World Cup brackets

Chris Rattue runs through the sporting winners and losers from across the weekend. LOSER: Football World Cup. Yes, the hoopla is winding up, but in truth the ...

It would be a disaster if they made the final. The injury-hit world champs were mainly rubbish after that. France were terrific until they scored their first goal in the 17th minute. It felt like more of a rescue mission than anything else, as sport tried to get up and going again after the Covid interruptions. Or maybe I’m just sick and tired of the overrated, smart-arse Jones, boring-rugby Gatland and never-much-good Foster having such a say over a sport that is grinding to a halt. Rugby has become such a big business — in the minds of those running it at least — that the beauty of risk and reward is being suffocated by something that looks like due diligence gone wrong regarding coaching appointments. There’s a lot of skill in the World Cup, and a lot of it is used to work the ball backwards. A lot of people still regard England’s last World Cup campaign as a thing of wonderment, rather than the spectacular failure it turned into. Rugby isn’t the only big-time sport with a carousel of coaches dotted with a few blokes who imply that only they have THE KNOWLEDGE. Actually, in the truly horrible 2010 World Cup extra-time final between Spain and the Netherlands — teams with traditions of playing interesting football — there were 47 fouls. England’s players earn the sort of money that would qualify as the GDP of a small nation. Or to put it another way, how come a team as limited as Morocco is now in the World Cup semifinals?