World Cup Diary | Day Three

Day 3: Argentina v Saudi Arabia, Mexico v Poland, Denmark v Tunisia, and France v Australia

Qatar have buyers remorse. Sources from Qatar have told The News Agents that: “Nothing good has come to us as a result of this.” Perhaps they could buy Manchester United?

And it wasn't the best day for the GOATs of the footballing world, one lost his job and the other was involved in the biggest shock in World Cup history.

Just another day in Qatar.

Day Two, as you know, saw security officers refusing entry to fans who were wearing items of clothing bearing rainbow symbols. Qatar finds rainbows scary. A tweet from a Qatari went viral on the topic: “As a Qatari I’m proud of what happened.” - pride – an interesting choice of word given the circumstances, he continued: “I don’t know when will the westerners realize that their values aren’t universal. There are other cultures with different values that should be equally respected. Let’s not forget that the West is not the spokesperson for humanity.”

There's a lot to unpack there. Central to his thesis seems to be the idea that persecution of LGBT+ peoples is a sort of, quaint quirk of the local culture, something of which to defend and be proud of. Perhaps this is a good point to remind you dear listener, if found guilty in Qatar of being gay, you could be sentenced to death by stoning.

Gay people can be found everywhere, and all the ones I know, quite enjoy not being persecuted for who they are. And while I can't be certain, I'm fairly sure that gay Qataris, might being who they are without fear of years in jail, or being tied to a post and hit with stones until they die.

Harry Kane didn't want to wear the One Love armband because he loves RuPaul's Drag Race and thinks that Qatar TV ought to be forced to show reruns on national television. The issue here is Universal Human Rights, something that the United Nations created a charter for in 1948. And it was not only the western world which agreed to basic human rights for all, several middle eastern countries, as well as Islamic nations also agreed. Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria and Turkey, all agreed that: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language..” etc.

Meanwhile, Belgium agreed to to FIFA's demand to not wear the shirts with LOVE on them.

Even the US Secretary of State was talking about the armbands. Never mind buyers remorse, Qatar paid 200 billion to be critised by basically everyone and tarnish the previously excellent diplomatic relations they had with the USA. And it's only day three.

Something else had happened overnight. Something quite strange.

The official capacity of the Qatar World Cup stadiums had officially grown by 12%. Now I know these migrant workers are battle-hardened by the conditions they've had to work in. But even for them, this seems like an almighty feat. How else to explain it?

Had the stadiums gorged themselves on the national dish of Qatar – machboos – and swelled overnight from the meat, aromatic spices and rice?

It's no coincidence the change has come after questions about the figures of official attendances being much larger than the capacity of the stadiums, despite a large number of visibly empty seats.

Now Qatar and FIFA are claiming that not only are all the empty seats full, but in fact the stadiums themselves are much larger than the look too. The Qatar slogan was “Expect Amazing” but I honestly never thought magical expanding stadiums and fans that look like empty seats would be on the agenda.

Maybe the original capacities were incorrect, maybe the attendences are actually tickets sold and not people attending. Maybe some people bought tickets before reading literally anything about Qatar, then when they realised they'd made a mistake, found they couldn't cancel them. Who knows? But Gianni Infantino's prediction of 3 million people attending the games seems impressively inaccurate.

Onto the football then, as Saudi Arabia came from a goal down, to beat favourites Argentina, 2-1, with a little help from VAR. But you couldn't say, apart from the bizarre VAR offside decision, that they didn't deserve it.

One viral video showed a group of Saudi men watching the football, as Saudi scored their second, the men celebrated with a reckless abandon, one man booting a cushion, another picked up a door which was, for some reason, not on its hinges, existed the building and chucked it at an outside wall. In another celebratory video, one Saudi supporter left the television room, went outside, and shot several rounds of an AK47 into the air. Each to their own.

But, finally, this is what football is about. The underdog, one of the, on paper, weakest teams in the Finals, beating the favourites, with the talismanic Messi at probably his last World Cup, widely regarding as the greatest footballer of all time.

Argentina had gone unbeaten in 35 matches, including beating Brazil to win the Copa América and beating the European champions Italy to win the Finalissima.

It was simply the single biggest shock in World Cup history.

In Saudia Arabia, King Salman announced a public holiday to celebrate. A public holiday. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how important this sometimes magical game is.

