The winners joined the losers
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The denouement of the tournament in group D of the World Cup in Qatar turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. Within a few minutes, a ticket to the playoffs was in the hands of the players of the Tunisian national team, in which no one believed at all, but which in the final round defeated the variant of the French team, which had already secured the 1/8 finals, made up of reservists. In the end, the ticket still sailed away to the Australians, who beat the Danes with the same score – 1: 0 and threw out the participant who seemed to have promised to make some noise on it.
The game at Al Janoub Stadium was close to halftime when a too clear and too friendly whistle came from the stands watching Dane Christian Eriksen leisurely prepare to take a set piece into the Australian penalty area. Thousands of people did not like what was happening on the field at all. They tuned in to a spectacle full of passion and pepper, but they got – well, definitely not the performance they were counting on. In him denmark team, lagging behind Australians by two points, was supposed to return all those magical properties that last year brought her, as if on wings, to the semi-finals of the European Championship, and simple, but strong, as her coach Graham Arnold likes to repeat, the spirit of the Australian team was everything it is possible and impossible – with feet, hands, teeth – to prevent them from breaking into the playoffs.
But the picture was the same. Anyone who did not see the game, but studied the advanced statistics of the first half, could decide that it is hot on the field, that the Australians are holding on thin: a third of the time the game takes place in their penalty area, and the percentage of Danish ball possession goes off scale. But this was that case when the numbers are a bit misleading.
The same famous Aussi Spirit, on which, for lack of anything fundamentally better, Arnold relies, whipped them in all directions for about ten minutes.
At the beginning of the match, the Australians really looked like a team that is not going to cowardly “hatch” the draw it needs in the trenches, but, having removed its visor, to get it in a fair fight. But the desire to fight soon disappeared. But there was a desire to sit out in the rear.
And this retreat was after all a chic gift for the Danish team. Such timidity is punished by the class. But all last year’s Danish magic, at least occasionally hatching in their previous matches in Qatar – with the Tunisians and the French, has evaporated somewhere without a trace, like a drop of water that has landed on a hot frying pan.
The Danes disposed of their possession as if they had enough points to reach the playoffs. Eriksen and Pierre-Emil Høybjerg are inert, playing without a spark. Joakim Mele, whose inclusions were the hit of the European Championship in 2021, has a single sharp breakthrough in the first half. And the attack that baffled the Australian defense is the only one: the one in which Martin Braithwaite’s longitudinal pass of Joakim Andersen cleverly sent it to Matthias Jensen in touch. But Australian goalkeeper Matthew Ryan was undeterred by the angled kick.
A parallel match in group D meanwhile acquired some relevance. Those who happened to visit the Education City arena that evening wrote messages to their friends like this: “Lord, now I understand what it is like to find yourself in the center of a hurricane!”
The hurricane was the Tunisian fans who advanced to the game, who were additionally encouraged by the composition of the French team.
Well, yes, the teams that secured the playoffs often test reservists in the final round. But here is almost the whole basis French – except maybe Raphael Varane and Aurélien Chuameni – ended up on the bench! And the cameras now and then caught on her for some reason all the time laughing, as if enjoying a flying comedy, Kylian Mbappe in the company of the same joyful Olivier Giroud.
But the French understudies were clearly not laughing. It was that unique situation when Tunisia national team could torment the team that owns the main title in football. And she tortured her severely. On the right flank of the French defense, sticking out his tongue, rushed after the opponents who chose him as the main target, unfired Axel Dizazi. On the left, poor Eduardo Camavinga – actually not a flank defender, but a midfielder, thrown by the mentor Didier Deschamps to close an unusual position – all the time became a victim of Wahbi Khazri’s tricks. An experienced striker argued that he was not trusted in vain in the first matches of the championship.
Tunisians often wandered somewhere near the goal. Once they even scored him, but from offside. And the memory helpfully suggested that if they did squeeze this strange French variation, they could, after all, seep into the playoffs. At the very least, it is already dangerous for the Australians to defend a draw with their poor goal difference.
And soon after the break, defending it became dangerously deadly. The Tunisian team opened the scoring. Khazri, of course, scored, and this event could no longer seem unexpected: yes, everything, on the contrary, went to him.
The Australians seemed to hear the roar of the Tunisian sectors from tens of kilometers away, as if they instantly realized that something needed to be done, because in the virtual table, for this particular second, they were already outside the “play-off zone”, and caught the Danes on the counterattack. Matthew Lecky, however, seemed to fall into a reliable trap of two Danish defenders, but he got out of it with a dribbling and, albeit weakly, but well-aimed hit into the far corner.
At Education City, Didier Deschamps, either ashamed of the inexorably rolling loss, or just to warm up the stars before the matches right through, slowly integrated his best forces into the squad – Mbappe, Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembele, but could not make his team play like a champion . At Al Janoub, the Danes were moving forward, but they couldn’t find the bright look of last year: their attacks were monotonous and dreary. And even a campaign of desperation into someone else’s penalty area goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel did not add anything interesting to them.
A team dreaming of the play-offs of the World Cup and a worthy play-off cannot have such football. The Danes will not be there. As well as heartbroken, despite the formally honorable victory, Tunisians.
But there will be Australians with their spirit awakened in time and rested French.
Their rivals in the 1/8 finals were determined late in the evening Moscow time after the final round matches in group C, in which all teams could both advance to the playoffs and fly out of the tournament. In them, the Poles met with the Argentines, and the Mexicans with the Saudis.
Third and final round
Iran-USA 0:1
Pulisic, 38
29th of November. Doha, Al Thumama Stadium. 42,127 spectators.
Match statistics
Iran USA
Shots on goal 6 12
shots on target 2 5
Corners 1 5
Offsides 3 1
fouls 13 10
Warnings 3 1
Percentage of possession 49 51
Wales-England 0:3
Rushford, 50, 68; Foden, 52
29th of November. Er Rayyan, Ahmed Bin Ali Stadium. 44,297 spectators.
Match statistics
Wales England
Shots on goal 7 18
shots on target 1 7
Corner 1 1
Offsides 5 0
fouls 16 9
Warnings 2 0
Percentage of possession 36 64
Group B final standings
V N P M O
1. England 2 1 0 9:2 7
2. USA 1 2 0 2:1 5
3. Iran 1 0 2 4:7 3
4. Wales 0 1 2 1:6 1
Group D
Australia-Denmark 1:0
Leki, 60
November 30th. El Waka, Al Janoub Stadium. 41,232 viewers.
Match statistics
Australia Denmark
Shots on goal 8 14
shots on target 4 3
Corners 2 6
Offsides 1 3
fouls 11 10
Warnings 2 1
Possession percentage 31 69
Tunisia-France 1:0
Khazri, 58
November 30th. Ryan, Education City stadium. 43,627 spectators.
Match statistics
Tunisia France
Shots on goal 6 10
shots on target 3 4
Corner 7 8
Offsides 3 2
fouls 14 6
Warnings 1 0
Percentage of possession 34 66
Group D final standings
V N P M O
1. France 2 0 1 6:3 6
2. Australia 2 0 1 3:4 6
3. Tunisia 1 1 1 1:1 4
4. Denmark 0 1 2 1:3 1
1/8 finals
03.12: Netherlands-USA, group C winner-Australia. 04.12: France—2nd in Group C, England—Senegal.
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