14 Dec The Passion of the Kane
It is rare indeed, Gentle Reader(s), for Your Humble Narrator to weigh in on matters regarding Sport (or Sports, as we colonials tend to call it), but the FIFA World Cup is an exceptional phenomenon—a uniquely global quadrennial event with an international following like no other. Having become a fan of the English Premiere League over the past several years (Liverpool is my team—one guess as to the reason why) I have found myself swept up in the fervor, getting up early to watch 8:00 AM games and trying to figure out which teams I favor.
Figuring out which team to support isn’t as straightforward as one might think. The US team was considered much improved over recent years but no one expected them to get too far into the competition, and they didn’t. American-born and bred though I may be, I wasn’t very interested in the national team—I’ve never seen them play and I’m not familiar with any of the players. As a fan of the Premiere League, the players that I am most familiar with were dispersed to the four winds—Tottenham forward Son Heung-Min to South Korea, Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker to Brazil, Man City’s Kevin De Bruyne to Belgium, Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk to the Netherlands, and so on. The English national team still had many familiar faces but the whole experience of seeing players in unexpected combinations—playing with their usual opponents and against Premiere League teammates—is quite jarring for a Yank such as myself. The major American team sports just don’t operate this way.
For an American football fan—and by football I mean futbol, the beautiful game, not the brutal gladiatorial smashups that my fellow countrymen foam at the mouth over on fall/winter weekends—the world of FIFA can seem bewildering indeed. Of course there’s the World Cup and the gazillion national leagues, but then there’s also stuff like the UEFA European Championship, and the Nations League, and the FA Cup, and the UEFA Super Cup and the Intergalactic Goblet and the Cosmic Chalice and on and on and on… it’s fucking mind-boggling! Dig into Wikipedia for a bit and the list after list after list of the innumerable cups and competitions will turn your brain into tapioca in no time at all.
And then there’s crazy shit like relegation and promotion! If that concept were applied to Major League Baseball a couple of teams would be banished down to Triple A ball every season and a couple of minor league contenders would move up to fill their slots. Can you imagine tuning in in April to discover that the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp have set up camp in LoanDepot Park instead of the Miami Marlins? As a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs I find the notion of relegation particularly terrifying.
All of these wack Anglo/American anomalies and more have been getting examined quite amusingly via Ted Lasso on Apple TV+. It’s a good place to start for those who are futbol-curious. For instance, it was from watching Lasso that I discovered that not all futbol pitches were the same size! FIFA specifies a range of length and width for futbol pitches, therefore Brighton & Hove Albion’s home pitch at AMEX Stadium is 105 meters by 65, whereas the pitch at the Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Molineux Stadium measures 100 x 64! Total madness!
And then there’s the time thing. As a baseball fan I’m used to games taking as long as they take. That’s one of the things I love about baseball: No Clock! It is my belief that there is more than enough time pressure in modern life without it intruding into my enjoyment of sport(s). In all of the other major American team sports the tyranny of the goddam CLOCK rules all! Tick Tick Tick Tick… hurry up! hurry up! hurry up! ohmyGAWD time is RUNNING OUT! HURRY UP!! I can do without it.
In futbol there is a clock, but unlike non-baseball team sports, the clock in futbol is highly malleable. There’s also cricket, of course, but who knows WHAT the fuck is going on with that shit? They’ve got cricket matches that have been going on since Maggie Thatcher was resident in No. 10, so let’s just not go there, okay?
A futbol team scores a goal and the scoring player slides across the turf on his knees, poses for the crowd, dances about, has a bit of a celebratory snog with his teammates; a player experiences the slightest of grazing contact with an opposing player and throws himself theatrically to the ground, writhing and grimacing in the throes of agony hoping for a foul (or an Academy Award nomination), holding his head or little toe or whatever to stanch the imaginary geysers of blood gushing forth from his horrifying wound.
