DOHA: There’s a memorable scene in Omkara, Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2006 badlands take on Shakespeare’s Othello. It is biting in its irony, cruelly emasculating in delivery. Langda Tyagi makes Rajju distribute wedding cards for Dolly’s wedding to Omi. Nothing wrong with that, just that Dolly was betrothed to marry Rajju not very long ago.
Maybe it’s an extreme comparison but at first sight, Saturday’s third-place match between Croatia and Morocco at the Khalifa Stadium here is something like that. It is that vital ‘seventh’ game at the World Cup that no team would want to be playing, falling on the wrong side of the equation. You wouldn’t want to too, if you were told that consolation prizes were your fate, that wooden spoons somehow outweighed golden laurel wreaths.
Walid Regragui, Morocco’s coach, barely having caught his breath after that helter-skelter of a marathon against France in the second semifinal, was being asked how he would prepare now for the third-place match. “I’m in two minds,” he would say, “The third-place match will be hard for us, especially mentally. We have a lot of injuries, and we are exhausted after this match.”
“(But) I want to win this game, we will do everything to win it but I also think I need to give some game time to the players who haven’t experienced the World Cup yet. They deserve it. They have been tremendous squad players and so we will try to find a middle ground in order to field a strong team.”
On Friday, Zlatko Dalic and Mateo Kovacic of Croatia cut very weary figures as they appeared for the customary pre-match press conference, looking like they would be anywhere but here.
Yet, diplomacy would hold sway. “For us this is a major match, a chance for a medal,” coach Dalic would say, “This is a major final for smaller nations, smaller teams.
Perhaps it is so because Dalic and Kovacic come from an ethos where a bronze-medal match holds great meaning. “In 1998, winning the bronze was very important for us. We had just gained independence, were a young country, so that medal is very important in our history,” Dalic would remind us of the debutant’s third-place finish after beating the Netherlands at France ’98.
A runners-up medal four years ago, a chance for a second bronze here, and Dalic and the rest of the Croatians back home would gladly take it. “Of course, we would have wanted to be at the final,” Kovacic would chip in.
In fact, such is the importance of the idea that after the spirit-draining loss to Argentina in the semifinal, Dalic, almost immediately began stressing on the need to lift his players’ morale to be ready for the third-place match.
“This is perhaps the last time for the Golden Generation,” Dalic would remind us.
History, of the third-place kind, also awaits Morocco. Having dared to dream, and almost going all the way, would the consolation of a third-place suffice for the north Africans? “The dream is the final,” Regragui had said ahead of their semifinal with France, “We just don’t want to be satisfied with a semifinal just because we are a small African team.”
On Friday, two days after running France perilously close, and ahead of the third-place match, the lure of the podium seemed irresistible, if not fully redeemable. “It will help our Fifa rankings,” he said with a dash of pragmatism, but it would not deny the idea that in the ambition they harboured here, it would still keep Walid Regragui in two minds.
Maybe it’s an extreme comparison but at first sight, Saturday’s third-place match between Croatia and Morocco at the Khalifa Stadium here is something like that. It is that vital ‘seventh’ game at the World Cup that no team would want to be playing, falling on the wrong side of the equation. You wouldn’t want to too, if you were told that consolation prizes were your fate, that wooden spoons somehow outweighed golden laurel wreaths.
Walid Regragui, Morocco’s coach, barely having caught his breath after that helter-skelter of a marathon against France in the second semifinal, was being asked how he would prepare now for the third-place match. “I’m in two minds,” he would say, “The third-place match will be hard for us, especially mentally. We have a lot of injuries, and we are exhausted after this match.”
“(But) I want to win this game, we will do everything to win it but I also think I need to give some game time to the players who haven’t experienced the World Cup yet. They deserve it. They have been tremendous squad players and so we will try to find a middle ground in order to field a strong team.”
On Friday, Zlatko Dalic and Mateo Kovacic of Croatia cut very weary figures as they appeared for the customary pre-match press conference, looking like they would be anywhere but here.
Yet, diplomacy would hold sway. “For us this is a major match, a chance for a medal,” coach Dalic would say, “This is a major final for smaller nations, smaller teams.
Perhaps it is so because Dalic and Kovacic come from an ethos where a bronze-medal match holds great meaning. “In 1998, winning the bronze was very important for us. We had just gained independence, were a young country, so that medal is very important in our history,” Dalic would remind us of the debutant’s third-place finish after beating the Netherlands at France ’98.
A runners-up medal four years ago, a chance for a second bronze here, and Dalic and the rest of the Croatians back home would gladly take it. “Of course, we would have wanted to be at the final,” Kovacic would chip in.
In fact, such is the importance of the idea that after the spirit-draining loss to Argentina in the semifinal, Dalic, almost immediately began stressing on the need to lift his players’ morale to be ready for the third-place match.
“This is perhaps the last time for the Golden Generation,” Dalic would remind us.
History, of the third-place kind, also awaits Morocco. Having dared to dream, and almost going all the way, would the consolation of a third-place suffice for the north Africans? “The dream is the final,” Regragui had said ahead of their semifinal with France, “We just don’t want to be satisfied with a semifinal just because we are a small African team.”
On Friday, two days after running France perilously close, and ahead of the third-place match, the lure of the podium seemed irresistible, if not fully redeemable. “It will help our Fifa rankings,” he said with a dash of pragmatism, but it would not deny the idea that in the ambition they harboured here, it would still keep Walid Regragui in two minds.
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