IN A PERFECTLY ASTONISHING GAME of football, Portugal conquered Spain and all the national anxieties that this anxiety-prone nation is heir to: qualifying for the knockout phases after all had seemed lost. This was always going to be the Angst Bowl. Or perhaps it was a competition within a competition: the Underachievers’ Cup. Until last night, Spain and Portugal had given us exactly the kind of football that you expect: perfectly living up to their own stereotypes.
Neither team had been playing like a team that expect to win stuff. On both sides, things had been characterised by a sort of gloomy fatalism; a dismal resignation to the fact that sadness lurks around the next corner. Both played like teams that know that life has a disconcerting habit of whacking you over the head with a sock full of sand, and both played as if they expected the sock to fall sooner rather than later. Such views have a terrible tendency to self-fulfilling, and that rule counts double in football. In football, again and again, fear is father of disaster. And both teams had played in fear this tournament; so much expected, so many things that could go wrong.
Portugal found disaster with defeat in their opening match; Spain had an embarrassing draw in their second.
People talk about all sorts of deep-laid national anxieties; historical reasons for a perpetual feeling of one-downness, national traditions that make for a perpetual feeling that the best of times have already gone. Translate such sentiments into football and you are always likely to extend the parameters of national suffering. It was inevitable, then, that last night’s match was going be a nerve-stretcher.
Football’s cliché at such moments is to say: “It comes down to desire. It’s all about who wants it most.” Try telling that to the players; they all wanted it, they wanted it with passion, they all wanted it with desperation. This was a match that brimmed with desire. For that matter, the previous two games both teams had played were also been brimful of desire. The one thing neither team has been remotely short on is desire. That, on the whole, was the problem.
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It’s not about who wants it more. In a way, it’s about who wants it least. The team that can cast care away and play as if it didn’t matter a toss has a substantial advantage. It’s like walking along the kerbstone: anyone can do it, but it gets somewhat tougher when the kerbstone is 500 feet above the gutter. The team that can play as if the drop were a mere six inches have won a priceless advantage.
And Portugal came bursting out of the traps as if they hadn’t a care in the world. They played football like millionaires. They played with swash and with buckle, with tricks and style and a wild, wacky optimism. They played as if they were the Harlem Globetrotters.
Spain played their part in a compelling spectacle, counter-attacking with speed and wit and having the better chances. The first half brought the best 45 minutes of the tournament so far, but no goals. Perhaps it was in the finishing that the anxiety best expressed itself.
Call it Play-Off Syndrome. The Football League play-offs invariably produce memorable games. It is as if the stakes get so high that they can no longer be taken seriously by the players. There comes a point when you care so much that the idea of caring is no longer manageable. All you can do is to say, the hell with it. And play football.
Portugal did that all right and at last found their goal when a somewhat optimistic shot from Nuno Gomes finding the net. The explosion of relief was followed by a further and deeper outbreak of national anxiety. How could it possibly be enough? Could they hold on? But Portugal sat back and defended much as the Light Brigade sat back and defended.
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The clock counted out the seconds as grudgingly as Shylock counted out his gold. Terror was now manifest in both teams, as desire had been from the start. And both found nothing but inspiration in the terror, the desire.