World Cup Diary | Days Seven and Eight

Day 7: Tunisia v Australia, Poland v Saudi Arabia, France v Denmark and Argentina v Mexico

And Day 8: Japan v Costa Rica, Belgium v Morocco, Croatia v Canada, & Spain v Germany

Hypocrisy comes in as many shades as a rainbow flag. If you want an example of it, you would do well to find one better than Piers Morgan. On the 2^nd June 2015 Piers tweeted: “Russia & Qatar must have their World cups removed. Both bids mired in sleaze & corruption via Blatter & his FIFA cronies”. A tweet which he has since deleted.

Piers has since taken a nice pay cheque to go and work in Qatar, he posted a photo of himself flying out to Qatar, his feet up, literally, on the furniture. And while doing so he has mocked the BBC for virtue-signalling. He also mocked the FA for the decision to not wear the One Love armband, “if you're going to virtue signal, at least have the guts to stick to your principles.”

For someone against virtue-signalling, Piers sure does a lot of it. Perhaps he was confused as to why the FA decided to scrap the armband, because he only deletes tweets he makes when he gets a big bag of Qatari money to do so.

Incidentally, Piers has also been, rightly, critical of Matt Hancock being on the TV show “I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here”, come on Piers, isn't it time we stop the virtue-signalling and just enjoy the competition? If only Matt Hancock had a big pile of money for Piers, ay?

Hypocrisy is a type of logical fallacy. And logical fallacies are useful to know, because logic can help us find the truth, and logical fallacies will take us away from it. When Gianni Infantino said: “I think for what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years, around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people.” As well as being factually inaccurate, he was making a logical fallacy based on hypocrisy.

Is it hypocritical of the UK to admonish Qatar for treatment of women, migrant workers and their LGBT+ community, if you consider the UK's enslavement and imperialist past? Or is it useful in a debate to turn the subject of the conversation upon your accuser, and make the story, not about 1000s of modern slaves dying building stadiums in a desert, but about the UK being hypocrites.

Is criticism of Qatar Islamaphobia? You'll be surprised to learn this is another logical fallacy known as the “Ad Hominem” argument. The modern world is full of logic, in the news, on social media, in parliaments and courts. If debate was a game logical fallacies would be fouls, but they only become own goals if you are able to call them out. I highly recommend reading about them.

On the morning of day 7 Saudi Arabia filled my twitter feed. There were rumours that after they had beaten Messi's Argentina, each player would receive a Mercedes. These rumours were of course ridiculous, they will be gifted a Rolls Royce.

Tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia feel like they're constantly simmering. Qatar is a tiny peninsula, Saudi Arabia is it's only land bridge. And Saudi Arabia, by comparison, is enormous. It doesn't take a genius to think that the Saudis might covet Qatar. Saudi Arabia is four times bigger than France, Qatar is smaller than Northern Ireland. And Qatar has 14% of all the world's natural gas: an already lucrative resource which has become vastly more expensive since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And as recently as five years ago Saudi Arabia planned, with the United Arab Emirates, on invading Qatar and assuming control of the country. It was part of a plan which began with a blockade of land, sea and air of Qatar in 2017 known as the Qatar diplomatic crisis. An invasion was averted through US intervention and the blockade only lifted in 2021.

It's a minor miracle for more than one reason then that these Finals are going on at all.

Turkey and Iran in particular became much closer allies of Qatar during the blockade and that may indicate one reason why the Qatari security forces at stadiums have cracked down hard on anti-Iranian regime protesters.

A Qatar TV broadcaster, Tod TV, has been blocked by the Saudi government, meaning that Saudis are not able to watch most of the World Cup games. While their leaders sit close together at some of the games, the political tit-for-tat continues.

Onto the football then and Australia beat Tunisia in a game where both teams had chances, the first half belonged to the Socceroos, the second to Tunisia. The 1-0 win, along with France beating Denmark 2-1, means France are through and Australia will play Denmark that should, barring an unlikely victory for Tunisia over France, send one of them through to the next round.

Saudi Arabia played next, and despite the gifts of Rolls Royce cars, it was finally the chance for Robert Lewandowski to score his long overdue debut goal at a World Cup Finals. The 2-0 put them top of their group.

After France's match v Denmark where Mbappe oozed class and overpowered a Denmark team who had beat them twice in the Nations League, it was Argentina v Mexico.

Mexico were much fancied before the tournament, along with Poland, to vie for that 2^nd spot in their group. And Argentina's shock loss to Saudi Arabia in the opening game blew the group wide open. But when a team is under pressure, during the big moments, when they are most needed, the big players step up. Enter then, Lionel Messi, widely regarded as the greatest player to ever kick a ball.

