Intrigue at full speed – Newspaper Kommersant No. 229 (7430) dated 12/09/2022

At the World Cup in Qatar, it came to matches in which the opportunity to compete for his awards is at stake. In today’s quarter-finals, the Brazilians meet the Croats, and the Argentines with the Dutch, in tomorrow’s – the Portuguese with the Moroccans, and the French with the British. And all these couples, including those in which there is a formal favorite, are filled to the brim with all sorts of intriguing moments.

Brazil—Croatia

The five-time world championships at the Qatari championship are very similar to a team that is ready to take the sixth title: an insanely harmonious line-up and an insanely harmonious game in which pragmatism is successfully combined with romance and lightness, an easy road to the quarterfinals – with an early earned ticket to the playoffs and not demanded exceptional tension by the match of the opening round with the Koreans. The temptation to see in the Brazilians the future owners of gold is very great, as is the temptation to consider the Croats doomed to defeat in a clash with Neymar, Richarlison, Lucas Paqueta, Casemir and other Brazilian football players who played so well with each other.

But not everything, apparently, is so simple, because it is, apparently, completely wrong to project the previous Qatari performances of the Brazilian national team onto this quarterfinal. If we compare the Croats with some of the opponents she beat, then definitely not with the Serbs and Koreans. They were stylistically tailored to be effectively dealt with by this Brazilian variant: they love open football, leaving a lot of space for dispersing attacks. The Croatian team in Qatar has a lot of obvious weaknesses, but there is also an obvious trump card – a triangle of Luka Modric, Mateo Kovacic and Marcelo Brozovic, which turns exactly the area where Brazilian threats ripen into a minefield: a step to the side – an explosion.

Structurally, perhaps, in terms of those who happened to cross in Qatar with the Brazilian national team, the closest to the Croats in terms of a set of properties were also the Swiss, who put on density. And with them, the Brazilians suffered terribly for almost an hour and a half before they scored the only goal.

And, of course, we must not forget about the fantastic Croatian stubbornness. In 2018 – three wins in a row in the play-offs on the way to the final of the Russian World Cup in matches that did not meet the regular time, in 2022 – the continuation of the series in the 1/8 finals against the Japanese. It just perfectly describes the character of the Croatian national team, for which the survival mode has become something completely natural.

Netherlands—Argentina

This quarter-final is the case when both teams seem to be equally uncomfortable for each other. And the point, of course, is not so much that one has a brilliant and insanely motivated Lionel Messi, and the second has coach Louis van Gaal with his colossal experience, who in his life found ways to neutralize football geniuses a thousand times, and not in others details, but in something more global.

The element of the Dutch national team in its rather specific Qatari incarnation: patient – either through waiting in a defensive stance, or through a lot of passes that at first glance do not threaten trouble, as was the case with the first goal against the Americans in the 1/8 finals, or through flank connections – search for free zones in the rear of the enemy. And Memphis Depay, Cody Gakpo, Denzel Dumfries know how to infiltrate them, maybe better than anyone else in this championship. At the same time, it will apparently be easier to lure the Argentines out on themselves than the same US team, which recognized Dutch authority and itself played with caution. And the defense of the Argentinean team, even having improved after an unexpected loss to the Saudis, still remains a suspicious element. She doesn’t have her own Virgil van Dyck.

The element of the Argentina national team is pressure. But not merciless, on the forehead, but with fiction. And the Dutch team, which has always clearly followed its master plan, has not yet solved the tasks of such a level that Lionel Messi, Julio Alvarez, Enzo Fernandez will put before it in Qatar. At the same time, when, say, the Ecuadorians and the Americans, albeit for short periods, put pressure on the Dutch, getting rid of the monotony, they experienced serious problems. Van Dijk did not help.

Portugal—Morocco

Here are some interesting numbers. In the four matches of the World Cup that preceded the quarter-finals, the Moroccan team scored only four goals. With a good implementation, because the current xG coefficient (these are the so-called expected goals) is even more modest – 3.08. In these matches, she struck 30 shots on goal, only ten hit the target. Moroccans have an average possession percentage of 32.8%. For all these indicators, the other participants of the quarterfinal stage surpass them by a head. And, for example, among the Dutch, who are not chasing possession, it still goes off scale for 50%.

But there is hardly anyone who would not hesitate to suggest that Saturday will be the Moroccan team’s last day at the World Cup. Their game left too vivid impressions, which neither in the group stage, including in matches with the Croats and the Belgians, nor in the 1/8 finals with the Spaniards, gave any reason to put it on the list of crazy breakthroughs that happened due to circumstances. In the Moroccan case, other figures are no less relevant. Let’s say a unit denoting the number of goals conceded by the Moroccan team from teams with a powerful attack. Moreover, she scored for herself and at the moment when she won against the Canadians with a difference of two goals.

The play of Sofyan Amrabat, Ashraf Hakimi, Nuser Mazraoui, Naif Agerd in this multi-layered, like a pie, Moroccan defense is a topic on which you can already write a whole study. And unbridled optimism for those who are worried about the Portuguese national team, before the battle with it, can only be given by the fact that in the 1/8 finals it effectively dealt with the Swiss, who seemed about the same tenacious, hardworking and disciplined as the Moroccans. Although these people are probably more concerned about the question of what will be the Portuguese line-up in the quarterfinals. Can coach Fernando Santos do without Cristiano Ronaldo again, and at the same time Juan Cancelo and Ruben Neves, since the understudies who replaced them in the match with the Swiss national team did so well, and Goncalo Ramos, the author of the hat-trick, did fantastically well?!

England—France

Saved the quarter-final round match with the most chic sign for dessert – to enjoy it properly. It is clear that when estimating the chances of giant rivals, each of whom convinced that he deserves to hunt for awards, you need to take into account the darkness and darkness of different nuances. And a heated argument over which is more important is unlikely to end by the beginning of the meeting.

But one aspect clearly deserves special mention. Much of this match is likely to be decided on the flanks. The flanks are, for example, the most vulnerable zones in the French defense. Relatively vulnerable, of course, but all the matches of the French team in Qatar, including outwardly without much difficulty won against the Poles in the starting round of the play-off, confirmed this observation. Theo Hernandez on the left is not uncommonly fake, and his duel with the sharp Bukayo Sako promises to be terribly difficult. And for Jules Kunde, who plays on the right, the position of the full-back is “non-core”, and this is striking. Kunda is clearly much more comfortable in the center, where the priority is not speed, but reading the game and the ability to start attacks with passes rather than jerks.

But the flanks also contain the lion’s share of the power of the French attack. First of all, we are talking about Kylian Mbappe with his “habitat” a little to the left of the center. It must be assumed that Mbappe is a headache for the English coach Gareth Southgate, which, however, is slightly facilitated by the presence of a footballer at his disposal who is used to playing on the right in defense, is exceptionally tenacious and looks like a literally reference weapon against a reactive Frenchman. Moreover, Kyle Walker has a fairly recent experience of quite a successful confrontation with Mbappe. Last year, he closed it in the Champions League semi-final, in which Manchester City conceded only one goal in two meetings with PSG.

Alexey Dospekhov