The Message - The World Cup and The End of Democracy

We’ve just witnessed a thrilling football tournament which, in many respects, encapsulated human nature at its best. Meanwhile, life has been going on, and democracy is increasingly under threat across the world. Is there a link between the two competing tendencies, from which we can learn – and that might even justify prime editorial space being devoted to a piece about the beautiful game?

The World Cup has just ended in Moscow. In so many ways it was a thrilling tournament, which climaxed in a final that was full of drama, excitement and heartbreak. Which is as it should be, but often isn’t. Add a touch of genius and a measure of calamity, and it was a game that had it all!

There was nothing cagey about this battle. An intense month of football ended with a contest which did full justice to the simple truth that the struggle for the golden trophy is the world’s greatest sporting carnival, with France prevailing 4-2 over Croatia.

This is the second time that France has won football’s ultimate prize. Didier Deschamps was the captain on that extraordinary day in Paris, in 1998, when his country romped to a marvellous 3-0 victory over Brazil in the final. Now Deschamps has managed France to a repeat of that landmark win. It is, by any standards, an extraordinary achievement for a modest, understated, decent footballing man, whose greatest distinguishing features are his thoughtfulness and his intelligence.

RISK AN OWN GOAL

Tournament football has its own unique dynamic and, having already been to the summit, Deschamps understands this better than most. The ultimate winners have been known to start slowly, as happened with Spain, who lost their opening game to Switzerland 1-0, in 2010. On this occasion, France began cautiously, beating a pedestrian Australian side 2-1. In many ways, they seemed lacklustre too against Peru and Denmark, but it was telling that they kept clean sheets in both games. Against lesser teams, they did what they needed to do. They suffered no serious injuries. They showed that they were defensively strong. And they began to really knit as a unit.

The big tests lay ahead. Would they be ready for them? There was something in their attitude which suggested that they were beginning to come good.

In the Round of 16, France were far better against Argentina than the final scoreline of 4-3 might suggest. In the quarter-finals, they never looked in danger against Uruguay, comfortably winning 2-0. By the time they faced the much-fancied Belgium in the penultimate round, they were looking like a well-oiled machine. The Belgians, with Eden Hazard, Thiebold Courtois, Vincent Company, Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku bringing star-quality to the line-up, had been hugely impressive up to that point. France, it transpired, had their measure. They fully deserved the 1-0 victory which earned them a place in the final.

On the other side of the draw, Croatia had also grown in strength. Their defeat of a resurgent England in the semi-final was achieved through an extraordinary combination of collective determination, steely individual resolve and exceptional footballing nous, with the current best midfielder in the world, Luca Modric, and Barcelona’s Ivan Rakitic running the show. The scene was set for a great finale.

And so it proved. There were controversies, around which the game might have hinged. Only 18 minutes had gone, when Antoine Griezman went down under a challenge from Marcelo Brozovic. Griezman has since been widely accused of diving, but the referee made the right decision in awarding a free. Brozovic got the man not the ball. And it was only a free kick. Mario Mandzukic leapt in an attempt to clear Griezman’s teasing ball, but not high enough: he ended up helping it into the Croatian net.

People have said that this was unlucky. Only in a way. Football hangs on fine judgments, by players as well as officials. Should the Croatian striker have gone for the header, not knowing if he could climb high enough to make good contact with the ball? It is ingrained into every footballer that the last thing you want to do is to risk an own goal. More important, however, is that this was a great ball, flighted at a tempting height right into the danger zone, but far enough from the Croatian goalkeeper Danijel Subai that he couldn’t afford to come for it. All it needed was a touch, and it could go anywhere – and that’s what it got. That it was a Croatian who deflected the ball into the net might have been unfortunate. But Mandzukic should have known better.

THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS

Life is cruel. Now we knew. But that lesson would be repeated in even more dramatic terms before the first half was over. Croatia’s Ivan Perisic scored a superb goal, with a memorable strike from just outside the French box that brought the underdogs back to level terms. It was a moment of pure joy for the Croatians, and especially for Perisic. Ten minutes later, however, his world had been turned upside down. Griezman took a corner. French centre-back Umtiti flicked it on at the near post. The ball struck Perisic’s left hand.

The referee didn’t put the whistle to his lips: he wasn’t going to give it. The French players surrounded the Argentinian official gesticulating wildly. The referee spoke to the VAR crew. He ran to the half-way line to have a look for himself. Eventually, he pointed decisively to the spot. Penalty. Antoine Griezman stroked it home. 2-1 to France.

A hundred million opinions have been expressed on whether or not this decision was correct. For all the nonsense spouted by pundits like Alan Shearer on the BBC, I am convinced it was. The player jumped with his hands flailing through the air, which even an amateur knows is never a good idea. Then, reacting to the flick on, he dropped his hand into the zone where the ball was moving and made contact, blocking it from pinging across the Croatian goal, where French players lurked. I saw it as an instinctive reaction. But there is no way of knowing. In football, as in life, there is scope for different interpretations. Some people are better witnesses than others.

It would have been a sad way to end the tournament, if that had been the final score. But the pass that led to France’s third goal was one that was worthy of deciding a World Cup final. Paul Pogba, who had grown stronger as the game progressed, picked up the ball in his own half. In the blink of an eye he had spotted the space on the right, behind the Croatian defence and side-footed a wonderfully weighted ball inside the Croatian full-back, and through the gap for the PSG wide-man Kylian Mbappé to run onto.

