The greatest show on earth

Forget about all of the other shit – it’s World Cup time. And what a carnival it’s been so far.
Of course the football is the most important thing – and, on this occasion, some of it has been spellbinding. You won’t see many games as good as the one between Argentina and Mexico, with both sides playing intoxicating, free-flowing, passing football throughout. There was great drama too, with the Argentinians winning only via a magnificently spectacular goal, in the eighth minute of extra time, by Maxi Rodriguez.
Rerun the moment in your mind’s eye. A long diagonal crossfield ball from Juan Pablo Sorin is aimed towards the right-sided midfielder just outside the area. The precision of what followed is a testament to the extraordinary feats of which ordinary mortals are sometimes capable.
A lumpen striker would have gone for a speculative looped header in the hope that the keeper might have advanced a bit far off his line. Instead, the athletic Rodriguez leapt to take the ball on his chest, cushioning it perfectly. Barely blinking, he landed on his right foot, adjusted his centre of gravity in a single movement, and swung the left, hitting it on the volley. The strike was incredibly sweet and like a radar-guided missile it arced into the goalie’s top right hand corner, mocking the acrobatic leap of the Mexican keeper, Oswaldo Sanchez, as it rattled the net.
Shock and awe had nothing on it. This was poetry in motion, a moment of the purest inspiration – which was what was required to separate two wonderful teams.
Germany too have been superb, demolishing Sweden imperiously in the first game in the knock-out stage with a swagger that suggested they might just have what it takes to go all the way. If you had made that statement before the tournament, people would have laughed. But they have outlasted many people’s fancies, the Czech Republic and Holland. Still, they’ve got Argentina to face next. It’ll be a cracker.
But, of course, the tournament is about more, much more, than just the quality of the football. It is about human frailty, high drama, moments of madness and, on occasion, sheer catastrophic stupidity. And it is about referees guilty of all of these and more.
Ah, yes, referees. Graham Poll of England was caught in flagrante committing the most blatant of errors when he had to yellow card Josip Simunic from Croatia a third time before sending him off in that country’s brutal but magnificently compelling clash against Australia. But Poll was far from alone in his incompetence: you’d see better refereeing than we’ve witnessed on occasion here, up in the AUL of a Saturday afternoon.
The fault may be FIFA’s, in that the officials are far too hell-bent on applying rules to the letter. They seem to have forgotten that they have the option of giving a player a good talking to without whipping out a yellow card. They also seem to have forgotten the fact that, if the temperature in a match reaches boiling point, they can drag the captains aside and get them to cool it – or else.
I know – it’s a dirty job and somebody’s got to do it. But please, could it be anyone except the Russian official, Valentin Ivanov, who mishandled the Portugal V Holland game so spectacularly?
It may not have been a classic from a strictly footballing perspective, but in truth this game had everything. There was passion, sublime skill, tactical nous and a lot more besides. There was also aggression that erupted into downright violence. And there was temporary insanity.
What else can it have been, that inspired the Portuguese midfielder Costinha, who almost dived to deliberately handle the ball on the stroke of half-time, to get the inevitable second yellow card that would see him dismissed from the action?
This is what makes football such an incomparably great sport. It all happens in real time – the spontaneous combustion, the sparks flying, and the well-oiled machines coming undone and spluttering to ignominious melt-down.
In this case, in the end, that fate was to belong to the Netherlands. They had tempted fate in the early, merciless creaming of Ronaldo – it had the appearance of a policy when Boulahrouz took the young winger out for a second time, following which he had to be taken off injured. The Dutch defender stayed on the pitch, but only till the 63rd minute when an elbow to the face of Figo sealed his fate. Red card.
As the game wore on, we were treated to the sight of Ruud Van Nistleroy, spurned by manager Marco Van Basten, brooding on the bench while lesser stars huffed and puffed unsuccessfully upfront. Our mouths dropped when the referee reached for a second yellow for Deco, when – the whistle having sounded – the play-maker picked the ball up, as he rolled over following a clash with a Dutch defender. We saw the great, and normally unflappable, Luis Figo land a minor but nonetheless real nut job on the Dutch midfielder Van Bommel, and our mouths dropped even further. He got away with it.
Go on, moan. A disgrace. Not the sort of thing our kids should be forced to watch. But wait: there was a primal intensity to it all that made for fantastically gripping viewing. They say that someone’s true character emerges on a football field, and you could see here how many different characters are inside all of us, waiting for their hour to come so that they can slouch towards Berlin – or not as the case may be – to be born.
So much done. So much more still to do. If it continues in its current vein, the 2006 World Cup will have been the most entertaining of the modern era at least, by some distance. What more could you ask for? What more indeed?
Roll on Ireland’s European campaign, for it’s a crying shame that we have not been part of the greatest show on earth. But in the meantime, savour what’s left of this phenomenal experience. You couldn’t make it up.