Out of sight, no longer out of mind

Finally we seem to be getting somewhere. Late on New Year’s Day, the beaming face of Mohamed Salah appeared on British television screens. Salah always has the slightly wrinkled appearance of a man who hasn’t slept very well, but was clearly in good spirits.

His Liverpool team had just dismantled Newcastle United to move three points clear at the top of the Premier League. He had played fantastically, scoring two goals, setting up one goal and missing a penalty to further the illusion of drama in what was otherwise a hopelessly one-sided sporting match.

However, there was a bittersweet tinge to the joy. That was the last few weeks that Liverpool would see Salah in the flesh. Immediately after the match he was due to travel to the fantasy New Administrative Capital of Egypt, just outside Cairo, to take part in his national team’s preparations for the Africa Cup of Nations, which starts next weekend. He does not plan to return to Liverpool until mid-February.

It stands to reason, of course, that the focus in Britain – and for those following the Premier League in general and Liverpool in particular – should be on how Salah’s absence could impact an unusually tense title race. (Liverpool is apparently doing well. “Anyone can play where I play,” Salah said modestly. “Anyone can do what I do,” he added, pushing his luck a little.)

However, in recent years it has become clear that this approach can be seen as somewhat parochial.

Europe tends to command football’s attention, dominate the discourse and set the parameters of what is considered worthy of attention or praise. After all, Europe is home to the world’s biggest clubs, the world’s strongest leagues and the world’s best players. Europe is, by almost any measure, the biggest event.

The consequence of this, of course, is that anything and everything that does not matter to Europe diminishes. The Cup of Nations is not the only example of that phenomenon, but it is probably the best. Every other year or so it is presented as little more than an obstacle, as if it had been invented purely to test the squad depth of the Premier League’s big teams.

There has long been a consistent undercurrent of conversation suggesting that for the African stars invited to participate it is somehow optional, in a way that the European Championship and Copa América certainly are not are.

Recent years have provided a welcome correction to that logic. Gradually it is becoming clear that it is not really fair to relate the Cup of Nations solely to its impact on the Premier League. The Europeans seem to have accepted that it’s not really up to them to decide whether players want to play in it, or when it can be held. Sometimes it was even possible to believe that we are on the verge of a more profound discovery: that just because something is not important to you does not mean that it does not matter.

That process has been slow indeed. It is certainly difficult to imagine that a German player would be asked to explain the importance of the European Championship, or that a Brazilian would be invited to explain the meaning of the Copa América in the way that Salah was asked to to explain why he wanted to do that. I was going to make the effort to go to Ivory Coast this month, but still: slow progress is progress after all.

And yet football still cannot completely shake off its innate Eurocentrism. This year there will be another tournament running simultaneously with the Cup of Nations. This week, 24 national teams from all over Asia gathered in Qatar – where they had some stadiums shut down, I’m not sure why – for the Asian cup.

This is of course a tournament that is just as important as the Cup of Nations, and by extension the Copa América and the European Championship. It is, apart from its South American equivalent, the oldest continental football competition, predating the European Championship by a few years. It will attract hundreds of millions of viewers and, with an admittedly unlikely combination of results, perhaps even capture the hearts and minds of the world’s two most populous countries.

And yet, even compared to the Cup of Nations, the Asian Cup is largely ignored. It’s not even given the backhanded compliment of being presented as a nuisance. Instead, it is almost completely overlooked.

That may partly have to do with its relative rarity. Although it is usually played at the same time of year as the Africa Cup of Nations – in January and February, in the middle of the European season – the Asian Cup is only held once every four years. It doesn’t penetrate the European consciousness as much as the biennial Cup of Nations.

The most important reason, however, is its impact on Europe. Salah is hardly an exception when it comes to players leaving major European teams and traveling to Africa this month. Of the 24 teams in the Cup of Nations, only five – South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Mauritania and Namibia – have not named players from the five major European leagues. Many of the top contenders will base their campaigns on familiar faces.

The contrast with Asia is great. Only a few dozen of the players who gathered in Qatar have been forfeited to teams in Europe’s most illustrious domestic leagues. Jordan has one, Iran two and South Korea six. Only Japan could name an entire team from the game’s premier leagues. (There are larger contingents from the Dutch Eredivisie, the Belgian Pro League and, largely thanks to Celtic, the Scottish Premier League.)

