3 shape like this one is “more attacking”. But that’s not really true. Formations are neutral; players aren’t.2 Just as the Euro 2020 final was exactly the wrong time to switch to a 3-4-3 despite requiring a "defensive" approach, this game was the wrong one for the 4-3-3 even though England had to attack.

On the flip side, the United States really did a number on England. The front two of Timothy Weah and Haji Wright did a really good job of cutting off the centre backs’ passing lanes into midfield, forcing them to go wide instead. Again, this could be partially resolved by Southgate switching to a back three. If anything did break through, Tyler Adams was there to clean it up. They moved the ball quite well by getting it quickly up the pitch and having Christian Pulisic become a third attacker from left midfield. Yunus Musah was also a pretty decisive central midfield creator (which surely frustrated England staff who knew he nearly chose the Three Lions over the USMNT).

At the end of the day, we’re talking about a game without many chances. The game had about one expected goal in total between both teams combined. But the USA really nullified England with a pretty simple tactical tweak. They have the intelligent players to switch formations quickly and do this, but England really should’ve known better.

Switzerland 1-0 Cameroon

Being the huge sap that I am, I think Breel Embolo’s non-celebration against Cameroon might be my favourite moment of the World Cup so far.

Embolo, born in Cameroon, has plenty of teammates who can empathise. Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka are both children of Kosovar Albanian immigrants, Manuel Akanji is the son of a Nigerian father, Djibril Sow is part-Senegalese, Ruben Vargas is Dominican on his dad’s side, and Ricardo Rodriguez’ parents are from Spain and Chile. This is a diverse collection of people with ties around the world coming together for Switzerland.

The Swiss stepped up pretty well after being flat in the first half. The goal was probably their best worked sequence, in which Shaqiri found space out on the right and put in a low cross for Embolo. I think they deserved the win, but Cameroon ran them pretty close, making excellent use of André-Frank Zambo Anguissa in midfield. I think Anguissa has been terrific for some time now, and I wish they could’ve found a way to turn his good work into more shots. I don’t know if I was disappointed, but I would’ve hoped they could’ve turned Anguissa combining with Bryan Mbeumo and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting into more than eight shots. This wasn’t a great game.

Uruguay 0-0 South Korea

Óscar Tabárez might have left, but Uruguay haven’t changed too much. I’m not sure anyone can blame new manager Diego Alonso. With 35 year old Martín Cáceres and 36 year old Diego Godín at the back, they were never going to press high. South Korea were no different. I don’t think this was actually a terrible thing for the game. Both sides just retreated into a block without the ball.

Uruguay’s biggest problem is their weird age distribution. Take their front three. Luis Suárez is one of the most intelligent and experienced players in the world, but can’t run anymore. Darwin Núñez can run all day with great quality, but totally lacks in maturity. And in an ideal world, this would probably be a tournament too soon for Facundo Pellistri. Suárez was a non-entity in this game, getting rightly subbed off for Edinson Cavani, while Núñez had one of those games, attempting a lot of things with few of them coming off.

Korea had a similar approach that might have paid off differently had Son Heung-min been at 100%, which we will hopefully see in subsequent games (an eye injury presumably shouldn’t be disastrous to his body). Uruguay were the better team here, but I think I like the outlook for Korea a little more. I can see how they could get into a higher gear, whereas it seems like this just is the Uruguay team.

Portugal 3-2 Ghana

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Morocco 0-0 Croatia

I’m jealous of people in the Americas who got to sleep through this one.

There are good 0-0s and bad 0-0s. This was a bad one. Neither side created much of anything, and the second half especially saw almost nothing happen. There were just three shots after half time. This was just a stinker.

Croatia, being Croatia, wanted to dominate the ball with a patient possession game.

You can see that things stopped working as soon as they reached the forward line. With Luka Modrić at the heart of things, Croatia will always work the ball through midfield nicely, but things did not click in front of that. Ivan Perisić, the one attacker reasonably involved today, received the joint-most progressive passes in the team (7). The other high receivers were full backs Josip Juranović (7) and Borna Sosa (5). What they struggled to do was get the ball into Nikola Vlasić and Andrej Kramarić in dangerous areas. (Progressive passes and touches from FBRef)

Morocco hardly brought the entertainment. Most of their touches in the attacking third came down the same flank, from Achraf Hakimi and Hakim Ziyech. Those are almost certainly the two Morocco players you’ve most likely heard of, so this isn’t shocking. But they turned it into so little. There’s a version of Morocco that really causes problems down the right, but we just didn’t see it.