The Saudia Arabian coach Hervé Renard, was, as you can imagine, in dream land: “This is football. Sometimes things are completely crazy”

Raw emotion. The seemingly impenetrable champions of South America have been rattled, the footballing world shook.

What we needed from this tournament now, was, for goodness sake, some normal, boring, mundanity.

Two 0-0 draws in a row – this is more like it! It wasn't quite 'Stoke away on a Tuesday night', but it was 22 men kicking a pigs bladder around for 90 minutes and no one scoring. This is the beautiful game we know, none of this heightened spectacle, none of the geopolitical drama we've had, well, not to the same depths at least. Just four football teams who can't score – marvellous!

Mexico, Poland, Denmark and Tunisia, I salute you, thank you for saving me some words and time. 2,000 words every day for 15 days in a row might be impossible, but with matches like these, I can save my breath.

All I would say is that there were so many Mexican fans it seemed like a home match for them. Plenty of gusto, not enough quality. And Denmark's game was notable for the return to the international stage for Christian Eriksen. When Eriksen died on the pitch at the European championship and had to be resuscitated, with his teammates standing around him in a circle blocking the view of cameras and the crowd, it was one of the moments you don't forget. The sight of his lifeless eyes was a shock that moved anyone watching. The TV director lingering on the efforts to save Eriksen had most of us screaming at the TV not to show it.

But there was little of the togetherness and passion that the Denmark team had shown post that incident to propel them to the Semi Finals of last years Euros. They'll be looking for more from their remaining games.

And as for Mexico and Poland, despite a missed penalty from Polish talisman Lewandowski, both teams will be encouraged after Saudia Arabia blew that group wide open.

Onto the final game then France v Australia.

You might say it hasn't been the idea preparations for France.

The worst of it has come from a report by Romain Molina which casts a horrifically dark and disturbing image of 40 years of the worst imaginable abuse of children within France's football pyramid. And at the heart of this report, a cover up at the highest levels by the French Football Federation, the FFF. The same FFF whose initials are stitched on to the shirts of the current football world champions.

40 years of silence is the name of the article and it is at josimarfootball.com. In the interests of brevity I won't go into any more detail here. It's yet another topic that deserves its own podcast.

From a topic not funny at all then, to Paul Pogba's brother. Mathias Pogba revealed earlier in the year that Paul Pogba had hired a sorcerer to cast an “evil eye” on Kylian Mbappé who he was jealous of. You can't choose your family.

Mbappé himself led a revolt against the use of the players images to advertise various products which he disagrees with.

France are without a number of their star players who won the world cup. Some like Matuidi have retired from international football, others like Pogba are injured and some are out for less savoury reasons. Benjamin Mendy for example, is standing trial on multiple counts of rape. Though I should say he denies the allegations and has been found not guilty on one count, with multiple counts still to be tried.

Even Karim Benzema, Ballon d'Or winner, who was injured as late as Saturday, was given a one year suspended sentence last year after being found guilty of attempted blackmail of his former national team-mate Mathieu Valbuena over a sex tape.

That's not even where the rabbit-hole of controversies ends when it comes to France and football, that's only the beginning. Sacre Bleu!

Onto the game then and when Australia took the lead in the 9^th minute of the game, it felt like there might be another giant-killing in the making. France had only one win in six leading into these Finals and they looked out-of-sorts.

But their quality broke the Aussies resistance and in the end it was comfortable, 4-1 France and Mbappé's class was the stand out. A goal and assist said the scoresheet, but the truth is, every time he got the ball there was a sense of magic, perhaps Paul Pogba's socerer's spell had backfired, and instead of cursing Mbappé, he has given him powers?

We're at the half-way mark of the first round of matches with nig-hitters like Germany, Belgium, Brazil and Portugal to come.

The day began with the magic of expanding stadiums and invisible fans, and the fear of rainbows and love. Day three ended in the magic of football – bringing joy and a national holiday to Saudi Arabia, and the mesmerising skills of Mbappé.

Perhaps it was the day when Messi handed over the reigns to his PSG teammate as the current World's best player. And as the sun sets on the day of the greatest shock in World cup history, we can say a silent prayer for all the Qataris so affected by the images of rainbows and the word love.