The World Cup tells us that if you have Mbappé in your team everything is easier

“World dialogues” will accompany every day of Qatar 2022. A daily dialogue between football and humor between Fulvio Paglialunga and Giuseppe Pastore on the topics of the day, or perhaps not, of the first winter World Cup in history.

Fulvius – Let’s be clear, to begin with: if they play before the game Life is life by Opus, the song of the most famous of Maradona’s warm-ups, and if you play the day after the second anniversary of Maradona’s death, and if Messi starts the match and is one goal away from the eight scored by Maradona at the World Cup, he can only score Messi, winning Argentina, and then everything else. Come on, this World Cup will still have Argentina: I’m out of balance despite the surprises we’ve already seen. Maybe it’s for the best, and we saw that free from fear then the team is back. Also because Mexico would not have scored even with another 100 minutes of added time.

Joseph – Against Mexico, the country where Diego wrote entire volumes of his football encyclopedia. What to say? The team that plays best football in Group C is Saudi Arabia, but in the World Cup the quality of the game matters relatively: what counts – especially for certain teams – is the mystique, and in this case I don’t feel like blaming Mullah Adani who freaked out after Messi’s goal. Argentina is much stronger than that, until a week ago it hadn’t leaked for three years, but the Saudi earthquake paralyzed it for an hour. Only his star player could unlock it. After that it’s just the second group game, and the third won’t be easy at all. Incomparable Mexico: once again these horrendous and primitive 5-4-1 without strikers, which many teams are scaffolding to aim for a draw, lead nowhere.

Fulvius – The group got a lot tangled up, but if I have to make a wish for the last matchday, I’m at least rooting for Mexico not to concede a goal. Because it could be Ochoa’s last World Championship and his devotion to these races has always amused me. He deserves to go out without a goal, and wave his number 13 shirt. Which, since there are, has its own story: Ochoa was born on July 13, 1985, Friday the 13th to be precise. And his first match in a World Cup was June 13th at 1pm.

Joseph – Poland-Argentina will be a nice (so to speak) style confrontation between two teams that have long expressed excerpts of excruciating football but yesterday they both won with the same score, dragged by their two champions. And looking at our backyard – after the Champions League – it will be Messi against again Szczesny, so far the best goalkeeper in the World Cup, as well as the only one still undefeated after two games.

Fulvius – And today it’s Germany’s turn, the other one that has been shaking since the first matchday and has some more reason to tremble, because today they’re up against a Spain that doesn’t know which side to take, which has a thousand resources and all of them very young. I didn’t think we’d be at this point, on day two, but every World Cup wants its sacrificial victim to sew a story on. The Germans called a frank confrontation what appears to have been a big scam. But I think that the most effective synthesis was made by Brandt in the press conference: “We know we are in the shit”.

Joseph – The collapse of Germany left me speechless because for 70 minutes they had really dominated a very good team like Japan. I wouldn’t even know what to advise them, and now they have to stick their heads in the lion’s mouth. A game that promises to be devastating management and emotion, because both teams can do nothing but play well, a thousand miles away from calculations and speculations. Perhaps Germany would need to distort its nature a little and go back to its own “antiqui mores“(but without having the right human material) to get out of this situation alive.

Fulvius – Yesterday, however, France explained football to us in a simple way. That is: you can organize all possible tactics, prepare tactics, analyze your opponents, but if you have Mbappé it’s still easier. By the way: do you remember my thesis from the other day according to which without Benzema and all those other absentees it is not excluded that France will unite and that the rest of the talents will feel more free to express themselves? Here, then I read it on the Equipe. But I don’t feel like saying they read this column.

Joseph – Yes, if I’m not mistaken I also agreed with you! Mbappé became the second footballer to score 7 goals at the World Cup before turning 24 – the first was Pele. He is an absolute champion, also equipped with the necessary presumption to fly above the anxieties and sense of inadequacy of his peers. And then, compared to Messi and Ronaldo, he has a great advantage: he’s already won a World Cup, and this gives him much more lightness in the World Cup. Excellent France, which however also risked losing it. This good Denmark is much superior to Australia.

Fulvius – But Australia won, and it already seems to me something to tell. But you’ll forgive me if I get touched (oh, football makes me) when I think that Duke scored against Tunisia, who grew up as the second of nine children, and, to exult, he made a gesture with his hands that he used to have in the stands replied the son, smiling. But weren’t you supposed to tell me about the Tunisia coach?

