World Cup Round-up - 'Arry-ba!

Captain Sensible leads England to Munt Doom to battle Mexico in final 16

England’s Blunderwall American tour continues, just about, the players standing in a long line to join their relieved fans belt out the Oasis classic for the fourth time this summer. Oasis’s American tours tend to end disastrously early due to internal rifts, and this iteration of England under Tuchel is certainly a more high-strung, skittish outfit than under the Southgate Coldplay era. For now the band plays on.

New England are better described as a compilation of football comic characters - Kane is 42 year old Roy of the Rovers, scoring both England goals including a last minute screaming thunderbastard into the roof of the net. Most of the team should feature in Billy’s Boots, the strip in which a mediocre player was transformed by wearing a pair of the great Charles “Deadshot” Keen’s boots he improbably found in his grandmother’s loft (some explaining to do there Grandma!) and whose storyline was mainly the jeopardy of losing the boots and being revealed as thoroughly ordinary. Here’s the majority of the team being found out all at the same time. And there should be a strip for the eternally overworked Declan Rice, grimacing in agony as he plays his 400th game of the season and his team spitefully make him take every set piece all over the pitch, as well as expecting him to make all the tackles. And of course a strip for Jude - wonderful, angry Jude - the true white-hot charisma rock n’ roll star of this largely dull, deeply weary, collective.

The Democratic Republic of Congo are a poor team, but for 75 minutes England were heading out - Iceland 2.0 - Congo were sending them into the Heart of Darkness. The players were suffering mass mental breakdowns in the middle of each half before the re-orientation breaks allowed Tuchel to talk sense into them. Sometimes you need to rub your eyes in disbelief that this is the best England can put out - Noni Madueke and Djed Spence on the right. Really? A simple pass early on exposed England’s vanishing defence - WheredaWall - and the Congolese forward lashed the ball past Billy the Fish’s little fin at the near post. Anderson and Pickford bustled around shouting like Dad’s Army’s Corporal Jones, Rashford played with the intelligence of Private Pike and the athleticism of Private Godfrey.

It didn’t matter in the end. Sir Harry rode to the rescue. The first knock-out game England have ended up winning after going behind since the 1966 final. Maybe.. . you’re gonna be the one that saves me.

Despite the controversies over pricing, immigration, pitches and heat, there’s no doubt this World Cup has been a good one, and the moaners and doubters have been proved wrong (*clenches teeth*). The big stars have all produced - Messi has 7 goals already, Mbappe 6, Haaland and Kane have 5 and Dembele and Vinicius Junior 4. Lamine Yamal only has 2 but could have had a hatful. It’s the best golden boot race we’ve ever had. Only Ronaldo has failed to join the party, sending a statue of himself to stand in the penalty area instead. It can raise its arms in frustration too.

Knock-out matches at this World Cup have been surprisingly even - of the 16 fixtures in this round 10 were decided by a single goal or penalties. There has only been one shock, though underdogs have snapped at the heels of several tournament favourites before their heartbreaking euthanisation. The rule tweaks and refereeing have minimised fouling and time-wasting compared to previous world cups.

Until this round VAR had been unobtrusive, but put it in the hands of a Premier League referee and that all changes. In the Portugal v Croatia match, Jarred Gillett on VAR awarded Portugal a penalty which Ronaldo converted, his only worthwhile contribution (though naturally he was FIFA’s man of the match). VAR also ruled out four goals (three for Croatia), including a dramatic Croatia equaliser in the 13th minute of injury time - ruled out for an imperceptible touch on the ball by a Croatian attacker’s hair, the sound of which was supposedly revealed by a snickometer. In a baying crowd of 40,000 people. I was unhappy because a) I don’t want to see a great match ruined by pettifogging pedantic killjoy officials and b) I don’t want to see Ronaldo, Bruno Fernandes and FIFA happy. As the Croatian manager said afterwards: “VAR kills emotions, it kills everything within you. We have gone too far with VAR”.

On a brighter note, France were again a joy to watch, roasting the Swedes for 90 minutes, leaving them soggy, glazed and caramelised. Mbappe reminds me of a table football forward (sorry Kylian for the underwhelming and unpoetic comparison) - the habitual quick shift of the ball to the side and thumping shot, the brutal simplicity of his play. But even he is eclipsed by the ethereal Michael Olise, a spectral presence shimmering and gliding over the turf. He’s astonishingly graceful and gifted, and to think he was born and brought up in England to a British-Nigerian father and a French-Algerian mother, but chose France over England. You fool Michael, you could be swapping misplaced passes right now with Noni and Djed.

France are sans pareil so far, but we seasoned world cup watchers know that something almost always goes wrong for the best team. Someone very average, usually Germany or Italy, sneaks in to win it instead. Well it won’t be Italy, defeated in the play-offs by Bosnia, and it won’t be Germany either - die Mannschaft have now failed to make the last 16 for the fourth World Cup in a row. Das Reboot has sprung a major leak.

