Spain vs Portugal: Heroes and Villains.

Every football match produces its heroes and villains and the FIFA 2018 World Cup match between Spain and Portugal was no exception. In fact football turned up the day everyone wanted it and the whole tournament itself would be lit up for the first time.
An expected hero turned up all right; Cristiano Ronaldo producing a dazzling, relentless display that would eventually net him a spectacular hat trick. The third goal, a result of a free kick, was especially well-taken. His team was losing, with a few minute to spare and it was a moment that require steady nerves, precision and brilliance: that called for a hero and perfectly did he answer the call.
Another hero turned up in the shape of Diego Costa. Not everyone expected him to be one, not the least his Brazilian countrymen who have been very tardy in forgiving him for turning his allegiance to Spain. Traitors, real or perceived, are not a particularly welcomed breed anywhere on earth. As a matter of fact, certain folks rather expected some villainy from him, a player notorious for his tempers and tantrums on field. They all got disappointed, Costa putting up a display in which industry and instinct got complemented by brilliance. Check out the first goal, an endeavor in which he had everything to do and he did not shy from duty. The second goal was simply instinctive, a striker's delight.
The villain that rather turned up was a most unexpected one: David De Gea, a goalkeeper that has been excellent all season for Manchester United. His attempt at Ronaldo's penalty could hardly be excused for a world class goalkeeper and he would compound sloppiness with the howler that led to the second goal, a goalkeeping blunder straight out of Robert Green's school of errors. His poor positioning would eventually lead to the third goal. Not a few argue now he helped made Ronaldo's day, gifting him his hat trick on a platter of heinous incompetence. Well, De Gea's woes might be traced to a bite of nerves and he is expected to get far better grip on himself in subsequent games.
Spain was lovely to watch in their possessive tiki-taka but some lethargy could not help peeping up. It was clear that if they had channeled their possession into greater relentless pressure especially in the final third, Portugal would have been toast. The team clearly felt pressure from the turmoil that had bedevilled it in recent days. A mayhem that led to the sack of the coach Lopetegui two days to the tournament and his replacement with Fernando Hiero, ex-national player. But there was no taking from Nacho' s goal, a strike that was as

fortuitous as it was instinctive.

Jesus and Klopp: Iscariot and Karius.

The Champions League final in Kiev really produced a lot: a not-too-scintillating contest, there had been talks of Red Arrows, Ronaldo's Superman and Spiderman efforts and many other appetite-whetting epithets but what actually turned up in place of the anticipated fireworks were at best dull sparks; Mohamed Salah's injury, largely responsible for the just-mentioned damp squib; Gareth Bale' resurrection in form of a wonder goal, the Liverpool's goalkeeper confounding howlers. And a new word play. Loris Karius is now Lor isKarius. Clever but quite disingenuous as the source is quite familiar to everyone of us; the young German goalkeeper could be accused of so many things in the blunders that led to Real Madrid goals but by no stretch of imagination could he be tagged with perfidy. Karius has done fairly well in Liverpool's bright season and we could all see the genuine agony in his eyes after the final whistle but mischief is not always far from folks in an enterprise as passionate as football, especially in Africa where suspicions and conspiracy theories are dished out daily in cartloads. It is often that players battle with nerves, as well as genuine mistakes, and what Karius suffered from on the pitch was simply nerve failure and no other thing could be responsible. And he should take heart, after all our savior was accused of far weightier things, and in football, as in the larger life, there is always an opportunity for redemption. A second is all it even takes. Bale will easily attest to that.
Apropos of our savior. We will see greater substance in the wordplay by turning our attention to the principals of Judas Iscariot and Loris Karius. We know the two guys in question very well. Jesus knew someone was going to betray him and he could have saved himself by simply having the culprit seized by his disciples. But he did not. He had the greater duty of saving the whole world and the divine will must prevail. His blood must be shed and in that would be the redemption for all of us. And that is why we still look at the curvature of our neighbor's wife with covetous eyes without the threat of fire and brimstone, that fire and brimstone, doing things to our lustful hearts. Klopp was outright negligent in not seeing that his goalkeeper was not feeling all that comfortable in goal. We could all see that the moment Salah was carried out of the pitch. It was a simple case of getting scared knowing he faced a greater threat from the suddenly expanded breathing space Real Madrid players now roamed with the pressure the formidable Egyptian was exerting now attenuated with his removal. His coach should have seen this but then the usually passionate Klopp might have been too animated in his technical area. A similar thing happened in the second leg of the 2009 champions league semi final match between Arsenal and Manchester United. Arsenal were playing at home and everyone could see that the young defender, Kieran Gibbs, was feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of facing the Cristiano Ronaldo juggernaut. The tension, the size, of the occasion  simply overwhelmed him and his inexplicable slip in the box gifted the opposition a crucial goal. Arsene Wenger would eventually take him off, seeing he was coping badly with the weight of expectations, but by then the damage had been done. Klopp should have taken Karius off after that first howler. He wasn't Jesus Christ. Maybe then the outcome would have been different. Now he carries the unenviable tag of a coach that gets selections and tactics right except at the crucial moments: the finals.