World Cup: Day 26

I’m bored of writing these intros at the end once I’ve finished the rest of the newsletter. I tire of doing them. Here’s some football talk.

Portugal 0-1 Spain

When low-scoring games are disappointing, it’s often not that they lacked quality, because this didn’t. It’s that goals “change games” and shift states, which we didn’t get here. It was all one phase.

A lot is being said about Cristiano Ronaldo, so let’s start there. I don’t think this was his worst performance at the World Cup. He’s strange in that he’s very old and has clearly physically declined, but he’s only really been useful in games where Portugal can attack in transition. He wasn’t good here, but this sort of game better mitigates that he can be a black hole in possession. He had one meaningful chance he couldn’t quite score, but this becomes a different conversation in that universe.

If anything, Portugal probably should’ve leaned into playing on the transition. There are things Portuguese football does better than Spanish football and close-knit fluid passing sequences isn’t one of them. Hypothetically, a more direct 3-4-1-2 with Bruno Fernandes behind Ronaldo and Gonçalo Ramos might have posed different problems for Spain, sitting a little deeper rather than contesting the midfield so much.

From a Spanish point of view, I still don’t think this side is as balanced as the one we saw at Euro 2024. Nico Williams is not necessarily more talented than the players out there, but he gave them a different kind of directness on the left. We haven’t really seen the fragility of post-injury Rodri tested, but perhaps it’s coming.

I’m pretty confident they will beat Belgium, though. I’d be pretty confident in plenty of teams beating Belgium. But not one particular side.

United States 1-4 Belgium

I like to tell myself I offer more detailed analysis than you’re likely to find from someone in the pub. I like to think of myself as more nuanced than that. But my only response watching this game was to think “they properly bottled it”.

Or, as the Americans in the stadium would say, they “choked”.