Welcome to the fourth edition of the Front Six. Russia is already home, Neymar is going home, and football might be coming home.
1. European dominance continues.
When Germany won the 2014 World Cup, it was the first time any continent had produced three-straight World Cup winners. And after the elimination of Brazil and Uruguay on Friday, that streak will now extend to four.
In 2002, it seemed like we might be seeing a challenge to world soccer’s established hierarchy. Senegal and the United States both made the quarterfinals, while South Korea and Turkey both advanced to the semifinals. Of course, it ended with Brazil and Germany, the two all-time great soccer-playing nations, in the final, but even that was something of a surprise, as they were ranked 11th and 10th, respectively, in the pre-tournament Elo Ratings.
However, that proved to be a false dawn. Of the past nine first-, second-, and third-place finishers at the past three men’s World Cups, only one team didn’t come from Europe. With the ongoing globalization of the game, why have things reverted back toward the traditional powers? Outside of some bad luck for the rest of the world, the easiest answer is that the best soccer, on a day-to-day basis, is still played on the training grounds of the biggest clubs in Western Europe. It’s where the money is, so that’s where the best coaches and players go, and in turn, it would make sense if that’s where the most creative ideas are, too. Of course, Croatia isn’t in Western Europe, but 15 of their 22 remaining players are employed by teams in the region.
The dominance isn’t likely to continue. “When the whole world is playing soccer and watching the same games on TV every night,” Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski write in Soccernomics, “a region with 5 percent of the planet’s population can’t keep winning forever.” But they’ll be the winners for at least four more years. So, given that trend, perhaps it’s time to think a bit differently about the one team to break Europe’s hold on the top three: Lionel Messi’s Argentina.
2. Belgium can’t do that again, but who cares?
Before the tournament, Omar Chaudhuri, head of football intelligence at the consultancy 21st Club, gave me a reason to be skeptical of Belgium: “Attacking football leaves you vulnerable to better teams, so while they’ll probably blow away the likes of Tunisia and Panama, they may come unstuck in matches where they need to keep it tight and create a bit of an upset, in the later rounds.”
They did blow away Tunisia and Panama, but against Brazil, they finally came up against a so-called better team. They did create an upset, but they did the exact opposite of “keep it tight.”
Based on the balance of the chances, Belgium wins that game … 4 PERCENT OF THE TIME. Of course, that’s not quite fair to Roberto Martínez and Co. In the first 31 minutes of the match, they repeatedly counterattacked through the heart of the Brazilian midfield. With Kevin De Bruyne pushed up from the midfield and into the front three and Romelu Lukaku out on the wing, the Belgians threw the game into chaos and came out two goals ahead, thanks to some good fortune on both ends and to De Bruyne’s continued alchemy. Watch him turn a soccer ball into a cinder block:
But after that goal, well, I’m still not sure how only one of these ended up in the net:
With Belgium in the semis and Brazil on their way home, the balance of chances, vague notions of who played better—none of that matters. Knockout soccer is madness, and quite often all a game does is reinforce that notion.
Brazil certainly missed the suspended Casemiro during that ragged first half hour when he likely would’ve been able to settle things down, but over 90 minutes, they created a typically overwhelming number of chances that just didn’t go in, and they were unfortunate to concede an own goal. Meanwhile, Belgium were fortunate to score an own goal, but their second score came on a breathtaking downhill counterattack that exploited both of Brazil’s weaknesses up the middle and on the left flank. Sometimes, neither team deserves to win and neither team deserves to lose.
The World Cup chews up our logic, and spits this back up: Brazil did everything they could, while somehow, Belgium did just enough.
3. Don’t expect the same thing against France.
If Belgium are playing darts in a burning building, France are flipping a coin two or three times and banking on their stars being better than your stars at calling heads or tails. After an uncharacteristic 4-3 barn burner against Argentina in the round of 16, the Uruguay match was much more like it. While Brazil created 2.5 expected goals’ worth of chances by themselves in the quarters, per Michael Caley’s model, Uruguay and France combined for 1.1 expected goals total. This was classic, cagey knockout soccer: Neither side pushed too many players into the attack, and the game was decided by a couple set pieces and a mistake.
I can go on all day about how France have too much talent to have to rely on marginal execution to get their results, but this is who they are, and it’s not gonna change—unless Belgium forces them to.
Argentina pushed so many numbers forward and offered little-to-no resistance in midfield that France were essentially forced to attack into the wide-open space in the middle of the field and behind the Argentine backline. None of their other opponents have really given France the opportunity to generate fast attacks, but in Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé, they have two of the best counterattackers in the tournament:
Per those numbers, Belgium’s Eden Hazard is, unsurprisingly, the ultimate one-man fast break, but it’s doubtful he’ll ever have the opportunity to do so against a French team that conceded just four goals through five games. They play four defensive defenders, a defensive midfielder as a winger, and N’Golo Kanté, who plays shortstop and second base at the same time. Since Belgium play just two men in midfield and two wing backs who are basically attackers, I suspect we’ll see Belgium carry the balance of play and get exploited by Mbappé and Co. as they leave space in behind.
