Post Mortem

Football World Cup

So France has won the football World Cup, beating Croatia 4-2 in an unforgettable final last night. Eight hours later, in the Garden today morning, we were to do a post-mortem of what shall be remembered as a match of one self-goal, one penalty goal, one comedy goal and three exceptionally brilliant goals.
“I predicted France would win!” exclaimed Nahid Khan, who had watched the match from start-to-finish on a laptop. “The other team did not stand a chance. They lost because of their own fault. But what a match it was!”
Significantly, almost everybody in the Club had watched the match yesterday and even Yusuf Rassiwala, Rukhsana Khan, Arun Patil and Kajal Babani (who hardly follow football) held an opinion on how the final should/ should not have played out.
Dilip Babani, a staunch Croatia supporter, analysed the “game plan” of France “when they were playing defensive” in the beginning.

After the exercises today, in the China Hut

But he also conceded that the better team won. “Mbappe turned the game around when he suddenly sent the ball crashing into the Croatian goal like a bullet,” Dilip exulted.
Yusuf R was happy that it was not a one-sided contest as “both teams did their best”. More importantly, he got to see some top-class footballers in action as the timing of the telecast (8:30 pm to 10:30 pm) was such that it “was difficult to avoid watching the match”.
And then there was Bijoy Gupta who could not hold himself on the goal gifted by the French goalkeeper to a lone Croatian striker. “It was such a silly mistake, even a schoolboy does not commit in his dreams,” he observed. “And this was to happen in a World Cup final. I haven’t stopped laughing after that joke of a goal.”
Sadly, Siba Prasad Maitra was not there (ref post of July 13). He is knowledgeable about the game and would have added colour to the conversation with his typical one-liners and witticisms on the finer aspects of yesterday’s match.

Lt Col Angad Singh (rtd):
Croatia proved to the world that it has good players as any other big country. The French were dead scared of the zeal of Croatian team. No doubt the better team won the match.

Bihari Milwani:
If this is the kind of interest our members had in a football match India is NOT playing in, I cannot imagine the amount of interest members would show if India was in the finals or say, if it were to be a ladies' final.