Being an old soccer player from way back, I have of course been watching the men’s World Cup which is being played in Canada, the US and Mexico. This time it has been a tournament with 48 teams, as opposed to the previous 32 team efforts.
Initially, there are twelve groups (A to L) each of four teams. Those four teams play each other and a team gets three points for a win, one point for a draw, and none for a loss. At the end of the six games the two teams with the most points go through to the 32 team knockout stage. As those only make up 24 teams, another 8 highest ranked third place teams from the group stage are also able to go through.
The group stage comprises 6 games for each of the 12 groups, which makes for 72 games. Then there are 16 games in the round of 32, 8 games in the round of 16, 4 games in the quarter-finals, 2 games in the semi-finals, a final game and a playoff for third place. So, all up, that is 104 games. It is a massive undertaking.
The expansion to 48 teams has meant that some national teams which would have had very little if any chance of getting to the World Cup have reached the tournament. These include the team from Curaçao, a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which occupies an island some 65 km off the coast of Venezuela. It has a population of 155,826 (as at the 2023 census)1. This is less than a third of the population of Canberra. Unfortunately, Curaçao did not make it past the group stage being beaten 7:1 by Germany, drawing 0:0 with Ecuador, and being beaten 2:0 by Côte d’Ivoire.
The other team which surprised me was Cabo Verde. It is a nation comprising ten volcanic islands. They are named after Cap Vert, the westernmost point of land of continental Africa, which is in Senegal2. The Island nation is located between 600 and 850 kms west of Cap Vert, and has a population of about 530,0003.
Surprisingly, Cabo Verde made it into the round of 32, by drawing 0:0 with Spain, drawing 2:2 with Uruguay, and drawing 0:0 with Saudi Arabia, thereby coming second in their group behind Spain. They lost to Argentina on July 4th, but gave them a run for their money.
Australia made it through the group stage too, beating Türkiye 2:0, losing 2:0 to the US, and drawing 0:0 with Paraguay, and coming second in Group D behind the US. Next, Australia then played Egypt, who came second in Group G behind Belgium.
I have played lots of sports over the years, especially cricket, squash and snooker, in addition to soccer, but have never been very good at any of them. However, I enjoyed playing all of them, mostly because I did so with mates. However, I have always been fascinated by players who excel in their sports, and seemingly have talents I do not possess. Some of those in this tournament I have seen before in other tournaments or the occasional game I have seen from the English Premier League. They include Lionel Messi, from Argentina4. He is the best soccer player I have ever seen and I have seen players including Pele, Johan Cruijff, Franz Beckenbauer, Diego Maradona, and Michel Platini among others. Messi’s ability is astonishing, and some of his work can be seen on YouTube5. He has just tuned 39 and is nearing the end of his career.
Some of the others who excel include: Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal who is now 41 and will likely retire very soon6; Mohamed Salah from Egypt who, at 34 is getting toward the end of his career7; and Kylian Mbappé from France, who is only 27 and is at the peak of his abilities8.
Watching them will be fun even if, because of the time difference, I am still in my pyjamas sucking in my first coffee of the day. Salah did play for Egypt against Australia on Saturday, after recovering from an injury in an earlier game, and was a bit of a handful. Unfortunately Australia lost the game on penalties after exhausting extra time without another goal. A cruel way to go, but that is the game.
One feature which has struck me about this World Cup is some of the legs and arms covered in tattoos, and some bizarre hairstyles. There are mohawks, mullets, man buns, man buns with mullets, one bloke has what looks like steel wool with a streak of rust through it, another has what looks like a badger skin lying crossways on his head, yet another has very short back and sides with cream fluff all over the very top of his head, another looked like he had week-old road-kill on his head, while another looked like he had a very large caterpillar crawling up the back of his neck onto the top of his head. While it is difficult to work out what almost all tattoos are supposed to be, some look like a scattering of gum leaves on cream tiles.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curaçao
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verde
- https://population.un.org/dataportal/data/indicators/49/locations/132/start/2026/end/2026/table/pivotbylocation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Messi
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV0PbW8fJKk
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristiano_Ronaldo
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Salah
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylian_Mbappé
