Can a Defender Be the Best Player in the World? 🤔

Greetings from (Back in) Yorkshire!

By the time you read this, only four days will have passed since the end of the Club World Cup, and yet somehow it already feels like it belongs to an entirely different world, or perhaps did not actually happen at all.

Maybe that is because of the contrast between where I spent the final week of the tournament – in the baking heat of New York – and where I am now, in the summer drizzle of Yorkshire. Or maybe it is because tournaments have a clock all of their own, moving so quickly that Bayern Munich beating Auckland City 10-0 feels like it happened in the dim and distant past, as opposed to…June. 

That effect is becoming more and more pronounced, for me, because these tournaments are growing more and more absurd: the gold livery, the grand staging, the glittering performances. As events, they feel increasingly unreal, uncanny. 

What seems much more concrete, much more human, what I will remember for much longer, was the chance to meet so many of you at our shows at the Michelob Ultra House in Manhattan. To those of you who came, thank you so much; to those of you who came to say hello, it was a genuine privilege. Hopefully we’ll have the chance to do it again soon.

The End Is the Start 🏆

The definitive shot was all that Gianni Infantino had wanted. Soccer no longer really does subtle; the game’s powerbrokers – and those who surround them, moths to a flame – have given up on the idea of the wink and the nudge. Instead, they tend to place their motivations front and center, and have a helpful habit of explaining exactly what they were trying to do.

And so, as Chelsea waited to celebrate their ascension as winners of the (sort of) inaugural Club World Cup, there was a slightly weird pause. Infantino, well versed in the rhythms of these things, had presented the gigantic golden trophy to Reece James, and duly vacated the stage. Alongside him, President Trump clearly had other ideas.

The most powerful man on the planet is, clearly, quite fond of the Club World Cup trophy. He has the original stored in the Oval Office; he liked it so much that FIFA gifted it to him, he told DAZN, and had another one made for use at the tournament. After the final, he helped Infantino hoist it from its dais all the way to James.

He was not done there. Chelsea’s players were clearly expecting him to follow Infantino off the stage, out of shot. Cole Palmer seemed to ask James what was going on. Robert Sanchez, the goalkeeper, politely warned the President they were about to start celebrating; whatever you think of Trump, he is a 79-year-old man, and probably does not need a load of athletes jumping on top of him.

Trump, though, wanted to stay. And so as James lifted the trophy above his head, the glitter cannon and fireworks exploding behind him, his teammates roaring in euphoria, Trump stood there, smiling contentedly. Infantino moved in, as quickly as he could, to act almost as a bodyguard, making sure the players did not accidentally damage his great patron.

For all the anxiety the FIFA president must have felt at that moment, he could not have hoped for a more ringing endorsement. Whether the Club World Cup worked in a sporting sense is hard to say, definitively. There were some good games: Al Hilal against Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain’s destruction of Real Madrid, Chelsea’s surgical victory in the final. There were some good stories: Al Hilal again, the thriving of the Brazilian contingent, Lionel Messi’s last flourish at club level.

And there were, of course, a number of problems: the poor attendances for some of the group games, in particular; the harsh and unyielding honesty of dynamic pricing; the heat, the storms, and the logistical difficulty of hosting a summer sports event in an era when the climate suggests that is not an especially bright idea; the fact that, even now, it is not clear to anyone quite how prestigious a tournament this was.

But as Trump stood on the podium, it became immediately, instantly clear that none of those things were particularly relevant to Infantino. The tournament, by his measure, had been a success, because the tournament, in his eyes, had been about something completely different. It had been about cementing his relationship with Trump. It had been about getting buy-in from a capricious leader. 

And, most of all, it had been about proving he could make it happen. 

If the Club World Cup felt a little like it had been cobbled together, that is because it was. FIFA only sold the last of its commercial packages on the weekend of the final, just as it had only found a broadcast partner a few months before the opening game. There had been doubts from Europe’s teams, in particular, about whether it was a serious proposition or a post-season junket until the moment it started. 

But Infantino, thanks in part to Trump, had pulled it off. When he said, on the eve of the final, that it had been a “huge, huge, huge success,” he was not referring to the traditional metrics: the standard of play, the amount of tickets sold, the size of the television audience. Its success was that it happened, and in doing so, it broke a seal.

FIFA is, now, a real player in the club game. It has a tournament that needs fine-tuning, but as a concept works. The clubs bought into it. They turned up. They played (by and large) senior teams. They seemed to care about the outcome. They certainly cared about the prize money. And most importantly, nobody stopped him: not the hostility of UEFA, not the doubts of the domestic leagues, not the objections of the fans, not the valid concerns of the player unions. 

The consequences of that are significant. There will, certainly, be another Club World Cup. It might be in Saudi Arabia, or Spain, or Brazil, or back in the United States, in 2029. Or it might be, as plenty would quite like, in 2027. It might have 32 teams. But it might have 48, or maybe 64. The entry criteria might be tweaked so that Barcelona and Liverpool and Napoli, the champions of three of Europe’s big leagues, can qualify, too. They might even find a way to get Manchester United, Arsenal and AC Milan, teams with vast commercial appeal, involved as well.

