And, of course, Zidane’s wonderful Panenka in the final against Italy. What’s your favorite childhood World Cup memory?įranck Ribéry, scoring an amazing goal against Spain in 2006. The blue shirt means a lot to me.”-Maxime Joly, GQ France My favorite position is central defender, but I can adapt. “For this coach,” he says, “I can play any defending position. Whether the Bayern star will play center back or right back in Qatar is a mystery, but he’s comfortable in either role. And the defender, who plays his club football for Bayern Munich, has returned the affection with a fierce sense of duty to the French team and its coach, Didier Deschamps, who considers Pavard his protégé. “We want to shift that mindset.” -Yang-Yi Goh, GQ USĮver since Benjamin Pavard scored a mesmerizing goal against Argentina at the 2018 World Cup-a trademark slicing volley with the outside of his right foot-he’s been a cult hero among French fans. “Not many people think of Canada as a footballing country, because all they think about is hockey,” Davies says. That Canada clinched its place in the tournament without Davies means opponents should overlook the Canucks at their peril now that he’s returned. Now, at his first World Cup, Davies has his biggest stage yet to deploy the rapier speed, crunching tackles, and lethal left foot that have made him arguably the best-and most offensively dangerous-outside back on the planet. His swift rise-from youth clubs to the MLS to the starting 11 of a European powerhouse-has been remarkable. “It was amazing to see the joy on their faces, to see the relief,” says the Bayern Munich left back, who has helped his club secure a Champions League trophy and four consecutive Bundesliga titles since joining in 2019. In March, when Canada qualified for its first World Cup in 36 years, Alphonso Davies-just 21, and already the most talented Canadian men’s footballer ever-was about 4,000 miles away, in Munich, watching the celebrations live on a Twitch stream as he recovered from an inflammatory heart condition. With summer temperatures in the desert hovering at 106 degrees Fahrenheit, organizers at FIFA were forced to shift the competition from July to November, seeking cooler climes and disrupting the rhythm of the club calendar in the process. The first World Cup to be staged in the Middle East, it will be held in Qatar, a tiny, natural-gas-rich petrostate located on a finger of desert in the Persian Gulf that won the hosting duties corruptly and despite having never previously qualified for the tournament. The 2022 World Cup is guaranteed to be a singular experience, for reasons both commendable and skulduggerous. One exclamation point goal can forge a generation of memories, and the choreography of feints, flicks, and flamboyance will be mimicked by millions of kids on dusty schoolyards across the world. A crucible of pressure in which the mantle of greatness can be assumed in a heartbeat. It’s the world’s greatest blockbuster franchise played out live, with a projected cumulative audience of five billion.
There is no greater stage on which Tyler’s theory can play out than the World Cup, the 2022 edition of which will kick off on November 20. “The greatest players just make better decisions more of the time than the merely good ones.”
Should I pass, run, or shoot?” He paused theatrically. “Football,” he said, “is a simple game in which any player has three decisions to choose from when they take possession of the ball. Tyler, the voice of the English game, responded instantly. I once asked legendary British commentator Martin Tyler to explain what makes a footballer become a global hero.
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