When Mbappé broke into the box, it seemed that he was most likely to take a whack-and-see approach. Instead, he pulled the ball back for Antoine Griezman. Facing away from the goal, the French No.7 juggled it, as if he intended to manoeuvre a volley on the turn; then, he fed it back to Paul Pogba, who had pressed forward to the edge of the opposition penalty area. His first strike was blocked, but the ball rebounded to the Manchester United midfielder, and he side-footed it sweetly into the corner. 3-1 to France.

France were now dominant. A fourth goal, rifled home by the 19 year-old Mbappé, seemed to have wrapped things up. Not so fast, mon ami: there was more drama to come! With still less than 70 minutes on the clock, under no real pressure, the Barcelona defender Samuel Umtiti passed the ball back to the Tottenham goalkeeper and French captain, Hugo Lloris. Rather than smacking it upfield, or making a quick pass, as most keepers would have done – high, one assumes, on the improbability of a 4-1 lead – Lloris tried to jink past Mario Mandzukic, only to see the ball rebound haplessly off the striker’s leg into the net. Out of nothing, Croatia were back in it. And Mandzukic had more than atoned for his earlier error.

Croatia worked hard, but over those final 20 minutes, France looked the more likely team to score. Again, following a fine passage of French play, Paul Pogba found himself meeting a cross in front of an open goal, but –just five yards out – failed comically to connect. It was that kind of day, with great players going from the sublime to the near-ridiculous. But in the end, the better team won, and it was those two fine French goals that really separated the sides.

MULTICULTURALISM IS A BEAUTIFUL THING

Is there anything to be learned from the tournament – beyond the inescapable fact, which is never far from the surface in sport anyway, but was writ large here, that even at its best and when we are having fun, life can be fiercely cruel and arbitrary?

The first is that a great team – like a powerful movement – is more than the sum of its individual parts. Both France and Croatia demonstrated that everyone functions better if individual egos are sub-ordinated to the collective effort. The spirit in the French camp was good. The players accepted the responsibilities allotted to them. They worked hard together as a unit. No one shirked or hid.

They played with control as well as passion. And they retained their sense of joy. You could see in the celebrations afterwards that even the unused subs had bought into the ethos created by Didier Deschamps. Get the balance right, and life can be like that too, at least some of the time.

The second is that multiculturalism is a beautiful thing. That Croatia, with a smaller population than Ireland, could get to the final of the World Cup was arguably the story of the tournament. The thought that a wonderfully cultured 5ft 6inch midfielder like Luca Modric might lead his country to historic footballing glory added a romantic twist to that narrative.

As it turned out, however, in the context of what is happening across the world right now, victory for France may be even more vitally symbolic. Most of France’s heroes are of African background. Both of Paul Pogba’s parents are from Guinea. Kylian Mbappé’s are from Cameroon and Algeria. Samuel Untiti was born in Cameroon. N’golo Kanté’s parents arrived in France from Mali in 1980. Baise Matuidi is of Angolan descent. Even Man of the Match, Antoine Griezman, can be said to be of migrant background, with his father’s people coming from Germany, and his mother’s from Portugal.

In a world in which migrants are routinely insulted, bullied, humiliated and even described, with a boorishness that is as pernicious as it is revolting, as ‘animals’ by the President of the USA, Donald Trump, this matters deeply. It will not change the reality that France is a very divided society. But it does embody the real truth, that given a bit of space and time, migrants will always enrich the places where they land and settle.

Bringing it all back home, this is something we are seeing in sport in Ireland now, with Gina Akpe-Moses, Patience Jumbo-Gula and Rasidat Adeleke joining Molly Scott and Ciara Neville among a new generation of Irish female sprinters who have been lighting up athletics tracks this summer – and who claimed the silver medal in the Women’s 4x100 metres relay at the World Under-20s championships last week. But, of course, it is the same throughout society at every level. Sport is just a litmus test.

BULLYING AND PROVOCATION

Ultimately, as the singer said, we are all pilgrims, just passing through. And we are all equal under the sun, and can find common cause, no matter where we originate. I know that you know that. It should go without saying – but that core source of human solidarity is being crushed viciously across parts of Europe now, as well as in Donald Trump’s America and Vladimir Putin’s Russia alike. Authoritarianism, dictatorship and brutality are already rife under Islamist regimes, as well as old-style Communist. But fascism, State control and the abuse of the rights of citizens are on the rise in what had seemed like sophisticated, liberal democracies.

In the ebb and flow, across the world, between freedom and repression, the signs are that repression has been getting the upper hand. And muddying the waters even further are those insidious new forms of control over people’s lives, their behaviour and their choices, which are being exercised by the large trans-national tech companies, who increasingly look like they are part of the problem rather than of the solution.

There is a real danger that things will get worse before they get better. It is up to us to play our part in fighting to ensure that they don’t. The battle to turn the tide against this increasingly fetid new world order, best symbolised right now in the reckless ignorance, cheapjack bullying and smug provocation being practiced every day by Trump, will not be easily won, but it must be. And a very good place to start is with an acknowledgement of the integrity of the other, matched by an even deeper commitment to the core principles of democracy.

Every citizen of every nation is entitled to an equal voice at the ballot box. We are fortunate that this fundamental freedom is not under threat here in Ireland. We are a functioning republic. But resting on our laurels would be a disastrous mistake. The legendary Irish rocker Rory Gallagher had a great, levelling phrase with which he started his live shows. “Let’s go to work,” he’d say.

It is the only way.