The golden wrapping of the first installment of the new and lavish Club World Cup turned out to be empty of goals, almost the only thing that ends at the end of football. After the opening show; After the liturgy of the exit of the teams, player by player, and even of the greetings; After FIFA found a way to occupy more than 60,000 of the 65,000 Hard Rock stadium seats; After all that, the first game, raw and inaccurate, ended without a prize. And that was raised with rammed flashes on the level that matched the American Inter Miami with the Egyptian Al-Ahly. They seem the weakest of a group that complete the Portuguese Porto and the Brazilian Palmeiras. The Argentine insisted until the end, until the last shot that the squad was looking for and that the-Shenowy diverted to the crossbar. He left with nothing. Messi is alone in Miami.
No one wanted more than him, nobody produced more than him, nobody saw himself. He was barely accompanied by his goalkeeper, Ustari, who stopped a penalty in the first part and allowed him the brilliant deployment in search of victory in the second.
The tournament of the future began by awakening the nostalgia of Luis Suarez from the past, of the Busquets of the Golden Era of Barcelona and the Spanish team, that they, and those of now, accompany a Messi who in contexts like this still reaches his huge football intelligence. The longing is a bit for them and a little for what surrounds them in this almost newborn Inter Miami that premiered in their league only in 2020. It gives the impression that the ball, which followed them so much, over the years it has been defaulted from them.
Melancholy is also because of what surrounds them. These types that approach the 40 play next to boys who are not like those others next to those who shone. The game is choked. They have the ball, but the ball seems uncomfortable with them, as if trying to escape. Inaccission delays everything, makes it predictable. It also despairs those who lived accustomed to excellence.
The Mascherano team only woke up when Busquets was driving and found Messi, with his superlative clairvoyance. Boring to contemplate from above a game that moved to trumpets, always on the edge of the loss, he went back to support the midfielder and from there some exciting and indecipherable sparkle came out for Al Ahly.
The Egyptian team, the most powerful and followed by Africa, lived quiet while the Inter Miami drove the ball without too much expertise. They barely felt threatened, even when Messi leaked passes. His goalkeeper, the-Shenowy barely worried.
The Egyptians, directed by, had a simple, but effective plan. They were not delayed in the elaboration, or in the contemplative maneuvers. They saw the ball less, but when they were done it was the Inter Miami to which it was difficult to place it. They executed with determination basic advance maneuvers by the bands: direct game in search of the tip. Not even ten minutes had elapsed and Ashour found himself alone against Ustari, who deactivated the occasion and began a series of stops that held his team in the game. Everything happened backwards that as things have happened to Messi: his team had more the ball but received all the danger.
Ustari’s night was inspired, winner of one hand to hand after another. Until the most decisive moment. Segovia knocked down Zizo in the area when Zizo had gone control. It seemed unnecessary, but he threw it into the grass. Trezeguet took over the penalty, which is not called Trezeguet, but Mahmoud Ahmed Ibrahim Hassan. He threw next to which Ustari had been released, again Ustari, and the goal he had imagined so close.
In the other goal, El-Shenawy was very different. The most dangerous thing that came in the first half was an attempt as Messi’s Olympic goal. The following, already in the second, was one of the Argentine’s classics. He took place on the front and opened a left -footed shot looking for the squad, but the goalkeeper finished the illusion with a single step to the side and without the need to raise his feet from the ground. And then, also from Messi, a direct foul that hit outside on the stick and on the side of the net and the stand celebrated, until the voice was ran that the ball had fallen out.
The Punzadas del Argentino were deflating the Egyptian team. He no longer found the way to the door of Ustari, which by then had stopped everything that the night had required him to stop. Messi pushed until the end, until the last stop in extremis of El-Shenawy. And he went empty, as a vacuum was the inaugural clash of the 1,000 million World Cup in prizes.
