Then There Were Thirty-Two: The Knockouts Arrive

There is a kind of joy that does not arrive through a television screen. Last Sunday, on Father’s Day, my son Sam and I went looking for it. 

We walked into a World Cup match for the first time in our lives, Spain against Saudi Arabia, and the football was only half the afternoon. The Spanish were imperious, as European champions tend to be. But the other half was the humanity of the thing: the songs in a dozen languages; the Saudi supporters in green, generous in defeat; swapping scarves with strangers they will never see again; the festival in the concourse; the children on shoulders; the Fan Cam bringing laughter and smiles for 70,000 to witness; the sheer festive joy of people who had travelled from everywhere to be in one place. 

Sam and I talked to people we had no business talking to and loved every minute of it. It was, in a word I do not use lightly, magical. I had written months ago that football is humanity’s game. I believed it then as an argument. Now I believe it as a memory.

America Wakes Up

And here is the remarkable part. The country woke up while we were inside that stadium. The United States have begun this tournament in a way that has galvanized public excitement I have honestly never witnessed for the men’s game on these shores. Four goals against Paraguay. Two against Australia. Two wins from two, the group already won, the knockout place secured before the second match had even ended. Folarin Balogun, who could have worn an England shirt but chose the US instead, has been a revelation. Coffee shops in Macon are showing the matches. People who could not have named a single American player in March are now arguing about Pochettino’s lineup.

The Americans closed their group against Türkiye with a loss. Even so, there was no scraping through, no nervous arithmetic. They have strolled into the knockouts with their heads up. All three host nations, it should be said, have come through. The United States, Mexico and Canada are all into the knockout stage, which has never happened to three co-hosts before, for the simple reason that there have never been three co-hosts before.

England, As Ever

And then there is England, which continues to do the thing England does. I watched the Three Lions register 79% of the possession against Ghana and manage, against all probability and most of the laws of football, to score precisely no goals. A nil-nil draw. The most possession of any side this tournament that failed to find the net. There is a word for this particular sensation, familiar to every England supporter of a certain vintage, and the word is exasperation. The talent is real, as I keep insisting to anyone who will listen. The capacity for inexplicable self-sabotage at the least helpful moment is, regrettably, also real. They will still very likely top their group. They will still, I suspect, give me a heart condition before this is over. My England enthralled in their outstanding win against Croatia and exasperated in their goalless draw with Ghana.

The Ageless Ones

Two men have written something close to poetry in these opening days, and both are old enough that they should, by every conventional measure, be commentating rather than playing. Lionel Messi, at thirty-eight, scored a hat-trick that drew him level with Miroslav Klose on sixteen goals, the most anyone has scored in the history of the men’s World Cup. Then Cristiano Ronaldo, at forty-one, answered in the only way Ronaldo knows how, scoring twice against Uzbekistan to become the first footballer who has ever lived to score at six different World Cups. The first. In a century of this tournament, nobody had done it. These two have spent twenty years refusing to leave the stage, and the stage, it seems, is not done with them either.

Sudden Death, on a Scale Never Seen

All of which brings us to Sunday, and to the part of this tournament where romance gives way to ruthlessness. The Round of 32 began June 28th, and it began as nothing in the history of this competition ever has, with a field of thirty-two teams entering single-elimination football all at once. This is the largest knockout stage the World Cup has ever staged, a direct consequence of the expansion to forty-eight nations, and it means that for the first time the agony arrives early and arrives for almost everyone. Win and you go on. Lose and you go home, no second leg, no consolation, just the long flight back and a lifetime of wondering.

This is where the World Cup stops being a festival and becomes a drama. The joy gets sharper because the heartbreak gets closer. The usual giants are behaving roughly as expected. Spain looks every inch the favorites. France carries that quiet menace of nations that need no introduction. Argentina marched on behind Messi. And yet no single side has pulled clear and announced itself as the one to beat. The field is open in a way it rarely is by this stage, and that uncertainty is its own kind of gift. I’m not giving up on England, I tell you.

A warning to the reader, and a confession from the writer. This tournament now produces extraordinary news by the hour. By the time these words reach print, the Round of 32 will be set, and dramas I cannot possibly foresee will already have rewritten the picture I have just painted. That is not a flaw in the coverage. That is the whole point. Sam and I have already had our magical afternoon on a Father’s Day I will not forget. But the truth is the whole country is about to have one, whether it planned to or not. The knockouts are here. Best not to blink. Celebrate and love the 250^th Birthday of the glorious United States of America on July 4^th but also keep one eye on the World Cup.

Christopher Blake is president of Middle Georgia State University. He is a passionate supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, and the men’s and women’s national football teams of England and the United States.