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Journalism of Courage
As the silvery, moonlit night emerged over the skyscrapers of Central Doha, drowning the tangerine Arabian Gulf, the digital billboards featuring footballers splashed on the facade of long and thin rectangular towers, suddenly glimmering to life, acquiring form and shape. The facial structures were defined, the eyes broader and prouder. In the mild yellow tint of streetlights, in the stifling quiet of the night, those looked like real, giant-sized figures, descending on the planet, to kick the skyscrapers into a distant, unknown orbit.
From Sunday, when hosts Qatar take on Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, the country’s lone port of connection to the world beyond Arabia in the days before the oil boom, the stars that glow on the towers will literally acquire life. All of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, who stares from every tunnel in the metro stations, Cristiano Ronaldo, whose body language has become a global footballing fetish, and Neymar will float in the fairyland that Qatar would be in the 30 days of football.
Even before a ball has rolled on the pitch, the shimmering aura of football’s luminescent stars has clutched the football-dazed country. Thousands thronged the Hamad International Airport when Messi landed from Abu Dhabi in the dark hours of Tuesday. The metro-line to the Al Shahaniya SC Training Facilities, Portugal’s base camp, has been running packed. Though entry of fans is regulated, more a whim and mood of the liaison officer, it has not deterred them from trying their luck. Mbappe is something of a raging home icon; after all, he turns up for Qatar-state-owned PSG. So do Messi and Neymar, but Mbappe is a player in his own frictionless prime, operating at a level where he could drop into any team, anywhere and improve it without breaking a stride or sweat. One in every three jerseys one spots in Doha is theirs; one in every three jerseys sold in the world could be theirs.
A raft of fabulous footballers would take stage. Like England’s Harry Kane, Croatia’s Luka Modric, Wales’ Gareth Bale, amongst others. So would a bunch of high-profile coaches, some dreamers and idealists, some pragmatists and realistic. There would be unknown talents waiting to scurry into the footballing galaxy; there would be scandals and controversies, un-intoxicated fans dancing and heaving in the stands, bringing a slice of the world into the tiniest country to have hosted a World Cup. But the holy quartet, bestowed with an irresistible pull, other than being great footballers, would take centre-stage, float and glide, with their legs in the air like the djinns, pulling strings of joy and tears in their devout, shining brighter than their billboard cut-outs.
Stars rule
As much a team game as football is, perhaps more than most, the stars are always the protagonists. The stars make the World Cup, even if they don’t always take the World Cup. Like the 2014 edition. It would be remembered not just as the one Germany won, but the one Messi lost. The defining image of the Russia installment was not N’Golo Kante’s relentless work-rate and ball-retrieving tenacity, but Mbappe’s sprint through the heart of Argentina’s defence in the Round-of-16 match. It’s an old universal law, humans gravitating towards the most talented, most powerful person in the group. They make the rules; they bend their own rules. Myths, lores and narratives are inexorably spun around them with embellishments and exaggerations, with fiction and lies. The legendary Socrates once captured it as romantically as only he could. “The sky is always there, but the stars make it more beautiful.”
Even among the holy quartet, Messi stands a notch above the rest in his universal adulation, in how the world wants him to win a World Cup before he sinks into the sunset. That football owes him a World Cup has been the most seductive narrative thread of the World Cup. The world wants to see a slice of Messi in the sky-blue and white stripes of his country. Unsurprisingly, tickets for Argentina’s games were the first to be sold out.
His fierce competitor Ronaldo was a quiet presence in the larger build-up to the tournament, but in the aftermath of his stormy interview and public bashing of club Manchester United, he has grabbed some of the attention away from Messi. Characteristically, some scorn and sympathy too. His diehards believe that post the outburst, Ronaldo’s fabled siege mentality would burn brighter than ever before and he would be motivated than ever before to add the only crown that he has not been crowned with. And a World Cup win could go a long way in settling the Ronaldo-Messi debate among their turbocharged fans.
Among the four, only Mbappe has experienced the joy of winning the World Cup. But like he told El Pais last year, “winning the World Cup is an addiction. It doesn’t matter whether you have won it once or 20 times, you would want to win it again, feel that moment again.” His lead-up to the World Cup was tempestuous, with him publicly posturing that he would leave the club if it does tweak its style for him. Some claim his sense of self-importance has swelled, but his form nonetheless has been imperious, piling on an amazing.
39 goals and 26 assists in 46 games last season. There are rumours of rift within the team, with Mbappe at the heart of it too.
Contrarily, Neymar has toned down his theatrics and tantrums. He has shunned his decorous style and trimmed his flourishes. He could be a less exciting player for the romantics to behold, but at the same time, less infuriating in that he has added a ruthless cutting edge to him. He doesn’t tumble down at the mere poke of a toe or the wind of a push. Rather, he uses the Sao Paulo street footballer’s smarts to wiggle and wriggle through the tightest of defensive labyrinths. But would the grandest stage channel his theatrics?
Stardom a double-edged sword
All four teams are title contenders. They are not dependent on the quartet alone, but they would define their team’s World Cup fortunes, whether they win or lose. If Messi doesn’t find the perfect farewell, he will be the doomed tragic hero, the boy who could have been Maradona but couldn’t. An early exit would push Ronaldo down the slope of damnation. And all the rage he had seethed on his club would come back to bite him back. Ronaldo, the Narcissist, would be a footballing epithet. Mbappe would be painted the self-centred divisive force in the team, and Neymar a star that never sparkled as brightly as he could have. It’s the burden of stardom.
In the dazzle of the light they shed, the world will forget everything about the biggest, costliest and arguably most controversial tournament in the sport’s history. Qatar would finally be ready for the moment it has been dreaming of – and dreading – for the past 12 years. And it would only be fitting if on the night of December 18 in Lusail, one among this quartet is holding the trophy into the moonlit sky.
