So earlier today I went to Whyte and enjoyed the World Cup Final. As I'm sure many of you noticed, it was a barn burner of a game by soccer standards. As the play-by-play announcer declared (I'm unsure if TSN had their own broadcast team like Fox did or if they aped the BBC or ITV feeds: while I know they had their own crew in-studio I think they just rebroadcast an existing English language feed): this was the greatest final match in World Cup history, and was in the running for the greatest footy match ever.
It reminds me a lot of Colby Cosh's writeup in the wake of the 2005 Grey Cup where the Edmonton Eskimos defeated the Montreal Alouettes (emphasis mine):
Let me be the first to say it: the question is not whether this was the greatest Grey Cup game ever--the question is whether it was the greatest football game ever, period. A hundred strange subplots. One coach opposing the team that made him a legend and broke his heart, the other scheming against the franchise he venerated as a child. A starting QB confronting the loathing of his own city and shooting out the lights to win the MVP. Eight lead changes. A do-or-die two-point convert. At least two shit-or-bust field goals. A 96-yard kickoff return. Grown men catatonic and screaming and crying. 60,000 forlorn fans with no hometown attachments surging one way and the other with each change of possession.
The parallels are fairly strong. In both games we had two of the big powerhouses facing off. Ricky Ray is no Messi, admittedly, but he was the dominant QB of the league up until some hotshot from Dixie setup shop in Cowtown. Neither game was played in the "hometown" so there were fans of each team in attendance along with a very large number of "neutral" fans who had months earlier pre-bought their tickets and simply sat in the stands watching two teams who weren't their favourites and had to import a narrative in order to support/oppose. While there strictly speaking weren't any "lead changes", as France never held a lead at any point tonight, Argentina did give up two leads which if you're comparing to CFL football must be the equivalent of at least eight lead changes. There were no shit-or-bust plays due to the nature of soccer, but you could call both of France's penalty kicks this for sure.
The 2022 World Cup went into both extra time and penalty kicks: the 2005 Grey Cup went to double overtime. In the first "overtime/extra time" period one team took the lead and forced the other to score themselves and keep the tie game into the next "post-regular time block"...the difference this time in the winning team scored first, in 2005 the Alouettes got the first TD of the first overtime. I guess if you want to keep the metaphor going, in both games the final play was decided on "penalties": the penalty kicks obviously today, where Argentina made every goal, but the 2005 Grey Cup ended based on a penalty as well...here's Cosh again:
The situation: Edmonton leads by three in OT, but Montreal has the ball on the Eskimos 35 with first-and-ten and has the opportunity (under CFL rules) to move the ball until there's a turnover. If they get a TD they win the game. No clock. Dead simple.
Alouettes QB Anthony Calvillo comes in, takes the snap from centre, drops back, and launches a short pass.Doink.
Esks tackle Jabari Issa has reached up to block the pass, and in an eyeblink it rebounds off his forearms right into Calvillo's chest. At this moment, Calvillo--olive-skinned, bright-eyed, an odds-on Hall-of-Famer--is magnificent. He takes no discernible time to recover, reload, and find receiver Kerry Watkins alone in the end zone. Standing alone, mind you, facing Calvillo from more than a hundred feet away. Not one Eskimo defender is in sight. Calvillo unleashes the game-winning pass on a perfect parabolic arc. Hideous magic. In front of the TV I am dying. A black vignette is forming at the edges of my vision.
And then a red flag interposes.
Did you, dear reader, exercise the skills we all honed in a hundred childhood "You Make The Call" commercials? Calvillo's throw is the second forward pass on the play. A wholly, unquestionably, one-thousand-percent illegal forward pass. In the time it takes the ball to reach Watkins' breadbasket (and thump insensible to the turf), Calvillo has gone from demigod to braying ass. And I am no longer dying, not at all (who spoke of dying?): I am snapping puzzle pieces together like some idiot savant in the grip of divine inspiration. The ten-yard penalty will move the ball back to the 45; the "easy" field goal to tie the game is suddenly a 52-yard proposition.
The ball flew and the flag flew and the magnetic poles reversed and the sun rose in the West, and on the next play an Eskimos substitute lineman (whose name I'd never heard before) sacked Calvillo for another 11 yards, and it was all over. Shouting definitely included.
We're really out of parallels at this point, aren't we. Well, almost: both teams featured a team nonsensically accused of racism.
As we all know by now, the Edmonton Eskimos knealed down and took the L (and 3 seasons without a win at home!) by shedding the name on the false belief that "Eskimo" is some sort of racist term.
You'd think national teams would be relatively safe, but no...you see, the Argentine team is racist because it's all made up of white people. And that's disgusting, because as everybody knows Argentina isn't 100.0% white: and that none of the country's blacks made it on the team is proof positive that something nefarious is going on. Because, as the Washington Post notes deep in the bottom of their long story about how racist Team Argentina is, blacks make up...er...almost one whole percent of the population. No, wait, sorry, fact check came through, a barely imperceptible slice of 1%.
