FIFA World Cup qualifiers: Inside the wild world of international soccer
By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
The buildup to the absolute, undisputed best time in soccer’s never-ending cycle is also its strangest.
In 14 months, the FIFA World Cup will be upon us in all its majesty. It is a fiesta of sports, a celebration of fan culture and a collection of the finest players on the planet in one spot for five glorious weeks of ceaseless action.
Until then, prepare for oddities and quirks, storylines that look like they were invented, impossible outcomes and freakish happenings.
"World Cup qualifying is weird," FOX Sports soccer analyst Stuart Holden said Sunday.
He’s not wrong.
During this current window, for which club soccer around the world pauses for a week, 148 World Cup qualifiers were scheduled, a frenetic burst of activity that is merely part of the process of deciding who gets to play in Qatar in November of next year.
The most newsworthy elements, however, came when play didn’t happen — or didn’t happen how we expected it to.
Within the space of a few hours, there was the abandonment of a game in South America after health officials stormed onto the field to deport players for COVID protocol breaches, the cancellation of a fixture in Africa due to the eruption of a military coup and a power outage in Central America that tensely paused a game between two nations that once fought a war over soccer.
Welcome to this wild international scene, where for soccer, being the most popular and global sport of all also means exposure to the unpredictability of life in all earth’s corners.
On Sunday, the highly anticipated qualifying clash between Brazil and Argentina in Sao Paulo — featuring Neymar, Lionel Messi and numerous other stars — was great, for all of seven minutes. That was the point at which health department officials headed onto the pitch to call a halt to the proceedings, the ultimate reminder, perhaps, that nothing will ever be quite the same post-COVID.
"We’ve been here for three days," Messi pleaded with officials. "Were they waiting for the game to start to come here? Why didn’t they warn us before?"
The furor appears to have come as the result of a breach of strict Brazilian controls, which forbid travelers from entering the country if they have been in COVID hotspots, including the United Kingdom, in the previous 14 days.
Argentina players Emiliano Martinez, Emiliano Buendia (both Aston Villa), Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso (both Tottenham) ply their trade in the English Premier League but now stand accused of falsifying their pre-trip health documents in order to be allowed into Brazil.
As the weekend ended, there were claims and counter-claims, with accusations flying to and fro, a statement from the Brazilian soccer authorities appearing to criticize the health service and other rumors insinuating that they had actually been discreetly involved in the dramatic stoppage.
"What happened is unfortunate for [soccer], a very bad image for the world," Argentina Soccer Federation Chief Claudio Tapia said.
As the Argentina players were deported from the country and left with their teammates while awaiting a decision from FIFA on the game’s outcome, the African nation of Guinea was in the midst of civil unrest.
On Monday, Guinea was supposed to host Morocco in a World Cup qualifier in the capital, Conakry. A day earlier, however, Guinea’s ruling government was overthrown in a military coup led by Col. Mamady Doumbouya and a group of elite special forces operatives.
Having gone to bed the previous night with a soccer game on their minds, the Morocco players spent Sunday sequestered in their hotel rooms, listening to the sound of intermittent gunfire from the vicinity of the presidential palace less than a mile away.
"We could hear it all day," Morocco coach Vahid Halilhodzic told reporters. "We’re stranded."
Ultimately, Moroccan diplomatic officials were able to negotiate with the coup leaders to allow the team safe passage to the airport. Once aboard their flight, according to a Reuters report, the squad burst into song, such was their relief at having escaped the situation.
The happenings in Brazil and Guinea made a power cut in the CONCACAF region‘s matchup between El Salvador and Honduras seem somewhat tame by comparison, but it should be considered that this is a soccer rivalry like no other.
In 1969, what is known as the "Football War" broke out between the two nations, as passions surrounding a World Cup qualifying series led to mass fighting between citizens and, ultimately, a breakdown in diplomatic discussions followed by a four-day war.
That is in the distant past, but when the lights went out over the weekend, it only added to the nervousness of a highly competitive 0-0 tie, and it capped an eventful few days for Honduras, who days earlier had accused the Canadian team of spying when a drone was spotted above practice before the teams played in Toronto.
"In CONCACAF," FOX Sports soccer analyst Alexi Lalas told me last week, "anything can happen."
What the past few days have shown is that in World Cup qualifying, expect the unexpected. Staging a World Cup is a giant show, with 64 matches in 12 stadiums. The part that involves teams getting there is different, all spread out and infinitely bigger and longer. Last time around, the whole thing took 872 matches to settle, involving 210 nations.
It is weird, and it is wonderful, and it is an integral part of soccer as a global sport, with a format in which, in theory at least, every team has a chance to qualify.
This is where unpredictability rules, where countries with proud soccer traditions can fall and tiny ones (such as Iceland) can claim their spot among the elite. It is where the United States stumbled last time and is hiccupping again, and there is a whole lot more drama to come, none of which you’ll be able to accurately predict.
The World Cup is the greatest show in soccer, but the preamble is a show all its own.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