Germany were flies in Paraguay’s web of anti-football. Their match trajectory was very like England’s, except instead of deadshot Kane upfront they have the eternally unreliable Kai Havertz. They lost a penalty shoot out in a tournament for the first time since they lost to the original panenka in the 1976 Euro Championship Final scored by ..er.. Panenka.

Netherlands are also out, deservedly sent home after fluffing their penalties against Morocco - that’s what happens if you appoint negative Ronald Koeman as manager. Older grudge-bearing English people like me are pleased - more pay-back for his villainous role in England’s “do I not like that?” world cup qualifying elimination against Netherlands 33 years ago.

Belgium’s bunch of bickering has-beens (plus Doku) smash-and-grabbed victory over the world’s unluckiest team, Senegal. 2-0 up with 5 minutes to go, the Lions suffered an England-style panic attack and let in two soft goals. It’s the latest in World Cup history any team has been 2 goals up and lost. As in the Afcon final Senegal then conceded a controversial late penalty. This time at least they did not all walk off in protest, though one of their players did curl up over the penalty spot for several minutes. Although initially effective to prevent the penalty being taken, it was a doomed strategy long-term. Belgium scored - the latest ever World Cup goal. Belgium just seem so drab (and not just because they are Belgium) - are they fated to be victorious? The darkest and lamest of dark horses?

Nothing dark or lame about Spain, they are very much in “start slowly, grow into the tournament” mode. They outclassed and exhausted a limited Austrian side with their suffocating quick passing technical game. Lamal is perhaps their only cutting edge although upfront Oyarzabal is an effective blunt instrument. To level things up a bit, in keeping with their socialist principles, Spain threw on the comically inept Ferran Torres. Something so horrible has happened to him since he left Manchester City that he’d now struggle to make the England team. OK I exaggerate, but you get the point.

The two South American giants both survived scares. Brazil’s class ultimately told against Japan, who played out the same script they have been given for the last 20 years - play high energy, fast interchange football, take a shock lead against a tournament favourite, then narrowly lose. For all their skill, Japan have still never won a World Cup match in the knock-out stage. And plucky Cabo Verde took Argentina to extra time and scored twice without ever actually looking like winning. Messi was again resplendent, scoring a record 20th World Cup goal. The Goat previously assumed that because he plays in America Messi was now just some bloated Elvis-like tribute act to himself, ambling around the pitch plastered in advertisements, giant Pepsi in hand, while players set him up to perform choreographed tricks. This uninformed assessment appears to have been somewhat wide of the mark.

Mexico were effervescent against a poor Ecuador. The Azteca Stadium, is a wild, exhilarating, intimidating venue, a cauldron of noise sitting at 2200 metres above sea level on a bed of cooled lava. It’s like playing on Mount Doom. The Mexicans are mad up for it - several people died in the celebrations afterwards. Next up to be tossed into the cauldron, poor old England, searching for morning glory in the small hours of Monday. Storms are forecast. Altitude sickness is likely. Will it be Wonderwall belting out between 3 and 4am, or Stop Crying your Heart Out?

So now only a third of the original countries remain. The nine Asian teams who qualified are all eliminated (seven went out at the group stage). By contrast nine out of ten African teams qualified for the last 32, though only two progressed - Morocco, and Egypt (who got to the last 16 for the first time since 1934, when there were only 16 countries to start with). This confirms my entirely unscientific belief acquired over 50 years of watching world cups that Asian teams never really deserve to be there in the first place (Japan excepted, for one knock-out match only) and that African teams always flatter to deceive, perennial under-achievers. They’ve been predicting an African world cup winner for 40 years. History really does seem to matter in this competition - the same old countries win it over and over.

This time the final 16 comprise two African nations, seven Europeans (out of 16 who started), four South Americans (out of six), and the three north and central American hosts. Ties of the round are the Iberian local derby of Spain v Portugal, Brazil v Norway, plus of course England’s journey to Mexico City.

The omens are not good for England. Mexico have lost just two out of 89 competitive matches at the Azteca. The last time England played there was in the 1986 World Cup, when Maradona single-handedly eliminated them in the quarter finals. And in 1970 England never made it to the Azteca but suffered their famous 2-0 up 3-2 meltdown against West Germany in the extreme heat of Leon. The fingers of blame on that occasion pointed at keeper Peter Bonetti and manager Alf Ramsey, for taking off Bobby Charlton. What heroes and villains will find themselves in a billion headlines, texts, posts and memes come Monday morning? The script is waiting to be written, England’s comic book heroes assemble. Football’s checking flights to Heathrow. Come on you lions!