Oranje-boom!
By Mark Daniell
14/06/2014
So, in a nutshell: four games, fourteen goals, genuine controversy and a huge upset. I can’t remember a healthier start to a World Cup.
Also we’ve finally got goal line technology, which it seems is making up for 84 years of absence by confirming and denying every activity on the pitch. Penalty scored? Wait for GoalPro… Goal! Throw in on the half way line? GoalPro? No Goal!
Obviously I’m not complaining, The alternate universe that exists in which Lampard’s ghost goal was recognised still haunts my imagination, (2-2, shift in momentum, go on to win on penalties, lose to Arg in the next round, Argy win the tournament and the 2018 World Cup bid goes to the whole of the UK as a unifying statement, since you ask) but we could probably have a little more common sense applied when broadcasting it. I mean, we don’t really need GoalPro for a penalty. I’m pretty sure the original form of goal line technology, namely nets, is enough to check when a peno goes in. But none of that should matter, because neither of them was a penalty in the first place. (Let the conspiracies begin!)
Actually, there’s nothing new about a bit of home team favouritism, nor of a bit of dodgy reffing – Dodgy ref calls are as staple a part of the World Cup diet as Australian defeats. If anything, the real upshot is that we’re quickly ruling out potential referees for the knock-outs. At this rate there won’t be anyone left for the final, which means it’ll have to be scouts honour and a bit of self-adjudicating. If that happens, my money is on the Nigerians, they know how to negotiate.
Of course, unlike the Fred Flop, the Spanish penalty didn’t affect the outcome of the game: Just as you and I were cursing the fact that they had won their last 8 knock-out matches 1-0 with a stifling collection of short lateral passes, and fearing the Dutch were going to get marshalled out of the game, Oranje-boom! In go 5. Van Persie’s flying Dutchman gets better every time you see it (especially the slomo of him impacting the turf, and his attempted high-five with Louis “Hank Hill” Van Gaal was even better. If you watch carefully, you can see LVG invite the high five, then at the last millisecond, inch his hand out of the way. Blanks! Too slow Robin!
So now everyone is going to be wallowing in Dutch Masters and Flying Dutchmen headlines (I’ve just checked that and they’ve gone with ‘SuperVan’ and, weirdly, ‘Robs Rockin’ which really doesn’t make any sense) and tipping them for the tournament. But there’s a long way to go before that happens, and in spite of what the scoreline may suggest, the victory owed a fair amount to some freak occurrences: Casillas was pretty blatantly fouled as the Dutch took their lead to three, and displayed a first touch that looked about as Spanish as that Juan Sheet guy. (I still think there’s a big in-joke going on with that guy. Is he supposed to sound like he’s talking about wiping up one shit? Or is that the point?)
Whatever, for all its tasty amusent-bouches, the real World Cup starts tonight. Now, there are some skills that you only learn with time, say for example the skill involved in twisting an icetray, giving it a little hoik while shifting it to the left a cube’s length and watching the ice sit up nice and easy. That skill takes about twenty five years to acquire. But some things are better left unlearnt, such as being a conservative footballing nation and fearing the Italians in World Cups. You know, for all our downplaying of chances, it may just be that we have a young enough squad to take the game to Italy and have a few strikes on goal… I don’t want to jinx anything, but I have a cheeky feeling the Italians are going to be more nervous than us.