Something very strange happened at the World Cup on Wednesday. The two best performances came not from teams needing a result, but from teams already eliminated, or near as dammit. Costa Rica went into the day with nothing to play for, and South Korea’s chances were slim to begin with, and gone before the end. Yet both came out of it looking like heroes.
South Korea and Costa Rica could’ve packed up and quit. They didn’t.
No one would have blamed them for skulking off. They played their best games of the tournament.
Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images,
The Koreans made the biggest splash, scrapping and spoiling against defending champions Germany. Faced with a notionally superior opponent, they delivered a masterclass in clinging the hell on at one end, thanks in no small part to their goalkeeper Cho Hyun-woo. Up the other end, they kept plugging away as break after break went to waste and all the grand inevitability of Germany built up …
And then Toni Kroos backheeled them a favour, Manuel Neuer lost himself completely, and the rest of the world gleefully wondered about the German word for schadenfreude.
Costa Rica’s performance against Switzerland didn’t quite have the seismic impact, but was still a performance worthy of applause. After two defensive defeats against Brazil and Serbia, they clearly decided “to hell with this”, and went for Switzerland. This clearly gave Swiss goalkeeper Jan Sommer the fright of his life, and after 90 highly entertaining minutes, the fourth goal, which tied the game, 2-2, ended up rebounding into the net off the back of his head. Poor lad.
Proverbially (if not mathematically) speaking, sportspeople are at their best when performing at or around 110 percent. This is tricky enough to maintain at the best of times; when a side’s involvement in a competition is technically over, it should be impossible. Here, at the end of a long season, with their dreams of going deep at the World Cup already dust, you’d forgive them a dip in performance.
But no. Presumably there were a whole host of factors in play here, everything from personal and professional pride through to a deep desire for chaos. We don’t have the ability to peer inside the heads of 20-odd footballers. But it was interesting to hear Son Heung-min describe the Germany win as a “dream” that his team could be proud of, within the disappointing context.
Meanwhile Costa Rica’s fans were weeping with joy at every goal, even as their team headed out of the competition. Altogether, the two performances served as a reminder that the World Cup sits somewhat apart from the usual evaluations and motivations of win and lose, succeed and fail. It’s not just that each country comes to the tournament with its own criteria for success, but that the importance of the World Cup remains even after the point of failure.
Both Korea and Costa Rica will have wanted to get out of the group. But having failed to do so, they still wanted to give this tournament their best. This competition matters so much that it transcends even the all-powerful forces of competitive logic. The World Cup might have been done with them, but there was no way they were done with the World Cup.
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