Brief review of the action, then some political considerations in the linked article.
France wins football World Cup
By Anthony Torres
16 July 2018
On Sunday, the French team won the final of the football World Cup, held this year in Russia. It was only the second World Cup championship for France.
England, which took fourth place, put in a surprise showing in the World Cup after not reaching the quarterfinals since 2002. Belgium, which took third place, eliminated Brazil in a spectacular match before narrowly losing to France, 1-0.
It will be remembered that this World Cup saw Panama’s first ever goal in a World Cup. The tournament also included a wild see-saw France-Argentina match (4-3), and a Russia-Croatia match in the quarterfinals that ended with tie-breaking penalty kicks.
The final match was rapid and intense, with a Croatian team whose strong offense, led by playmaker Lukas Modric, relied on attacking up the sides.
The World Cup struck a blow against the propaganda against Russia and its population in the international media. The relentless effort to demonize Russia is bound up with NATO interventions targeting pro-Russian governments in Syria and Ukraine for regime-change, the former to date unsuccessful and the later accomplished in a fascist-led putsch in 2014.
But for masses of people around the world, the hysterical anti-Russian propaganda of NATO has no real credibility.
Robbie Lyle, a well-known blogger from the Arsenal football club in London, said: “I want to thank the Russian people, they’ve been brilliant. They’ve been so hospitable. We heard so many things before we came here. There’s going to be fighting, there’ll be ultras, police will beat you up, all this rubbish. The Russians have been so hospitable. I’ve met so many good people out here, so many brilliant people.
The English team, which took fourth place in the Cup, “has been very well treated by everyone,” asserted trainer Gareth Southgate. He added, “I was here last summer for the Confederations Cup. It was exactly the same thing, there were a lot of stories going into the tournament that I knew weren’t going to be true, as was the case here.”
He concluded, “People have spoken a lot about the problems of relations between our two countries, but from the point of view of personnel, we could not have been greeted better. We had a great experience and I think all our fans did, too.”
