God save the queen, football is not coming home anytime soon.

Russia 2018 has been one of the best tournaments in the history of the world cup. This tournament that has produced excitement, disappointment, thrilling performances and many more.  It is a full package.

This world cup edition has defied all odds as pre-tournament favorites, Germany, Brazil, Spain have all been eliminated.  

We have just witnessed how the power houses of world football couldn't come to the party in this tournament. This is the first time in the ever in the history of the world cup none of  five time champions Brazil (1958,1962,1970,1994,2002), Germany four time champions (1954,1974,1990,2014) and Argentina two time champions (1978,1986) reached the semis.

It presented England with an opportunity to win the world cup again since 1966. All have been going well for the 3 lions until they met Croatia. The Croats proved too strong a test for them as they suffered a 2-1 defeat at the Luzhniki stadium.

Gareth Southgate  played the free flowing game from the group stages because of the kind of opposition he faced, but when the real test was presented to him, England reverted to type (long balls). One couldn’t count the number of times Maguire and Stones sent it back to Pickford to play it long.

Much of the pre-match discussion had focused on how soon Croatia would tire having played extra-time in each of their previous two knockout games against Denmark and Russia, but in the end it was England who suffered from fatigue.  The experience of Rakitic, Modric, Perisic and co were too much for  the youth exuberance of the English lads

 Their media is happy and celebrating mediocrity because the lads have progressed from their failure in the last edition when they went out in the group stages. But should they be doing so? Southgate has taken  them to where Capello, Mclauren, Goran Eriksson, Alladyce and others couldn’t.

This was a fine opportunity to go the extra mile and win something. Their U-17 and U-20 had won their respective world cup last year and the national team crowning it all would have been a fantastic achievement for them. But they bottled it.

Gary Neville had this to say “We praise them and I think the opportunity was there to win the game, but having that opportunity and taking that opportunity is another challenge”

The search for the world cup still continues!

God save the queen, football is not coming home anytime soon!


by Vincent Ashitey