For all the evils of the world, the 2018 World Cup has shown that a little football done well can make the planet smile

Monday morning with a sinister and overwhelming inevitability. Unless you peel yourself on a sidewalk in Paris, or do not waste your time at a diving bar in Dubrovnik, the 2018 World Cup is over. As a month of sporting hedonism slips from the present to the past, real life and its harsh boundaries refine their concentration, bringing with them a cruel calculation. It was only football, after all.

It was more than that when Kylian Mbappe was burning supporters of the opposition, or that Lionel Messi was repelling the tide, or that Russia and South Korea were getting rid of the unworkable. squares throbbed with raspy songs and nervous tension and thorny thorns of a vague dream. But no: in the end, it was only football, neither more nor less.

Thus, a world on a comedy seeks meaning in its ecstasy. What did we learn? What, ultimately, was all for? France was worthy champions, there is no doubt. Eleven goals in four knockout games and a second World Cup were not easy for a team that was ahead of the tournament as a ghost in a shell, a team of illusory talents chained by indecision and defensive tactics. Instead, they provided an object lesson on what happens when you persuade exceptional individuals to submit to a collective structure, when you patiently wait for the game to break down and give as little as possible. Every adversity they faced, they negotiated. They went through a monstrous draw: Argentina, Uruguay, Belgium, Croatia.

We should be wary of the big powers cementing their grip on the competition. Yes, the last three World Cups have been won by France, Germany, Spain and Italy. But Croatia's spectacular run to the final – and race is the key word, given that they just stopped all month – should give pause for thought. A chaotic football infrastructure and the veil of institutional corruption did not stand in the way of a team that was consistent and who believed and was ready to support his faith with his courage and experience. They were closer to winning the final than history will remember.

Meanwhile, Belgium, Uruguay and Sweden have all shown what it is possible to do with team work and a little momentum. Brazil played perhaps the best football tournament, only to be defeated by half an hour of pure inspiration in Kazan. Teams like Japan, Colombia and Serbia will all come back stronger in four years. The likes of Italy, the Netherlands, the United States and the Ivory Coast will surely return to the ring in Qatar. A renewed interest in international football and the expected increase in 48 countries should allow medium – sized teams to better cope with the game. Over time, Croatia may not become the best. exception, but the rule

And of course, we had England. Riding a unique wave of great optimism and low expectations that will not be repeated for a generation, Gareth Southgate's team has dug a modest half of the table with an uncompromising cocktail of established method, determination , routine and first shootout victory in 22 years. It was not their climax, not by a long time. The "English disease" still struck at key moments against Tunisia, Colombia and Croatia. But they have a friendly team, a newly reengaged audience, a defined identity and teams of young people who have opened silverware in recent years. Think of it as the first step, not the last.

If England has a bright future ahead of them, then for the two biggest footballers in the world, the opposite is true. Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are out of the tournament four hours from one another, their international future uncertain, their legacies – whatever that means – remain open to interpretation. They'll be 35 and 37 at the time of the next World Cup, so it's tempting to conclude that it was the last time we saw them both at their peak on their stage, without the fact that neither one neither the other near their summit in Russia

Oh, there were moments, of course: the goal defying Messi's geometry against Nigeria, Ronaldo's carefree hat-trick against Spain. But after an era that was fashioned, distorted, almost defined by these two superheroes, it was perhaps the tournament when the idea of ​​the star player who was dragging his team alone on the line. arrival finally ran out of locomotion. Mo Salah, Robert Lewandowski and Neymar have all been eager to catch the tournament by his setbacks. But in their respective failures, one realizes that building a camp around a single captivating individual is never the most lucrative strategy.

In any case, the next age will not boast of two superstars but of several. That was the other side of this World Cup: the anointing of a new generation of champions, players we knew all along had potential, but now we have started to do it in a very serious way. If the 2010s were the decade of Messi and Ronaldo, the 2020s will be the decade of Mbappe and Pogba, De Bruyne and Hazard, Torreira and Betancur, Stones and Pickford: men of enormous individual talent, but with a well defined tactical role. that full-fledged tactics

The real team of the tournament, however, was Russia. And not just Russia playing the XI, a limited but eagerly high team in the quarter-finals on an inexhaustible race and pursuit diet that has barely passed the test of the naked eye, but the country's Russia. The most expensive World Cup in history has proven to be the best-organized, with virtually no violence or unpleasant incidents, immaculate transportation and stadium infrastructure, and a concerted charm offensive that, according to you, has only been partially entrusted to strangers. were truly bewitched by the hordes of strangers in the middle of them, dancing and singing and lining their coffees with flags and hope. A country that has always looked vaguely at the rest of the world has been confronted with the vibrancy of globalization and has not hated it. Our solidarity should remain as strong as ever with those who are oppressed and harassed by the odious government of Russia and those threatened by its belligerency. But if these few weeks have brought us closer to a micron, then it may not have been a totally useless experience. This is not because Vladimir Putin did a good tournament that everyone had a bad one.

There has always been evil and evil in the world, there has always been darkness in souls and there will always be darkness. The World Cup will always offer a platform for opportunists and demagogues, kleptomaniacs and carpet-guards. It will continue – unfortunately – to generate pollution and waste that breaks the heart and rot the planet. In four years, the circus will go to Qatar, a flagrant racist state that does not think of hand-frying migrant workers on the plate of its own selfish prestige. We should, and we must, always remain vigilant.

But even by the vortex of the black hole of the stupidity of Fifa remains, perhaps, a nucleus of undeniable truth. Football brings people together. Football awakens our collective spirit like nothing else on earth. And in a troubled world, as long as there is a ball and a field, and people can play and watch, the reservoir of human happiness will never be completely dry. It's only football. But when it's done correctly, what a gift it is.

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