Germany 1-2 Japan

Ok, now onto the games that were actually interesting.

How much of this result was down to luck? That’s certainly the obvious question, and there are a few ways of looking at it. In terms of xG, Germany hammered Japan. They created far more chances and, at least according to Between the Posts’ model, should win that game 78% of the time based on the chances created. I don’t think these numbers are “wrong”, exactly. At least, I don’t think the xG is getting the quality of chances particularly wrong. But there’s more to the story, and we have to break it down a bit.

In an attacking sense, Germany were excellent today. I thought Joshua Kimmich and Ilkay Gündoğan were both brilliant playmakers pulling the strings. Gündoğan in particular just helped move the ball through midfield with clever passes delightfully. Serge Gnabry was an excellent outlet, while Jamal Musiala was brilliant as both an outlet and playmaker. They carved Japan open a number of times. When putting the xG values (from FBRef) into Danny Page’s simulator, we can see that they score one goal or less only 10% of the time from those chances. They were more likely to score five goals than just the one.

They should have arguably been 3-0 up after 75 minutes. Once they got to the 75-minute mark, however, take a look at what happened.

Long before Japan got their big chances, it felt like Germany were open on the counter. That midfield might have been delightful at creating chances, but you wonder whether they could’ve dialed it back a bit by adding in Leon Goretzka alongside Kimmich and Gündoğan. There’s obviously a risk there that they would create even less and not even get the one goal, but if that’s a serious calculation to make against Japan then they simply have to be better than this.

Spain 7-0 Costa Rica

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Argentina 1-2 Saudi Arabia

For simplicity, we’ve all sort of conflated “low block” with defensive and “high line” with attacking. But that’s not really how football works. You can play an aggressive line far from your own goal with the intent of simply stifling the opposition in the most negative and cynical fashion.

I do think Argentina got a lot right in the first half. If you look at the xG models, the only serious chance registered was the penalty, but the several offsides are discarded entirely from the data. I understand why the models have to do this, but with such marginal decisions I don’t think it’s fair to say Argentina created nothing in open play. They had their chances, but they mistimed runs by a matter of centimetres. I don’t think there’s a substantive difference between not scoring because you were a 2cm offside rather than because you kicked the ball 2cm wide of the post. Saudi Arabia’s gameplan was to hold a line and force offsides, against the greatest player at floating passes into runners of all time. It did pay off, obviously, but just marginally mistiming any movement would have led to disaster.

I think Argentina were worse in open play in the second half, though Saudi Arabia can count themselves lucky to score from a tight angle and a long range screamer. Saudi Arabia sat a little deeper while Argentina were just throwing everything at it without much care for structure. As J.J. Bull of Tifo Football pointed out, they had all their attackers on the same line without a more thought out way of opening up space. It was just a bit flat.

Still, though, I reject the notion I’ve seen online that Saudi Arabia were good value for their win. They took three shots, none of them great chances, and scored two goals. Dropping three points obviously has big implications for the group, but I don’t think I’ve really changed my view on Argentina. As long as they don’t mess up again in the group stages, I’d still back them to go far.

Denmark 0-0 Tunisia

I should say that I was having internet issues for much of this game and thus missed pieces of it, but I’ll try my best to find the story of what happened.

Denmark were really bad for long periods of this match. For the first hour, they had been outshot 13-3 despite dominating possession. As the passmap below shows, they were good at working the ball until things got to the attackers, who were barely on the same wavelength.

What changed is that they went to a back four and became more direct with Andreas Cornelius upfront. Tunisia didn’t take another shot after that game. Denmark were surprisingly passive for most of this match and surprisingly patient. With France coming up next, I think they’d be well advised to go more direct from the off. Tunisia found most luck from Ali Abdi at left wing-back, which feels counter intuitive when Denmark also played a back three.

86% of Denmark’s xG came from set pieces. Christian Eriksen is good at them, and Danish football in particular took a hard turn towards set plays during the 2010s. Is this a positive or negative? It’s obviously not ideal to rely on any source of chance creation that much. They’ll need to find more variation, but it’s something that could definitely help them out if they put in any more stinkers like this.

Mexico 0-0 Poland

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