Round 3 - the beautiful craziness of football

The third and final round of the group stages is really the first knockout stage where tensions are high, fates are decided and unexpected plane tickets are distributed. There’s more to it than that though with some teams already qualified which leads to them fielding a weaker team and an almost indifference to defeat. And then we have that three-lettered invisible entity called VAR who treated us to a few seemingly crackpot decisions, the very thing VAR was supposed to eliminate. It's a bit like the invention of the microscope - before it, we made decisions based on what the naked eye could see but once that microscopic world was revealed, we saw things we'd never even dreamt of. It's the same on the football field - the technology at VAR's disposal means that the nail of a middle finger can deem a player offside, brushing the ball with the hairs of your arm can reward the opposition with a penalty and a micron of the ball still being in play can lead to formerly disallowed goals being given.



Let's brush over the games which never matched up to the hype. Wales continued on their woeful way to a WC exit at the feet of England – let’s hope they do a little better next time, in 2086! Iran were disappointingly meek against a US team who continue to impress. It's all over for the world no. 2, Belgium, gracefully shown the way out by a determined Croatia though Lukaku may have been traumatised for life as a goalscorer, missing five clear chances he’d normally bury. Not surprisingly, Morocco beat Canada to top the group - a great outcome for football, for Arabic Africa and, of course, for the bookies.



We can now move on to the meatier cuts of round 3. So much for my early Messi exit! It wasn’t just that Argentina were excellent, that Messi got the crucial first goal but that Poland were bloody dire – no spirit, no energy and no clue. And all this despite the fact that at 0-0, Messi was awarded an extremely dubious penalty which was brilliantly saved by Szczęsny, the only Pole to stand up and perform. Unfairly, Poland made it to the last 16 because poor old Mexico just couldn’t get a third against Saudi.



France, with their big boys resting on the bench, fell to Tunisia but it wasn't enough for Tunisia thanks to the Socceroos doing the unexpected and beating Denmark. By all accounts, Denmark were a bit like Poland, lacking drive and energy which was a huge flop considering that they beat France twice in the qualifications.



The pinnacle of round 3 was the concluding games of Group E, where Spain, Japan, Costa Rica and Germany could all be in or out. With 20 minutes to go, Costa Rica took the lead against Germany and Japan were leading Spain which meant both Germany and Spain would be bidding Auf Wiedersehen/Adios to Qatar! Germany did all they could do to survive by grabbing 3 goals back and could even have had a few more. Meanwhile, Spain were prancing around indifferent to defeat because (the conspiracy theory has it) Spain wanted to avoid Brazil until the final so they were happy to let Japan top the group. If they’d bothered to equalise, they’d have won the group and carried Germany through on their backs. Japan’s second goal would have been disallowed in pre-VAR days as the cross to make the goal was made outside the field of play. Or was it! Apparently only 99.999999999% of the ball was out of play!



It was great to see Korea go through when they beat Portugal and at the expense of an ugly Uruguay. Portugal, like France, Spain and Brazil didn’t seem to mind too much taking a loss. As for CH, our adopted homeland played as well as I’ve ever seen them play when beating Serbia 3-2 with good goals (both sides) and really good defending too. Serbia were also doing their bit until they were correctly not awarded a clear non-penalty. This was the trigger to feel hard-done-by and victimised which was a huge mistake, evaporating any hope they had of an equaliser, never mind a win. In parallel, Brazil lost to a 93rd. minute Cameroon goal but it didn't matter to anyone except Cameroon.

And so endeth the group stages!

There are still 5 unbeaten teams which is a lot but more interestingly, it’s a list not made up of the pre-tournament favourites:

USA, Morocco, England, Croatia and Netherlands.

Of the last 16, only 8 of them are European which is good for football!



Now let's get down to the serious stuff.