The referee makes note of all of this and keeps a running tally of how much goofing off has taken place during a given half. At the end of the standard 45 minutes this ‘stoppage time’ gets added on and the game continues, for one minute, five minutes, an hour—whatever. It’s up to the judgement of the ref when to blow the whistle and end play! He just makes it up—on the fly! Crazy shit, right?
Anyway, I think you get the picture. I, for one, find all this kind of stuff quite fascinating indeed. But then I’m just easily amused, I guess.
Back to the World Cup.
So, once every four years all of this planetary futbol insanity gets distilled down to the World Cup—in Qatar this time, of all places. The qualifying matches began, like, 15 minutes after the last World Cup finals in 2018, and now—at the time of this writing, five million matches later—it is down to the semi-finals. The Americans—pfft, long gone. Brazil—the winningest country in World Cup history—eliminated in penalty kicks by the scrappy Croatians. The Germans—second winningest country—didn’t even make it to the round of 16. Those scrappy Croatians got their collective dick kicked in the dirt by Messi and Argentina this very afternoon. Defending champs France are facing Morocco tomorrow, hoping to be the first repeat winners since Brazil in ’58/‘62.
And the Brits, you ask? What of the Kipper-Munching Monarchists, pray tell?
‘Tis a sad tale, the Brits.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m a Liverpool supporter. I’ve gotten to know the players over the past four years or so and I can reasonably say that I’ve developed a feel for the team and its personality. I love Jurgen Klopp’s huge gnashing white teeth and his fist-pumping exhortations of the fans after a win. Mo Salah is my fave player. I admire his extraordinary athleticism, his amazing footwork, his speed and accuracy, and his faith. Salah has had a variety of signature celebratory moves during his career but nowadays he performs the sujud on the pitch after every goal. His English fans adore him and I believe they also admire him for his faith, which is pretty cool in these fraught times. However, Mo is sitting out this year’s Cup—his national team, Egypt, didn’t make it through the Africa Qualifiers back in… a couple of years ago? Who knows?
The other Premiere League team that I follow is Tottenham Hotspur. I am particularly fond of the great interplay between Son Heung-Min and Harry Kane—those two really create some beautiful moments together and Mo Salah hasn’t really had an equivalent dance partner since Sadio Mané departed Liverpool for Bayern Munich in June of this year. Anyway, I dig Tottenham—I’d say they’re my number two team. Most of the time.
By any measure, Harry Kane is a world class footballer. He is a three-time Golden Boot winner (one of only three three-time winners, along with Mo Salah and Alan Shearer) and he strikes me as a solid, no-nonsense type of player. Quite deservedly and to the surprise of no one, he was named captain of the English squad for the World Cup. England has only brought home the Cup once—in 1966—so it’s been 56 long years of disappointment for a futbol-mad nation. As a Cubs fan, I can relate.
England 2022 features Kane, Jack Grealish, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jordan Pickford, John Stones, Phil Foden—a squad full of nothing but top flight players. England gets through the Group Stage taking down Iran on November 21, pulling a draw with Team USA on November 25, and knocking out Wales on November 29. In the Round of 16 England blanks Senegal on December 4 and makes it to the Semi-Finals on December 10 against France.
To cut to the chase, France pulled ahead of England with a Olivier Giroud goal in the 78th minute to bring the score to 2-1. Kane had scored on a penalty kick back in the 54th minute and then, in the 84th minute, he stepped back up for a second penalty that would have taken the game into extra time and, possibly, a penalty shoot out. The man defending the goal for France was Kane’s Tottenham teammate, Hugo Lloris.
So it all comes down to this. I’m standing there—it was too much to sit down for—watching Kane and Lloris set themselves up for the kick. Okay, Lloris is a great goalkeeper—solid, athletic and 6’2”. Perhaps a bit on the small side for a top flight goal keeper, but he’s here for a reason, right? And Kane? Well, he’s Harry Fucking Kane, right? Mister Golden Boot! Tied with Wayne Rooney at 53 goals for the most, all-time, in English international competition. If anyone can nail this, Harry can.