There will, of course, be those who say that is going too far, that it is asking too much of the players, that it is destabilizing soccer’s surprisingly delicate ecosystem, that people will not care, that the leagues or the clubs or someone will rebel, that it is just a Super League by the back door.

But what Infantino has proved, over the last month, is that there is nobody to stop him. The two bodies that might have been able to do so – UEFA and European Leagues, the body that looks after the interests of the continent’s major domestic tournaments – have been wholly silent. They might not like it, but they have been shown to be powerless.

Infantino does not just have friends in high places, but he is a president in Trump’s mold, too; that is why, perhaps, they get on so well. Without the slightest qualm, he rules when he has to by decree; he has a base that believes he is acting in their best interests, regardless of what he does; he has sufficient power, now, to reshape his fiefdom in whatever manner he sees fit. He was not lying about the scale of the Club World Cup’s success. It has done exactly what he needed it to do. It has proved that he can, and will, do whatever he wants. 

One Bad Day (Maybe) 🤔

As those of you who attended our shows in New York might (but hopefully won’t) remember, I’ve spent the last few weeks very much hitching my wagon to the idea that Nuno Mendes might be the best player in the world. And if he isn’t, then Achraf Hakimi probably is.

My logic for this, I think, holds. It is difficult to compare skill sets across the various different positions on the pitch. A central defender is outstanding in a completely different way to a midfielder; the elements of the game they have to master in order to excel are almost entirely distinct. How do you establish whether a winger is a better player than a striker?

Maybe, then, it would be better to change the way we think about that honorific. Maybe the best player in the world is the one who is best at their job, whatever it may be, by the largest distance. It would be fairer, too: individual awards invariably go to attacking players, but it is self-evident that their defensive teammates are just as important and can be just as effective.

It seems strange to me that we have decided the best player in the world cannot be a defender, or a goalkeeper, and Mendes in particular has spent several months casting the absurdity of that position into sharp relief. He is an astonishing, breathtaking footballer: a left-back who occupies an entire flank, a defender just as comfortable finishing off an attack as he is blunting the threat of an opponent, a force destructive and creative in equal measure.

On Sunday, though, we saw exactly why defenders struggle to get the credit they are due. Mendes did not have a worse game than Ousmane Dembélé or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. But where their failures were ones of absence, things that did not happen, his were things that very much did. 

The errors Mendes made, the tough first half he endured, were visible (as evidenced above). It is not that he did not play well, like his teammates; it is that he could be seen to be playing poorly. (I’m not sure that’s fair; Mendes will have been told by his coach, Luis Enrique, to raid forward as normal. It is not solely his fault that Chelsea were able to exploit the space behind.) 

That difference is key, because – as with referees and goalkeepers – the most memorable defensive performances are often the ones they would rather forget. Their poor days are much more apparent, much more noticeable than their good ones. And when it comes to determining who is the best player in the world, those are the instances that float to the surface, forever counting against them.

What I’ve Been Writing and Reading ✍️📚

• We will only know the true impact of the Club World Cup in a few years’ time, and it may not be good. 

• Whether you enjoyed the tournament or not, it did kind of perfectly encapsulate modern football.

• Cole Palmer: all show, no tell. 

• And it’s good to see America getting into ‘Love Island’.

Your Recommendations, Ranked 🍦

As promised, I went back to Philadelphia the day before the Club World Cup final, to meet an old friend. If I needed confirmation it was the right decision, it came when I stepped out of Jackson Station and found myself in the middle of an ice cream festival, which may be the three best words in the English language. We had the Schuylkill River Surprise – chocolate and caramel – from the Hangry Bear Creamery, and it was delicious. That was dessert; the first course was a crab cake sandwich, complete with Old Bay fries, from the counter at Pearl’s inside Reading Terminal Market: all of you who recommended it were quite right.

So many of you had sent in ideas for where I should eat that following them all would, I think, have literally killed me, but I did as many as I could. The sandwiches at Faicco’s and Pisillo in the West Village – favorites of Men In Blazers guru JW – are both far too large for human consumption and yet somehow so delicious that they are not large enough; Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side and, not far away, Wayla were both incredible, too. And if I can throw one of my own in: the kung pao chicken at Café China is a marvel.

I’m conscious that this is a loaded statement, because these things are a matter of both taste and experience, but the best gelato I found – maybe there is better gelato out there, who knows – was at Caffe Panna, just off Gramercy Square. Maybe it was the sunshine, or maybe it was the airy thrill of the Club World Cup, but I feel it may be top-10 material. Thank you to all of you who helped me feed myself while I was in the U.S. I am now on an all-vegetable diet.

That’s all for this week. It’s not quite true to say that these are the two quiet weeks in soccer’s otherwise non-stop calendar – I’m writing this on the morning of England’s game with Sweden at the Women’s Euros, a quarter-final that is wonderfully poised – but it definitely feels as though it is a chance for the men’s game to take a breath and gather its strength. Even as fans, that is maybe not a bad thing. As always, you can reach me anytime at [email protected].

Thanks,

Rory