The opening game of the World Cup was not very good and Qatar were awful. So it couldn't really have gone any better, frankly.
The World Cup opener was absolutely dreadful and we couldn’t be happier about itWe’ve thought about it and decided that opening World Cup match went pretty much as well as anyone could have hoped., and everyone got to unload all their VAR jokes and grievances inside the first five minutes. For this particular opening game at this particular World Cup, we couldn’t have asked for more.
There will be plenty out there who argue that having a VAR decision go Qatar’s way just three minutes into the tournament is a bit on the nose, a bit hack, a bit rejected-in-the-writers’-room-for-being-too-obvious. To those people we say, one, that whole “bit on the nose, lazy writing” is itself extremely cliche and hack which is why we’re having our cake and eating it by framing it this way. But two, and more importantly, no. This was excellent.
But if VAR is staying as we must assume it is then it is going to have to get better at explaining itself. Nothing was going to stop the confirmation-bias and conspiracy theories already racing round the internet, but showing one inconclusive replay and then nothing for 10 minutes certainly helped the spread. And then when we did get the actual evidence the decision was based on, the graphics for the “semi-automated” system were absolutely sensationally low-rent.
The same could not be said for Dion Dublin’s often bizarre turn in the co-commentator’s chair.
Maybe they were nervous – they certainly looked it – and maybe in other games their goalkeeper won’t stage his own dirty protest against the tournament. But other host nations were surely nervous before their opening game and none had ever lost it. Qatar had lost this game with barely half an hour on the clock.
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