If VAR needs a microscope, it’s no longer football.
THERE we have it, yet again. Smeared across our social media feeds (if your algorithm is following it), your football team’s WhatsApp group chats, or the weird depths of Telegram – though, if we are being completely honest, no Malaysian has any logical reason to be in a Telegram group chat unless they are actively trying to get scammed by an unhinged forex trading syndicate. But then again, if we apply that exact same logic, it is precisely the right habitat for the congregations of Messi-ism and Cristiano-ity to manifest other targets.
The Round of 32 clash between Portugal and Croatia in Toronto had many headlines. For the followers of Messi-ism, the entire evening was defined by a singular, desperate desire to see Portugal kicked out of the tournament. On the other side, it was an exhausting push to cement the definitive GOAT legacy.
Yet for the ordinary football fans worldwide, i.e. those who haven’t entirely outsourced their cognitive functions to online fanboy factions, it was about something far more dignified. It was about watching a masterclass in a permanent class. It was about witnessing Luka Modric grace a pitch. At least, it was for me.
Some people understand that genius does not expire. Unlike a WhatsApp message I received earlier from a particularly uncultured acquaintance, who confidently typed, “Croatia are a subpar team lah. Modric 50 years old and he’s done…” I am guessing I don’t need to explicitly name which internet fanbase he belongs to.
However, the reality is that Zlatko Dalic’s men were absolutely not bullied. Croatia played with the fierce, technical resilience of a golden generation refusing to be dismissed. Over their last ten internationals, this side has systematically suffocated some of the most expensive midfields on the planet, with Modrić still pulling the strings like a Renaissance architect. Instead, the match was defined by what were, for me, two monumental, highly volatile turning points.
First, there was the moment Cristiano Ronaldo was substituted. For the first time in this entire 48-team tournament, it appears Roberto Martínez has actually asserted his authority, looked the monolithic superstar in the eye and decided he is the manager after all. Sending a tactical shockwave through the stadium, he withdrew Ronaldo in the 81st minute, just moments after the forward had converted a high-pressure penalty to score his first-ever World Cup knockout goal. It left the superstar walking off the pitch in a state of highly visible, simmering discontent.
And then came the offside that wasn’t an offside.
In the 103rd minute of deep stoppage time, Josko Gvardiol bundled home a dramatic, heart-stopping equaliser for Croatia. The stadium erupted; the fans erupted; my daughter woke up entirely confused as to why I was erupting early in the morning. The tournament’s romantic script was written. Then, enter the Video Assistant Referee.
As I mentioned in my previous article, the bureaucrats tucked away in their air-conditioned shipping containers acted exactly like cricket umpires huddled around a television screen during a Test match, desperately listening to the audio waveforms of a snickometer. The technology hunted for an invisible micro-touch from Igor Matanović on Ivan Perisic’s cross, using a motion sensor embedded inside the Adidas Trionda match ball to manufacture the most ridiculous, pedantic offside call in the history of the sport.
It was an executive decision as utterly tasteless, rigid, and joyless as the conservative low-blocks Ronald Koeman deploys whenever his Dutch side faces a major opponent.
My late grandmother was once on the receiving end of a brutal snatch-and-grab robbery by rempits on motorcycles, but even she would admit this was the worst piece of daylight administrative robbery ever executed. The referee on the pitch and the VAR in the booth systematically erased what should have been one of the greatest, raw emotional highlights of the World Cup, hunting for microscopic millimetres that nobody in the stadium, or home, could see with the naked eye.
If you are forced to spend minutes zooming and drawing digital lines to a shoulder, a heel, or a boot, the evidence is not clear and obvious. And if it is not clear, the goal must stand. That is the entire philosophical point of the system. A technological intervention that was supposed to help the game ended up ripping the soul out of the Croatian players, leaving them in tears while fans threw plastic bottles onto the pitch in absolute outrage.
But internet trolls don’t care about the football part. Some Messi faithful spent the morning screaming about how Ronaldo only scores penalties, displaying a selective, delusional amnesia that fails to comprehend that without the avalanche of penalties Lionel Messi converted in Qatar, he wouldn’t have lifted the trophy at all. Meanwhile, the Ronaldo loyalists remain in heavy denial, refusing to state the blindingly obvious reality that their 41-year-old idol needs to be occasionally benched if the team is to function structurally.
If we look past the noise and focus purely on the game, Harry Kane is quietly moving himself directly into the centre of the conversation. I have so many things to say to Kane, but let me start by saying: you, my friend, are slowly becoming the one. Never mind where the metrics place him in the global player rankings; in the hierarchy of captains who are physically carrying the crushing psychological weight of their team, Kane is executing pure heavy lifting. You’re a wonderwall, Kane.
All said and done, the Round of 32 has already turned this tournament into an absolute graveyard for the elite teams. We may very well see another colossal upset later in the morning. Logically, Argentina are heavily tipped to comfortably dismantle Cape Verde on the pitch, and the casual narrative assumes Lionel Messi and co will easily glide into the next round.
Yet, for a true football loyalist, an institutional Argentina victory would feel like a real upset. It is a corporate dampener on a tournament that desperately begs for a romantic, minor minnow to win it all.
With the Dutch officially dead and buried, Cape Verde are the ultimate Mighty Ducks I am rooting for. In this beautiful, somewhat broken tournament, the spreadsheets mean absolutely nothing, and I cannot wait to see if the underdog can pull off the unthinkable.
