Before things get underway, let’s confront the elephant in the room. We’re all grown-ups here, because presumably all of the kids are second-screening on TikTok, so let’s just say the quiet part out loud: no, World Cup knockout games are not pretty. To newcomers, they may seem cagey, attritional. To older hands, the aesthetic quality of the play pales in comparison to, say, the latter rounds of the Champions League.
There are a few reasons for that. One is that these teams have had far less time to develop a cogent style than their club counterparts, who train together all year. They are, necessarily, less finely-tuned. They are also more obviously flawed. Didier Deschamps and Gareth Southgate cannot go out and buy a new midfielder or a better central defender, as Manchester City or Real Madrid might; they have to work with what they have got, and that means thinking as much about concealing their weaknesses as it does emphasizing their strengths.
But the most significant factor is just how much these games mean. World Cups roll around only once every four years. The players are acutely aware, as the England midfielder Jordan Henderson said earlier this tournament, that every game might be their last on this stage. That is even more true in the knockout stages than it is in the group phase. There are precious few one-and-done games in modern soccer: they feature in some domestic cup competitions, and in major finals. These are not far off the only occasions when teams do not get a return leg, or a chance to meet again later in the season. Everything can disappear in a puff of smoke.
The fact they are rarely pretty, though, is not a drawback. That tension, that pressure, is what makes these games so special. Consider some of the meetings we have seen already: Morocco holding the Spanish at arm’s length, and then resisting Portugal; Argentina having to hold its nerve against Australia, and then that rollercoaster finish against the Dutch. This is entertainment as exquisite as it is excruciating. And the good news is that the stakes only get higher from here.
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