SOCCER | WORLD CUP 2010 QUALIFYING

Yoann Gourcuff of France shooting to score against Romania during game on Saturday in Constanta, 250 km or 155 miles east of Bucharest.

(Bogdan Cristel/Reuters)

When more than a game is at play on world's soccer fields

By Rob Hughes

Published: October 12, 2008

Sports cannot provide lasting escape from the realization that we are all financially poorer today than we thought we were yesterday, but soccer gives it a good try.

Argentina and France, possessing some of the most gifted players on earth, flirted over the weekend with the futures of their national team coaches.

In the Monumental Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina's diminutive strikers, Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero, withstood thuggish fouls from Uruguayan feet to win their World Cup qualification match, 2-1. In the process, they possibly saved their coach, Alfio Basile, from being fired.

In Constanta, the visiting French players, the only people who could spare Coach Raymond Domenech from the fate he probably deserves, gave two performances in one match against Romania. Domenech's position will be, as the newspapers put it, the plat du jour when the French soccer federation, meets Wednesday. Domenech's team faces Tunisia in an exhibition game in Paris the night before.

In the first half on Saturday, it was impossible to see how Domenech could survive that vote. His men seemed talents betrayed by nervousness or indifference, and succumbed to two early goals. But Franck Ribéry and Joann Gourcuff rescued that situation and the game ended tied, 2-2.

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When more than a game is at play on world's soccer fields

Is it enough?

"The federation council meeting is on the 15th," its president, Jean-Pierre Escalettes, answered coyly after the match. "We have to concentrate on Tuesday's game against Tunisia, then we will see the decisions the council will take."

Domenech hangs on. If he goes, if Basile is removed, the only ramification will be whether the coach is responsible or is a victim of his players' failings.

World Cup qualification is a global process, involving 200 nations, and in some places, sport is dressed up as the excuse for life-changing decisions.

The United States reached the next stage of qualifying with a thumping 6-1 victory over Cuba in Washington's Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. But while the U.S. coach, Bob Bradley, commiserated with the Cubans playing half the match a man short after a red card, the more familiar loss to Cuba was two more athletes defecting.

Pedro Faife and Reynier Alcantara slipped their guards at the hotel on Friday, and Cuba's team coach told The Washington Post, "We have security, but you can't handcuff them to their rooms."

Nor can you convince some fans that victory is not their due. Senegal raised expectations by beating France on its way to reaching the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal, but on Saturday it was held, 1-1, in Dakar by Gambia.

The draw cost the Senegalese a place in both the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations.

Incensed fans tore down billboards, blockaded a road outside the stadium with burning tires, and hurled rubble onto the field until the police responded with baton charges and tear gas.

In the name of sport, there was violence in Africa, defection in America, and the careers of coaches were swaying on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Reports from Sofia also suggested that some Italian fans reverted to hooliganism, replete with fascist salutes, during their team's goalless draw in Bulgaria.

"The fans need to be punished," Giancarlo Abete, Italy's soccer president told RAI television. "Tickets were sold with names on them, so we can trace every single person."

Saying it and acting on it are sometimes worlds apart.

There was decent sport this weekend. England's aerial power bullied Kazakhstan to a 5-1 defeat in London. Germany overcame the now considerable challenge of Russia, 2-1. Turkey maintained its habit of coming from a goal down to win, this time against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Istanbul. Jamaica beat Mexico by a single goal in Kingston.

No one can view matches across four continents simultaneously, but I'll wager that no contest was more febrile or closer to World Cup history than Argentina against Uruguay.

This match, known as the River Plate derby, dates to the first World Cup, in 1930, when thousands made the boat crossing to Montevideo, where Uruguay beat Argentina, 4-2, in the Centenario Stadium. Forewarned by chants of "Argentina-Uruguay, victory or death," the customs police had relieved fans of their revolvers, but could not stop the Uruguayan consulate in Buenos Aires from being stoned after the final.

On Saturday, there was merely a resumption of cross-border passions, without the firearms. Nobody, certainly not the overawed Paraguayan referee, Carlos Torres, seemed prepared for the unsavory sting of Uruguayan players determined to stop Argentina at all costs.

The importance was obvious. There were 42,000 spectators shoe-horned into the Monumental, and millions of viewers watching on television. The cameras had a mouth-watering array of skills in front of them - the wizardry of Messi and Agüero, the tenacity of Carlos Tévez, the play-making of Juan Riquelme in the light blue of the home side.

Yet those lenses constantly dwelled on the suffering of the home coach, Basile. He is a man who dares to pick a team of small, mobile, quick, cavalier forwards. His nation won the Olympic tournament in Beijing, but it had not won a World Cup qualifier in 11 months.

Uruguayans, notably the striker Sebastian Abreu, were on record as saying they would be happy to end Basile's reign by squeezing out Argentina in its own stronghold. Abreu's oratory served only to galvanize Argentina, which started at speed.

Messi may be a dwarfed by Uruguay's defenders, but he jumped to head the first goal after six minutes. When Esteban Cambiasso found a similar gap in the Uruguayan cover on 13 minutes, his header ricocheted off the post for Agüero to make it 2-0.

The quicksilver passing and movement cut through Uruguay's defense like rapiers to the flesh. In retaliation, the shoes came in heavy and high - and only the referee can account for the fact that Sebastián Eguren, Cristián Rodríguez and Jorge Fucile were still on the field after fouls that threatened to cut down Argentines at the knees.

"The referee was a disaster," said Basile. "His permissiveness allowed Uruguay to disrupt the spectacle. We did what we could in a game where the opposition kicks the hell out of you."

His own men kicked back. The likes of Javier Mascherano and Gabriel Heinze were not shrinking violets while their creative colleagues were violated. But when even Messi, the mildest of men, says that the opponents "came to kick us," the sporting value of soccer is clearly abused.

Oscar Tabárez, the Uruguay coach, did not agree. He was proud that his team came back to score a goal through Diego Lugano that at least kept the pressure on Argentina.

His reading of the violence was, "It's a derby, nobody wants to give anything away, and both teams got yellow cards."

Indeed, 10 of them were scattered after the referee had no doubt been reminded at half time that he is supposed to maintain discipline. Those cards, too many and too late, in no way stopped the malevolence that scarred a telling, and just, victory for Argentina.