In the final minutes before the final game of the 2018 World Cup, Paul Pogba had a dressing-room speech that he hoped would bring France Football – and, by extension, the tournament – to a peak.
“We are 90 minutes away from realising our dream,” the midfielder said. “To be world champions, to make history, to make France shake – in a way that the French children and the children of those children will celebrate what we have done.”
France did that, and the final so fittingly shook with all of the entertainment that this whole World Cup had done and that so brings the child out in so many football supporters… but there was one thing none of this did do. Russia 2018 didn’t shake up the established order.
After all the reverberations, and all of the moments and stories of this World Cup that had so many widely opening their eyes in joyous appreciation of the sport, it ended with the same predictable story. It ended by continuing the slightly troubling trend that is likely to be the future of the international game.
For the third World Cup in a row, the that unique trophy was lifted by squads from wealthy western European countries who had mass-industrialised talent production, and in a way that is really unique to them.
That is why it was somewhat less uplifting that France themselves played the type of bog-standard “pragmatic” and restrictive football that so many smaller countries must resort because they don’t have that talent.
It’s all the more striking when so many smaller countries then didn’t resort to such tactics, in a tournament that was mostly so raucously stirring, and perhaps the most “fun” World Cup – whatever about best – since 1986.
That is at least down to a twist in this trend of massive countries mass industrialising talent, and suggests there is the potential for respite, that they won’t trample over everyone indefinitely and insufferably. Croatia’s run alone is illustration of that, but this – conversely – might be both why this has been a greatly enjoyable World Cup but not a truly great World Cup.
The reality is that Spain and Germany probably had squads as good as France, but didn’t show it because of problems that are universal to every team, even the most successful. The previously imperious Spanish never recovered from the deep disruption of so shockingly sacking Julen Lopetegui on the eve of the, while the Germans by contrast never escaped the complacency that gradually gripped and slowed the side.