In fact, the first part of the equation for Belgium probably looks a lot like the one they used against Brazil: Grab an early set-piece goal and draw the favorite out of their shell. Then, uh, just don’t concede 27 shots again.
4. It seriously might be coming home.
France won 2-0 despite notching just 0.4 expected goals, Belgium somehow survived against Brazil, Croatia ran themselves into the ground en route to a shootout win against Russia, and England … cantered to a businesslike 2-0 victory over Sweden. You’re not gonna believe it, but they even scored from open play.
At this point, England have as good of a chance of winning as anybody. Seriously: Per FiveThirtyEight, they’re at 28 percent, France stands at 29, Belgium at 26, and Croatia at 18. And with such a young team—17 of the 23 players weren’t born the last time England made the semis, back in 1990—it doesn’t seem like any of the players are carrying the weight of history that seemed to suffocate the Steven Gerrard, David Beckham, and Wayne Rooney generation.
Harry Maguire, man. The guy scored his first goal for England in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. He is my generation’s Maradona:
I love Harry Maguire, and how can you not? He showed up to his first England camp with his clothes in a garbage bag.
He went to Euro 2016 … as a spectator with his mates.
And that was right after he spent a year playing for Hull City and finishing fourth … in England’s second division.
For Leicester City this past season, Maguire led all Premier League center backs with dribbles and was second in chances created—two things that center backs, historically, are not supposed to do. He’s become the fulcrum around which England’s set-piece attack is balanced on; everyone knows it, and it still didn’t matter against Sweden.
The main reason England are here, though, is the defense. With their starters in, they’re yet to allow more than 0.7 expected goals in a single match. Against Sweden, it was just 0.5 on six total shots. If they keep that up for two more matches, then Mags and Co. might really bring this thing home.
5. [INSERT MULTIPLE FLAMING SHRUG EMOJIS HERE]
What the hell was that? I feel like I just watched Saving Private Ryan and Friday the 13th at the same time.
I’d even argue that Russia just lost the best game they played at this tournament. Sure, their first goal was another once-in-a-lifetime strike: For his club team, Denis Cheryshev hasn’t scored a goal from outside the penalty area since at least the last men’s World Cup. And yes, Russia needed a 115th-minute goal to just get the game to penalties. But they registered more shots on target than Croatia (five to three), and the quality of chances just about evened out over the course of the 120 minutes.
The outliers are what make soccer great: If the side that created the best chances always won, then there’d really be no point in watching. When a team saves everything that comes its way and converts chance after chance on the other end, it really does feel as if there’s something magical happening. Every palmed-away shot or picked-out corner serves as both a confirmation of what came before it and a rebuke to rationality. But the magic always eventually goes away: Monaco sold all their best players, Leicester City fired Claudio Ranieri, and Russia just learned the lesson they’ve been teaching: Even if you play well, you can still lose.
Meanwhile, it seems like Croatia’s entire team left this game injured, and on the whole, they basically played a 50/50 game with the worst team in the quarters. Not great! Even with a new lineup that paired Andrej Kramaric with Mario Mandzukic up top, they were still maddeningly reliant on crosses, as they attempted 38 in this game despite playing against a team that’s been dominant in the air.
Anything can happen at this point, but England have to be feeling pretty good about themselves after watching that. Their semifinal opponents might not be at full strength, and even if they are, they’re still struggling to get out of their own way.
6. Neymar contains multitudes.
Here are two things, both of which are true:
- Neymar will often fall down when he’s not touched by a defender. He will also exaggerate contact to the point of hilarity when he is, in fact, touched by a defender.
- He was one of the best players at this World Cup.
I find the “diving” conversation tiresome, as it often stems from some version of toxic masculinity that values toughness above all else. And it rarely ever takes into consideration all of the underhanded shit that defenders are allowed to get away with on a weekly basis. Sports are theater, but that doesn’t mean they need to be a morality play.
FiveThirtyEight recently developed a player-similarity generator for all players who have ever played at least 30 minutes in a given World Cup. Guess who Neymar’s doppelganger is for 2018? Johan Freaking Cruyff from 1974. In other words: the best player on maybe the most beloved team in the history of international soccer.
Unlike any other player in Russia, the 26-year-old Brazilian was a high-usage, all-consuming, efficient attacker—moving the ball upfield, dribbling past defenders, making passes, creating chances, taking shots, and scoring goals.
As The Guardian’s Sid Lowe put it, Neymar left Barcelona for PSG last summer in search of finally being recognized as the best player in the world. In reality, he’s really not that far away. As for his reputation, he’s still not even close.