Thoughts on FIFA World Cup 2022

We just witnessed one of the greatest football matches of all time pulling down the curtain on the greatest spectacle of the most loved sport in the world. A few quick words:


The unworthy hosts: Sorry to begin with a negative, but this has to be said. Qatar was an unworthy host of this great festival of joy. Yes, they organized it superbly, but how can FIFA ignore the blatant human rights violations? Human life and freedom are sacred. We need to be more empathetic towards the migrant labourers including those who died building the stadiums, the LGBTQ+ community and the women in that country. It will always remain tainted in my memory. And I’m not even getting into the corruption allegations on FIFA for allotting the tournament to Qatar in the first place.


About the game now.


The giant killers: Some of the traditionally weaker sides made this world cup highly entertaining. Morocco and Japan punched above their weights. What’s even more impressive is that they didn’t just sit deep to kill the game. They went on the hunt themselves. Saudi Arabia beating Argentina with their high-line defending was special and brave!


The quality of the matches was relatively good for international tournaments. If that’s not enough, the unpredictability of results more than compensated for the obvious lack of quality and tactical astuteness in the international tournaments in comparison to major European leagues.


The officiating was shady. Considering the technology at our disposal, too many crucial decisions were doubtful, or even outrightly wrong in some cases, that changed the course of the games. FIFA is leaving too much at referees’ discretion.


The GOAT: Messi lifting the world cup was a fairytale. A Blockbuster. His GOAT status didn’t need to be stamped by the world cup, but now this trophy has taken away the last possible excuse from the people questioning his greatness. Messi has no comparison.


Mbappe: The boy has well and truly taken over the status of the greatest player of the next generation. He was fabulous in the previous world cup, but he really exploded this time. The 23-year-old almost single handedly revived his side after the 80th minute in the absence of Benzema, Pogba, Griezmann, Dembele and Giroud. Surely, he made millions of fans with his performance in the final. He needs to play in a more competitive league though. Mbappe is too good for Ligue 1.


The final: Who could imagine in the 75th minute that it would be an all-timer? We’ve seen many great pre-match narratives that fail to live up to the expectation. This one surpassed all expectations though. It can’t get better than this.


Thank you, football!




Location: New Delhi, Delhi, India

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mutual funds sahi hai! But which one?

Image
Investing in equity is unarguably one of the best, if not the best, investment options available to the long-term investors. If the economy has to grow, businesses in the country have to flourish; and if businesses flourish, so will the market price of these businesses and the investors’ wealth. Also, investing through mutual funds (MF) is the only sensible way to invest in equity for the majority of investors as against stock-picking . In the last couple of years a large number of Indian investors have realised this fact which is reflected in the steadily rising amounts being managed by the MF schemes. However, countless retail investors are observed confused about finding the best MF schemes for them. The misleading advertisements and mis-selling by the distributors make the matter worse. This article is an attempt to inform the readers about which MF is right for the purpose of long-term wealth creation while minimising the risks. To outline briefly, there are two types of equit...
Read more

How to Outperform Professional Investors Effortlessly

Image
You can outperform most professional investors with zero effort. Yes, it is guaranteed . We will first understand the why part of it and then the how part of it. The WHY Part Mathematics of the market: you and me Let’s imagine a simplistic scenario. There is only one stock listed in the stock market. Only one stock of only one company. And there are only two investors in the market—you and me. On a given day—any day, but let’s say 1st January 2022—the price of the stock is Rs. 100. You and I trade in that stock. When I sell, you buy; when I buy, you sell. On another given day—any day, but let’s say 31st December 2022—the price of the stock is Rs. 115. What’s the total amount of money you and I made? The answer is Rs. 15. If you earned Rs. 4, I earned Rs. 11. If you earned Rs. 20, I lost Rs. 5. If you earned nothing, I earned Rs. 15. Plain arithmetic. But wait. We also paid the brokerages, taxes and advisory fees. Let’s assume these amounts totaled to Rs. 3. Now how much you and I ea...
Read more

The Magic Formula for Investing in the Stock Market (Book Review: The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt)

Image
One should always be suspicious of words like ‘secret’, ‘shortcut’, ‘formula’ etc. when it comes to investing, or most other things in life for that matter. Generally, there are no shortcuts in life. In the end, you must log-out of the Netflix and do the tedious jobs of working-out, eating broccoli and analysing a business in detail. Basically, almost all successful long-term equity investing is about (1) estimating future earnings of a business and (2) buying them at a price lower than the ‘value’ corresponding to those future earnings. This is a tough thing to do, no matter what ‘formula’ you have. Earlier I had written a piece on why most individual investors cannot beat the market-returns and it does not make sense for them to pick individual stocks . Forget about part-timers; majority of professional investors fail to beat the index-returns after accounting for their fees and transaction costs. Hence, it makes sense for most investors to buy the index and end up being an abo...
Read more

Book Review and Summary: Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker

Image
A living being is most vulnerable to the innumerable dangers in its surroundings while it is asleep. Further, a sleeping creature cannot hunt, eat or indulge in reproduction. In spite of that every species studied to date sleeps. Why is that so? Has evolution made a blunder by incorporating sleep in living organisms? Obviously not. Benefits of sleep outweigh, by wide margins, the obvious hazards caused by it. Sleep does vast variety of functions, without which it is not possible for brain and body to work. Not surprisingly, humans are the only species that intentionally deprive itself of sleep. In the book ' Why We Sleep ', Dr. Matthew Walker , a sleep researcher for two decades, explains innumerable functions of sleep and detrimental effects of lack of it. He unravels the underlying science along with description of numerous experiments supporting these findings. The brilliance of the author is reflected in his ability to explain the complex science of sleep witho...
Read more

Book Review: Sapiens (by Yuval Noah Harari)

Image
Where are the other Humans ? Tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars are evolutionary siblings (Genus panthera ). So are horses, zebras and donkeys (Genus Equus ). Where are our evolutionary siblings? From about 2 million years ago to until around 30-40 thousand years from now, our sibling species lived on this planet. We are Homo Sapiens . They were Homo Erectus, Homo Floresiensis, Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals), and others. No, they were not monkeys. They were Humans . The other members of Genus Homo . Somehow, they became extinct, but we survived. Perhaps we had played a role in the extinction of the Neanderthals ; but we’re not quite sure. Slowly, we spread out from Africa to the rest of the world, and we are thriving—at least for now. We chose to call our humble selves Homo Sapiens ; meaning ‘wise man’ in Latin. Nearly fifty millennia ago, a magical spark happened to our brains that enabled us to imagine things. We call it the Cognitive Revolution, when we become intellig...
Read more