There was barely anything in this game. Argentina edged possession, both sides had chances and Mexico started the brightest. In the 64^th minute Messi was allowed half a yard of space well outside the area, the shot had an xG of 0.02. But this is Messi, and it had to be him. If you walked up to the goal and put the ball in the side netting you couldn't have placed it better.

This will almost certainly be Messi's last World Cup. He has delighted fans for 17 years since establishing himself in the Barcelona first team. More likeable than his long-time rival Cristiano Ronaldo, the humble Messi is seen as a team player, and so naturally gifted, that people who would never normally be interested in football, would watch because of him.

Should he win this World Cup, it would almost certainly cement him as the World's greatest ever player.

Day 8 then. And there was news from Tenerife where some Wales and English supporters have gone as an alternative to travelling to Qatar. In footage from Friday night that had gone viral by Sunday morning, groups of England and Wales fans could be sign in a mass brawl which has been viewd nearly 13 million times on Twitter.

Finally a normally news story about a World Cup, England fans behaving badly overseas.

One England fan was standing in the middle of the road, between the two sets of supporters, punching himself in the head in an apparent display of proof of how tough he is. A Welsh fan, confused starts punching his own friend by accident. Strange.

After Japan's “Miracle of Doha” against Germany, their next opponents Costa Rica were trying to make amends after losing 7-0 to Spain. This World Cup of shocks kept delivering as the Central Americans mounted a sturdy defence while scoring with their only shot on target. Former Real Madrid and current PSG goalkeeper Keylor Navas made 3 saves and a heroic Costa Rican backline blocked 7 shots to deny the Samurai Blue.

Belgium against Morocco next and The Red Devils, who were ranked first in FIFA's rankings for 4 years in a row from 2018-2021 were in trouble when they could not break down Morocco's shape. Morocco have lost twice in over 40 games and have not conceded in 6 straight games. But it was the first time Belgium have failed to score since the Semi-Finals of the Russia World Cup.

At the hour mark Youri Tielemens and Dries Mertens were sent on, but on Onana's defensive qualities were missing and Morocco's captain got the deftest of touches to Morocco substitute Abdelhamid Sabiri's expertly crafted free-kick. Belgium brought another tree attacking players on, but still looked far too slow and passive. When Zakaria Aboukhlal scored in the 92^nd minute it confirmed only Morocco's third ever win at a World Cup and puts them in contention to get out of this group, with only Canada to play.

Speaking of Canada, in an emotional speech after their game against Belgium, Canada boss told an interviewer that the Canadians were going to “'F' Croatia”. It seems that the Croatians heard the interview, put the remarks on the dressing room wall, and that was all the motivation they needed. Croatia were beaten finalists four years ago and showed how they got there.

Though Canada scored first through a brilliant Alfonso Davies header, Croatia took control of the midfield and completely dominated the match from there on. It finished 4-1.

Onto the weekend's final game, the huge match between Spain and Germany. Germany were seeking redemption and knew they needed at least a draw to stay in the competition after losing their opening game to Japan. Spain had cruised to a 7-0 win versus Costa Rica and knew a win would put them through with a game to spare.

An entertaining draw saw Spain dominate for large periods of the first half, and Germany mounting late pressure and grabbing an equaliser through powerful forward Niclas Fülkrug.

After the weekends results the only confirmations we have are that France are through and Canada are definitely out. After failing to capitalise on their brilliant display against Belgium in the first game, zero points after two means they'll be going home whatever happens against Morocco.

It was Messi's weekend and after Saudi Arabia's performance against Poland, maybe it will be Mercedes and not Rolls Royce after all. At least the performance wasn't bad enough for more plans of invasion, as far as we know.

A final week of group matches before the knockout rounds lies ahead, and all to play for in Qatar. Apart from Piers Morgan's credibility of course, that was out before a ball was kicked.

ABOUT

The Qatar World Cup 2022 is potentially the most controversial sporting event since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. A story that is so bizarre and complex, it has sent sport from the back pages, to the front pages, to the long-reads in the middle of newspapers.

Blood on the Sand: Qatar 2022 will track the progress of the World Cup through the World Cup Diary series. A short podcast episode, one per day, covering news from the tournament both on and off the pitch. Followed by a more detailed in-depth look at the history of Qatar, the tournament and how those two collided.

CREDIT

Blood on the Sand is written, produced and performed by Adonis Storr (@theadelites on Twitter).

Cover Art was created with Daan (@DaanGraphics on Twitter and Instagram).

Music by WombatNoisesAudio (https://soundcloud.com/user-734462061) including the tracks The Legend of Narmer and Jewel Of Nekhen. Music was promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com and is used in conjunction with Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US.