France or Brazil, there’s always starlight
Some of many podcasts on the World Cup
The end is near and it feels too soon. We have been engrossed by the world’s biggest sporting event. But if anyone was under a rock the following soundbites will catch you up a bit.
Can anyone beat France but France?
An episode of The Totally Football Show with James Richardson months ago is just one of the many podcasts that underlined the defending champions’ strengths ahead of the World Cup, betting that the abundance of individual talent was too overwhelming. With Kylian Mbappe having scored 5 goals already the prescience of those September words seems remarkable: As the opposition bounces away from him as if he is a character in a video game we shouldn’t just get used to how brilliant this guy is, just because he is so in match after match.
Why was Portugal better off without Ronaldo?
But at the other end of this trajectory, as the Football Ramble podcast highlighted this week, is a player who is finding out that football also moves on, and there’s no exception to this. Cristiano Ronaldo is for sure one of the greatest players of all time but he can’t see today’s reality in front of him because he has taken a team sport and in his mind made it all about himself. But it’s not him alone. Before coach Fernando Santos pulled the handbrake off Portugal in the match against Switzerland, nobody knew the handbrake was Ronaldo! And then the young replacement Goncalo Ramos promptly scored the first hat-trick of the Cup. Maybe Ronaldo will embrace some humility and an ‘elder’ role now.
Can anyone beat France but France?
An episode of The Totally Football Show with James Richardson months ago is just one of the many podcasts that underlined the defending champions’ strengths ahead of the World Cup, betting that the abundance of individual talent was too overwhelming. With Kylian Mbappe having scored 5 goals already the prescience of those September words seems remarkable: As the opposition bounces away from him as if he is a character in a video game we shouldn’t just get used to how brilliant this guy is, just because he is so in match after match.
Why was Portugal better off without Ronaldo?
But at the other end of this trajectory, as the Football Ramble podcast highlighted this week, is a player who is finding out that football also moves on, and there’s no exception to this. Cristiano Ronaldo is for sure one of the greatest players of all time but he can’t see today’s reality in front of him because he has taken a team sport and in his mind made it all about himself. But it’s not him alone. Before coach Fernando Santos pulled the handbrake off Portugal in the match against Switzerland, nobody knew the handbrake was Ronaldo! And then the young replacement Goncalo Ramos promptly scored the first hat-trick of the Cup. Maybe Ronaldo will embrace some humility and an ‘elder’ role now.