Iresh Zaker

I am not even a little ashamed to admit that I was wrong about the third-place decider.

If it wasn’t obvious before, I think the match between Argentina and the Netherlands laid to rest all doubts about the importance of the referee in a football match.

I must say that I did never much hold to the World Cup’s third-place decider.

French winger Ousmane Dembele was one of the luckiest men in the world on Wednesday. While his team made it to the final of Qatar 2022, he had come away from the match against Morocco without making any meaningful contribution.

The World Cup in Bangladesh is most fun when both Brazil and Argentina fans have some real skin in the game. 

Carlos Javier Mac Allister played with the great Diego Armando Maradona. His son, Alexis, is playing with Lionel Andres Messi. Only one other father and son duo, Diego and Gio Simeone, can make the same claim. Like millions of other families, the Mac Allisters have long engaged in the inevitable and endless debate about which of the two greats is better. Carlos obviously leaned towards his close friend and teammate Diego, while Alexis swore by Leo, but only till recently.

There is alliterative appeal in talking about Messi, Mbappe, Modric, and Morocco, and each of the four does present a strong story for the semi-finals. I do, however, want to take some time to talk about a certain Didier Deschamps. This is a man who has won both the World Cup and the Euros as captain, and the Nations League and the World Cup as manager.

For me, the best thing flowed on the internet yesterday was footage of Morocco’s Sofiane Boufal dancing on the pitch with his mother in celebration after his team’s famous victory over Portugal in Saturday’s quarter-final game. The short clip encapsulates so much of what is good about the sport in general, and this World Cup in particular.