Kane places the ball, fiddles with his socks, centers himself, eyes downcast, blinks numerous times, his face a mask of concentration, plotting his strategy. The ref blows the whistle. Kane takes a couple of quick stutter steps in place, makes his move. He connects solidly, sends the ball soaring for the upper left corner—same spot as his successful first kick.
Now, there was always the chance—the slight chance, I figured—that Lloris would block the shot. Unlikely (this is Harry Fucking Kane!!), but possible.
Lloris flings himself explosively to his right, stretching out full-length, in an all-out effort for the block.
He is nowhere close. He is nowhere close because the ball has sailed up and over the crossbar, completely missing the goal by several feet.
What… just happened? Kane missed? He MISSED the goal?? If Kane’s shot had been on goal Lloris wouldn’t have been able to block it—but he didn’t need to. Harry Kane missed. This was a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to me. How could Kane miss? It beggars belief, but it happened.
Harry pulls the collar of his jersey up and into his mouth, possibly to stifle his own scream, and wanders slowly towards the goal. Nineteen-year-old midfielder Jude Bellingham runs over to say some quick words. The rest of his teammates keep their distance. The England fans in the stadium are stunned, crying, goggling in disbelief.
So what happened?
Kane and Lloris are teammates. Lloris knows Kane. He knows Kane’s method. But Kane knows that Lloris knows this. With this in mind, should England manager Gareth Southgate have sent someone else up against Lloris for the second shot? Should Harry have gone the other way? Was Lloris expecting him to go the other way? Or did Lloris expect Kane to go the same way because he realized that Kane knew that Lloris would expect him to go the other way? In trying to psych Lloris out did Kane psych himself out? Whichever way the psychology was working, it didn’t matter. Because Kane just missed.
Didn’t see that coming.
It has to be pretty crushing—to be the focal point of all those expectations, all that hope. But that’s why a guy like Harry Kane gets paid the big bucks. Or the big pounds, as it were. He’s still an elite, world class player, he’s only 29 years old, and now he’s got to go home and prepare to get on with the season for Tottenham. Boxing Day ain’t that far off. Tottenham vs. Brentford. Brentford is tenth in the Premier League standings, Tottenham is fourth. It might seem like a bit of a letdown after the World Cup. It’ll be a tough day for Harry Kane, no matter what, but he’ll be back.
The lore of the 2022 World Cup will no doubt cast Kane’s missed shot as one of the pivotal moments, but there was so much else going on.
The drama of Cristiano Ronaldo: Had he finally sulked and pouted his way into a corner he couldn’t get out of? At 37 this is definitely his last World Cup. He’ll head into retirement without bringing home the ultimate prize—for himself and for his country. At the moment, he’s also a superstar without a team, having burned down his relationship with Manchester United just before heading to Qatar. The most famous player in the world, but his own national team kept him on the sidelines— with ‘chalk on his boots’ as the Brits put it—for most of Portugal’s critical matches. Will anyone want him? Anyone with more than just money to offer?
Lionel Messi: probably the second most famous player in the world. Messi is 35. This is going to be his last World Cup as well and it would be a beautiful thing for Messi to lead Argentina to the trophy ceremony. Argentina is probably the odds-on favorite to take it all, but, as Harry Kane showed us, ya just never know.
Morocco: The first African team to make it to the World Cup semifinals—all others have been either European or South American. The top teams across Europe have so many great African players, both by birth and first-generation European—Mo Salah, Sadio Mané, Romelu Lukaku, Riyad Mahrez, Bukayo Saka, Paul Pogba, Tariq Lamptey, Kylian Mbappé, the list goes on and on. That an African team has made it this far into the competition must be a huge point of pride for all of them. It would be an amazing story—an epochal win for an entire continent—if Morocco took home the trophy on Sunday. That the Atlas Lions are facing off against their former escargot-munching colonial overlords makes Wednesday’s semifinal match all the more compelling (France’s Les Bleus squad counts no less than 14 Afro-Franco players in its own rank).
It’s gonna be a thriller. I wonder if Harry Kane will be watching?
