1.Possession has always been a better judge of a team’s style than its strength, but this was the tournament where the ‘possession equals dominance’ myth was truly busted. There’s nothing quite as ineffective as sterile domination.
- None of the six teams who had the most possession in Russia reached the semi-finals, and none of the top four for possession even made it beyond the last-16 stage. Only two teams in the World Cup averaged more than 65% possession. They were Spain, whose lack of a Plan B against Russia turned their ponderous, patient passing into a parody, and Germany, who knocked and knocked at the doors of Mexican and South Korean defenders but were left goalless.
- Meanwhile, France ranked 18th for possession of the 32 teams, Sweden ranked 27th and Russia 30th. The benefits of creating a solid defensive platform, soaking up pressure and hitting on the break was obvious. When your counter-attacking options are as good as Didier Deschamps’, it can be enough to win you the whole thing.
- In their four knockout matches, France’s possession was as follows: 39.8%, 38.6%, 36.4% and 34.2%. Each time they gave up more of the ball. Each time they fell further into Deschamps’ strategy. Each time they got closer to glory.
2, It’s an unscientific theory, but a glut of result-changing late goals make for a tournament that sticks longer in the mind. A match in which the result is established after 89 minutes rather than 19 minutes is likely to stay with you longer simply because you have less time within the match to get used to it. That helps to bridge the gap between matches that then turn a tournament into one long memory, rather than individual spikes.
- World Cup 2018 was a tournament of late goals. Thirteen result-changing goals occurred in the 90th minute or later of normal time. Nine games were won and four were saved. For over 20% of a tournament’s matches to be decided in added time is extraordinary.
- In total, 29 of the 166 goals scored in normal time at the World Cup game came in the 86th minute or later, or 17.4%. You quickly learned not to leave early to beat the traffic.
3. As soon as it was announced that VAR would be trialled – and this very much was a trial – at this World Cup, it was guaranteed that the initiative would make headlines. How could it not?
- I’m broadly against the introduction of technology for subjective events. I see the value in goal-line technology and can even see that for offsides VAR can work, but little else. That said, I can see the benefit in reducing howlers, those decisions that those at home know are clear mistakes while the referee on the pitch is still in the dark.
- My issue lies in the fact that the game has now been irrevocably changed on the sly. We have had breaks of up to five minutes while officials watched multiple replays on screens. We have had the interpretation of handball offences by top-level referees changing overnight to the point that I could now watch ten handball claims and have no idea which would be given and which not. We have the new scenario where assistant referees don’t flag for offsides until after a goal is scored because it can all be watched back. For those of us who watch sport as obsession, the product has changed and changed forever.
- Refereeing has now changed too. Making decisions in real-time is becoming a thing of the past, because the clever thing to do is not make a decision at all, wait for the word in your ear and then watch the incident seven or eight times until you are sure. The best referees used to be proactive, but now they are persuaded to be passive.
- This is also only a half-solution, epitomised in two incidents during this tournament:
- a) Antoine Griezmann dived for the free-kick that led to France’s opening goal in the final, but VAR cannot intervene when an event occurs outside the penalty area. Yet this was clearly a game-changing event – perhaps even the game-changing event – of the final, and nothing could be done. So where does this end?
- b) In the Brazil vs Mexico last-16 game, the assistant did not raise his flag for a ‘close call’ offside, because they are now instructed to let the game go and VAR will be used to check offside if a goal is scored. But if a corner is won in that same move – as it was – the corner will stand without VAR being used and therefore any goal resulting from that corner will stand without review. So an assistant is effectively allowing a goal to stand that he or she believes not to be legitimate. That is illogical.
- I’m broadly anti-VAR. I love watching, playing and writing about football because of its propensity for human error, not in spite of it. Call me selfish, but I think football has a duty to be absorbing and entertaining more than to be ‘right’. But my biggest gripe is that it felt as if football was being experimented upon at the World Cup before the guidelines on this new future had been set in stone or players and managers had grown accustomed to them. To me, that was a mistake. And I’m not asking everyone to agree.
4. Still, one consequence of VAR’s introduction was the reduction in the number of red cards. At the last three World Cups there were 55 red cards combined, but in 2018 only four. They have dropped off a cliff.
- Most notably, there were no red cards for violent conduct. Because what is the point in elbowing somebody if there’s a Big Brother watching your every move from a studio packed with television screens and different camera angles?
5. That said, the reduction in red cards must also be put down to some extraordinarily lenient refereeing in this World Cup. There’s interpreting the law with common sense and there’s deliberately failing to administer it in order to avoid players being sent off or being suspended for accumulated yellow cards. This was the latter.
- There were innumerable times that counter-attacks were stopped by shirt pulls and cynical fouls but only a free-kick awarded, and times too where red-card incidents were not give due punishment. Think Gerard Pique against Morocco, Cristiano Ronaldo against Iran, Wilmar Barrios against England and Ante Rebic against Argentina. Russia and Uruguay committed 144 fouls but were given only eight yellow cards between them.
- There is an argument that the rules were the same for everyone, but there’s also no doubt that such leniency allowed strategic fouling to become rife. I’ll be wondering how Dejan Lovren wasn’t booked in that semi-final until the next World Cup comes around.
6. The other impact of VAR was the huge rise in set-piece goals at this World Cup. In total, 43% of the 169 goals came from set-piece situations, easily the highest in history. That is explained in three ways:
- – The lack of holding allowed at corners and free-kicks. Following the controversies in England vs Tunisia and subsequent awarding of two penalties for England against Panama, managers soon realised that sly holding at set pieces – previously a staple of defending – were a thing of the past. Less holding equals more free runs equals more set-piece goals.
- – The use of technology to award penalties. There were 29 penalties awarded in 2018, 11 more than the previous World Cup record set in 2002.
- – The general improvement in open-play defending from weaker nations. Only five teams conceded more than three times in a game at this World Cup. Two of them were Argentina and Croatia.
7. Hindsight might enable 20:20 vision, but we saw Spain’s tournament failure coming from the moment Julen Lopetegui accepted the Real Madrid job and was promptly sacked by the RFEF. It left Fernando Hierro as the stooge, desperately trying to learn the lines to a month-long soliloquy hours before the first curtain call.
- Lopetegui and Real Madrid deserve censure. If the manager really did delay in informing his bosses about his impending departure then that was a huge error of judgement. Real’s arrogance in making the announcement so close to the start of the World Cup was predictable but demoralising.
- Yet you do wonder if the RFEF now consider Lopetegui’s sacking as hasty. He had effected such a change in Spain’s style and mood that there was genuine hope that another World Cup was in realistic reach. Hierro merely went back to what he knew from his time as a player, sterile domination with the ball but far too little penetration after the opening 3-3 draw with Portugal.
- If Spain had beaten Russia, their route to a final against France was Croatia and England. With Lopetegui in charge and the players all pulling in the same direction, the final was the least Spain could have hoped for. Luis Enrique’s performance will determine for how long the regret lingers.