It started off with sloppy incidents of poor refereeing but in the last few days the WC has become an utter farce. Croatia was cheated of a late equalizer against Ronaldo’s Portugal. Trump’s “executive action” managed to get Balogun’s suspension overturned. Egypt got “gypped” by insanely biased video review to push Messi’s Argentina through. And of course Iran’s treatment throughout was disgraceful. The fact that people pay big money to watch this live, or that billions are churned through the parasitic bookmakers over this “product” is lamentable.
I’m therefore going to take a look at the lighter side of the tournament, now that I’ve taken a closer look at the catalogue of overpaid and overemotional players.
Overnight there was a rather interesting duel in the Switzerland vs. Colombia penalty shoot-out. The final penalty kick featured Camilo Vargas defending Colombia’s goal from Ruben Vargas (Swiss mother, Dominican father). The latter succeeded. The Swiss team is one of the least “endemically derived” teams in the tournament. Another player is Mohameth Djibril Sow, who I assume is Muslim from his name and Senegalese father, rather than his Swiss mother. It’s good to see that he isn’t bothered by his porcine surname or the fact that there is a crucifix on his country’s flag, because I’ve seen Muslims protest over much less.
The legendary French-Algerian Zinedine Zidane made a return to the tournament this year, at least in the form of Algerian goalkeeper Luca Zidane and defender Zineddine Belaid. Luca is the son of Zinedine and was born in France, but chose blood over water it seems. The Zidanes are very white for Berbers, which probably indicates a high degree of Vandal and Carthaginian ancestry.
As far as other fish out of water, Alexis Mac Allister deserves a mention for representing Argentina. Scots migrated to Patagonia to farm sheep in the late nineteenth century.
Meanwhile, the country of Uruguay has a reputation for being South America’s most European country. While Diego Forlan certainly lived up to that billing in his time, the current squad falls rather short. Some of their names, however, do sound very right-wing: Darwin Núñez and Rodrigo Zalazar.
Other fantastic names that just roll off the pitch in this World Cup are: Moïse Bombito of Canada, Pervis Estupiñán and John Yeboah of Ecuador, and the rather poetic Carl Starfelt of Sweden.
Perhaps not so elegant is Sphephelo Sithole from South Africa, as well as Aaron Hickey from Scotland. The most unfortunate name association, at least from an American perspective, is the Haitian player Duke Lacroix, due to the close homophony with the Duke lacrosse rape hoax of 2006.
A contender for the most bad-ass name would have to be Jordanian defender Mohammad Abu Hashish, along with Swedish forward Benjamin Nygren. The cheekiest sounding name might just belong to the Dutch-born coach of Curaçao: Dick Advocaat. Eat your heart out, Roy Cohn.
As always, Africa and its diaspora offers up the most sentimental, quaint and old-fashioned names for the rest of the world to enjoy: Chancel Mbemba and Fiston Mayele (DR Congo), Evidence Makgopa (South Africa), Martin Expérience (Haiti), Promise David (Canada) and Auston Trusty (USA).
There’s a healthy dose of religious evocations in this year’s cup, especially among goalkeepers: Zion Suzuki of Japan (who is half black) and Aymen Dahmen of Tunisia. English defender Jarell Quansah resembles (at least superficially) the made-up African American alternative to Christmas: Kwanzaa. As far as Christian names go (literally), a trinity of players appeared to spread the word: Cristiano Ronaldo, Christian Pulisic and Christ Inao Oulaï (Ivory Coast).
I’ll conclude with an amusing possibility for the upcoming clash between Spain and Belgium on Friday. In goals for Spain is Unai Simón, while coming off the Belgian bench is Joaquin Seys. It is rather unlikely, but a “Simon—Seys” moment could happen in a penalty shoot-out. And that is every tied match’s final say.
*Thanks to the Guardian for their extensive player profile presentation of all 1,248 players.