AFTER such an epic World Cup, FIFA could do worse than play the next couple of tournaments during the winter months.
Those cold, bleak November and December days and nights weren't so bad and were properly transformed into something beautiful.
The group stages were laced with unbelievable drama, the knock-out stages occasionally sagged before Argentina and France produced a final befitting of the tournament.
Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe was a duel sent from the heavens – and that sense of expressed coolness between the two PSG team-mates merely added to last Sunday’s final.
For years, football fans were spoilt by the Cristiano Ronaldo-Messi rivalry – two players that pushed one another on to unbelievable heights at Real Madrid and Barcelona, respectively.
By the time the next World Cup finals come around, Messi and Ronaldo will almost certainly be culled from the stage by Father Time.
God knows when we’ll see another rivalry like it as the brilliant Mbappe carves a lonely path to greatness in the hope of finding an opponent along the way that will make him even better.
Mbappe singlehandedly almost rescued the final in Lusail last Sunday by scoring an astonishing hat-trick. Argentina, while heavily reliant on Messi throughout the tournament and the final itself, had more players that brought their 'A' game.
Alexis Mac Allister got better with each passing game in Qatar and rounded off a brilliant four weeks by being involved twice in the move that led to Argentina's second goal - arguably the best team goal scored at the finals.
Mac Allister's ancestral roots can allegedly be traced back to Cushendall.
TV crews rushed to the north Antrim village to interview anybody called Mac Allister with every passer-by enthusiastically claiming the Argentine midfield technician as one of their own.
After reading all the reports you could be forgiven in thinking that Alexis Mac Allister once played for the Ruairi Ogs minor team while Christy McNaughton was never done plying the Argentine with Guinness in the Lurig every Thursday night after hurling training.
We allowed our imagination to run riot for a while.
Alexis Mac Allister was from Cushendall, and that was that.
No doubt the last month of thrills and spills will live long in the collective memory. But, at the risk of sounding mean-spirited about the 2022 World Cup, you could count on one hand the exceptional players on show: Messi, Mbappe, Neymar and Vinicius Junior – players who were comfortable in one-v-one situations.
You could compile a thick archive of World Cup moments where wide players declined the chance of taking on the defender, preferring to turn and pass the ball backwards.
If you saw one passage of play in Qatar, you seen them all. Centre backs alone must have hogged over 50 per cent of the possession rates.
The game itself feels over-coached, too prescriptive at times, where you can almost see the manager’s fingerprints in familiar patterns of play.
The world has become much smaller from the days of the 1982 and 1986 World Cups where the football was more varied, more nation-specific. You tuned in to discover players you’d never laid eyes on before.
Because coaching practices were much looser back then, there was more space for wingers and playmakers in teams.
In other words, individual innovation played a bigger role in the game, the copyright belonged to the players, not necessarily the coaches.
A quick glance at the heroes of ’86 and the names trip off the tongue even after all these years: Diego Maradona, Careca, Michael Laudrup, Preben Elkjaer, Emilio Butragueno, Hugo Sanchez, Bruno Conti, Zico, Socrates, Jean Tigana, Michel Platini, Igor Belanov.
Will we remember Sofyan Amrabat, Achraf Hakimi, Richarlison or our friend from the Glens Alexis Mac Allister in 10 or 15 years' time?
There is less tactical diversity in the modern game. Nearly every team plays with the high press and the passing patterns are uncannily similiar.
Dribblers are bordering on extinction.
The game is definitely more sophisticated than ever before but that doesn't necessarily translate into making the game more entertaining.
Former assistant to Pep Guardiola, Juanma Lillo made a very salient point in a column for The Athletic during the World Cup where he wrote: “It’s true now that there aren’t bad players any more. But there are no exceptional players either. In trying to kill the bad guys, we’ve killed the good guys, too.”
You can see similar trends in other field sports. Gaelic football is a classic example where the game is more sophisticated but also more risk averse. So many teams play the same way, playing the percentages and manipulating the ball into specific positions for their shooters.
So many passages of play look the same too. And so many players look the same. They’re coached to the ‘nth degree.
Probably the zenith of Gaelic football was during the ‘Noughties’ insofar as tactical advances were improving the spectacle and didn’t infringe on the predatory corner-forward or the cerebral number 11.
Football is more rehearsed than it ever was. Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City is among the top three or four teams in world football, but their play can be formulaic where so many passes need to be made and overloads conjured down the sides of the opposition.
And it is successful; it will probably land them a Champions League title sooner rather than later but Pep’s football doesn’t set the pulses racing. It’s more functional than spontaneous.
When you coldly study the game, coaches don’t like spontaneity, they don’t like surprises, they deal in cause-and-effect and likely outcomes.
They can control so much of the game from the technical area.
The World Cup was one of the best for sheer drama and entertainment - but was short on exceptional individual talent.
As Juanma Lillo says, the prevailing coaching practices of the day are killing some of the good guys along the way.