In other words, Europe still has – or still assumes – the prerogative to determine what is important and what is not. Perhaps it is not because attitudes have changed that the Cup of Nations is tolerated; perhaps it is tolerated instead because it feels more familiar to Europeans. After all, the teams are filled with players that the Europeans recognize, appreciate and miss. The seasonings have not changed to accommodate this. It has been changed to better suit the seasonings.

There is, needless to say, sadness here. There is a wonder in the obscurity of players and teams, one that has been largely lost in the digital age of football. There was a time when heterogeneity was one of the great joys of sport, rather than a trend of the distant past.

The Asian Cup, with selections from distant and diverse competitions, has that in abundance. The difference should be his strength. It would definitely be worth watching. CBS Sports has acquired the rights in the United States. Unfortunately, no one in Britain has deigned to do this.

In the two years or so since the Newcastle United takeover, Saudi Arabia – sorry, sorry, the Public Investment Fund, which is absolutely not the Saudi state, and you really shouldn’t think so – has been substantially more restrained than it could have been. expected.

Significant sums of money have been poured into transforming Newcastle’s squad, but even the fiercest critic of the project would struggle to deny it has been wisely spent. Newcastle supporters have resisted the temptation to look for a quick fix. The club’s growth has been almost cautious – partly thanks to the Premier League’s financial rules.

That wasn’t a problem as everything worked and the club seemed to be ahead of schedule. It becomes more complex when there is a feeling that things have come to a standstill. Newcastle have won just three of their last thirteen games. Eddie Howe has now suffered three defeats in a row. It comes from the Champions League. And even the club’s injury problems are no excuse for Liverpool conceding 34 shots on New Year’s Day.

Howe’s work to date should actually insure him against the threat of dismissal during the first real recession of his term. He has, as the saying goes, credit in the bank. Under normal circumstances that would undoubtedly be the case.

But Newcastle is no ordinary circumstance. It is one that is tied to whatever image of itself the primary investor chooses to project. So far, the new owner has seemed happy to be responsible, patient and understanding. That was easy when times were good. Now that is not the case, and it is difficult to know whether Saudi Arabia is really willing to take the hard line, whether it is willing to tolerate underperformance, whether it is really willing to wait.

User Generated Content

Fortunately, the results are unanimous. The votes have been cast, the suggestions have been made, the forms have been processed, the information tabulated, the data collected and the conclusions drawn and now we can say with some certainty that, if FIFA were to allow a team to be composed of the countries outside the top 48 of his rankings to participate in the expanded 2026 World Cup, Jan Oblak would be in goal.

Pretty much everyone (and there were several dozen of you) who submitted an entry for Joe Rizzotti and Dolores Diaz-Vides’ festive challenge – they’re not married, Dolores wrote to inform me; sending their joint emails is purely platonic; Oblak, the formidable Slovenian from Atlético Madrid, decided to be in goal.

Elsewhere the picture was slightly blurrier. Central defense was no problem: there were nominations for Milan Skriniar (Slovakia), Stefan Savic (Montenegro), Evan Ndicka (Ivory Coast) and Edmond Tapsoba (Burkina Faso), among others. The central midfield was also well filled, thanks to Mohammed Kudus (Ghana), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Armenia) and Yves Bissouma (Mali).

In attack, the options are less quantitative, but possibly higher in quality: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Georgia) and Leon Bailey (Jamaica) on the wings, perhaps complementing Edin Dzeko (Bosnia-Herzegovina) or Sébastian Haller (Ivory Coast)? Or would a more fluid trident of Miguel Almiron (Paraguay), Iñaki Williams (Ghana) and Benjamin Sesko (Slovenia) be more modern?

However, there is a problem with the full-back. A problem so significant that you could practically build a whole theory around it: that the hallmark of an elite football country, it seems, is the ability to produce left and right backs. Ivory Coast’s Serge Aurier, currently at Nottingham Forest, and Bosnia’s Sead Kolasinac, now at Atalanta, were the best a small field had to offer.

But that doesn’t detract from the purpose of the exercise. International football is always about compromise; It is inevitable, with resources limited by borders and birth rates, that teams will be flawed. In many ways it is what makes it special. And there is enough strength elsewhere to generate a side that could probably reach the quarter-finals in 2026. Joe and Dolores, consider me converted. Let’s bring a world team to North America.