Joseph – I should have, but this very thin figure has me a bit demoralized. In any case, his name is Jalel Kadri and he was born in Tozeur, the city sung by Franco Battiato in one of his memorable pieces: on the edge of the Sahara, in an oasis where in summer it is not uncommon to witness the optical phenomenon of the “fatemorgane” . And even the eighths for Tunisia have become a mirage.

Fulvius – Instead think how nice it is to be Japanese (like that man who became a meme in the basilica of San Gennaro), now you feel very strong because you have beaten Germany and you are sure today you can beat Costa Rica easily. Mainly because you remember when Costa Rica looked like the team of the future? The usual successful World Cup blunder. How could Japan also be in the next. But Navas owes his career to the World Cup, he has this left and he can’t take another seven goals.

Joseph – Perhaps, like Iran, Costa Rica is much better than it first seemed. I’m curious to test the killer instinct of Japan, which according to our Western stereotypes is not exactly the picture of cynicism: if he doesn’t fail a second game that is vastly easier than the first, he puts crazy pressure on Germany. Coach Moriyasu is the mvp of the first day as regards the substitutions: with three very well-chosen moves he overturned the fate of Germany-Japan, first by inserting a defender for a striker (Tomiyasu for Kubo) to restore balance, then unleashing the best greyhounds in the last half hour.

Fulvius – I would say, however, that Poland has done us a slight. Saudi Arabia had us so excited that it would have been nice to see them dominate the group, and they didn’t even get off to a bad start. Of course, but if you have against Szczesny who saves the penalty of the draw, it can change the game. In the end, when the stakes in matches rise, the difference is also made by the singles, the great champions that Poland has and Saudi Arabia a little less. But let’s say that if the Saudis can console themselves with the Rolls Royce given to each of them by the prince, I don’t see them really desperate.

Joseph – I’m happy for the great Lewandowski and I’m still very perplexed by the increasingly stunted and freeze-dried Poland, but can I say that I’ve changed my mind a bit about the Saudis? Great work by Renard from a tactical point of view, great athletic preparation (or maybe it’s Poland that is rather weak), an extremely false result, but from the first to the one hundred and second minute they maintained an attitude always aimed at wasting time, at simulation, at ‘accentuate very normal contrasts with maximum annoyance of the neutral spectator. For example, the contact that led to the penalty on which allow me to play on politically incorrect words: Allah al Var.

Fulvius – I don’t know if I’ll pass you, so I’m going to the other matches today. Once upon a time I would have seen Belgium (against Morocco) and Croatia (against Canada) with more conviction, but it seems to me that they have reached a more dark phase of their cycle. Which then is a cycle that led us to say “what a team Belgium”, which however stopped at a certain point, while Croatia at least reached a final. Today let’s see if they can go on or not, because I can’t forget saying that, until elimination, I support Croatia.

Joseph – Two very insidious and very interesting matches: Morocco, very poisonous and at least one player in illegal form like Hakimi, seems to be made to unmask the Belgian bluff, which is such regardless of Lukaku’s presence or absence. In Canada, I would like to point out goalkeeper Milan Borjan, born in Croatia but belonging to a Serbian minority (resident in the Serbian Republic of Krajina) who was targeted by independence-minded Croatia in the early 1990s and was defended and then abandoned by Slobodan Milosevic: by as a result, they considered emigrating to Ontario.

Fulvius – On the other hand, the pre-match temperature rose a lot in Croatia. Fault of John Herdman, the coach of Canada, who after the defeat of the first day against Belgium, incited him by publicly saying “let’s fuck Croatia”. The Croats – both the delegation of the national team and the press – did not take it well, and a tabloid did not spare itself, first publishing a photo of Herdman naked, covered only on the mouth and between the legs by the flags of Canada, with a writing that is not exactly sibylline: “You have a mouth, do you also have balls?”. Here you are..

Joseph – The temperature of matches is rising, the temperature of declarations is rising. And this week Iran-USA, Ghana-Uruguay, Serbia-Switzerland await us…

Fulvius – A global stuff, in short. I would add the word van Gaal, to say goodbye, because we haven’t said it yet.

Joseph – Van Gaal to you too, Fulvio.