BRENT A GOB: This week, Harry Brent’s slamming the criticism of Thomas Tuchel’s right back picks, FIFA’s new World Cup rule change, and the virtue-signallers who tried to spoil Lionel Messi’s big moment
All this outrage about Thomas Tuchel taking the wrong right backs to the World Cup is a joke.
It’s about as well-deserved as Anthony Gordon’s move to Barcelona. I know major tournaments bring out the inner reactionary wally in every fan, but if you honestly think Tuchel messed up his selection here, you’re about as clear-headed as Matt Le Tissier talking about Covid vaccines.
Tuchel’s top four right backs – Reece James, Tino Livramento, Ben White and Jarrel Quansah – have all picked up injuries in the space of a month. That’s not negligence, that’s luck so rotten it stinks worse than Sam Allardyce’s unwashed jockstrap.
He’s a defender who actively loathes the concept of defending, treating every opposition attack like an optional Terms & Conditions box. Taking him to the World Cup would’ve been the sort of mind-boggling self-sabotage normally reserved for anyone foolish enough to sign for Tottenham.
Oh, and by the way, Trent completed just 10 full 90-minute games for Real Madrid this season, thanks to a toxic combination of – get this – injury problems and defending like a blind matador.
Much like anything that comes out of Eni Aluko’s mouth, this entire right back debate is all just performative whinging with absolutely zero substance. Pack it in, you dweebs.
Head-to-headache
FIFA switching from goal difference to head-to-head to decide World Cup groups is the most unnecessarily brain-dead footballing decision since Chelsea hired Liam Rosenior.
It’s a move that handicapped the final round of group games the way Noni Madueke handicaps every England attack with his useless, one-dimensional head-down brainlessness.
Instead of the glorious chaos of multiple teams needing to hunt down three-goal swings in 20 minutes – throwing their centre backs up front and playing with the tactical discipline of a Sunday League pub side – we were given tedious, pre-decided dead rubbers.
It turned what should have been matches stuffed with more drama and tension than the Real Madrid dressing room into a bunch of total snorefests.
At least with FIFA’s new hydration breaks you can see some logical health benefits, even if the concept is about as popular as Liz Truss’ mini budget and Marc Cucurella combined.
But this? This is just needlessly sucking enjoyment and intrigue out of the World Cup – essentially giving the rest of the planet a taste of what it feels like to support Scotland.
Like Simon Cowell’s plastic surgeon, FIFA are obsessively fixing things that aren’t broken. Goal difference was perfect. It actively rewarded attacking football and stopped teams from playing for a Lee Dixon dra— sorry, a bore draw.
Stripping that jeopardy away makes the tournament less fair, less fun, and about as interesting as an episode of The Rest Is Football podcast.
Stop virtue-signalling
I foolishly thought we could all just collectively enjoy Lionel Messi breaking the all-time World Cup goalscoring record last week. But of course, the internet’s resident army of annoying twerps simply couldn’t help themselves.
Out they crawled, the “well, actually” brigade, radiating the sort of intensely irritating energy you only usually see when Mikel Arteta is flailing his arms half a mile outside his technical area.
Apparently, Messi hasn’t actually beaten Miroslav Klose’s record of 16, because the actual record-holder was Brazilian women’s star Marta, who scored 17. Actually.
This tedious, patronising lecturing is precisely why so many ordinary fans ignore the women’s game the way Marcus Rashford ignores Thomas Tuchel telling him to track back.
You don’t have to cram women’s football down our throats like Todd Boehly trying to cram another useless, overpriced 19-year-old into Chelsea’s never-ending loan army.
Pretending there’s no difference between the men’s and women’s games isn’t progressive – it’s as detached from reality as the belief that Steven Gerrard is an elite manager.
Trying to merge their history books to score virtue-signalling points online is ridiculous and it does the women’s game no favours whatsoever. In fact, it actively invites a toxic backlash.
If you want people to respect women’s football, stop treating it like a charity case that – much like Manchester City’s home attendance figures – needs artificial inflation to look respectable.
Promote it on its own bleedin’ merits instead of constantly pitting it against the men’s game. Because if you keep forcing that comparison, I promise you, like Arsenal in a Champions League final, you’ll lose every single time.