Remember the World Cup?
Our collective relationship with time has become warped in the last few years, so you would be forgiven for thinking the big jamboree in Qatar was about four years ago. But, dear reader, that breathless final was a mere three months in the past.
Now the international fixtures are here once again, a reminder of that crazy time when we would gorge ourselves on three games a day; a time when the antics of characters we may have known little about, if anything, consumed our lives, and once the tournament was over, they were gone again.
But what have they been up to since? What has happened to the World Cup protagonists since returning to the real world?
Cho Gue-sung
Perhaps it was his two goals against Ghana in the group stage that caused Cho Gue-sung’s Instagram followers to go from around 20,000 to 1.6million during the World Cup. Or perhaps it was the fact that the man is quite the dish, and pictures of him and his razor-sharp cheekbones began circulating the thirstier corners of the internet.
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That Instagram follower count is now up to 2.7million, and it’s been a whirlwind few months for Cho since the tournament, starting with his appearance on the cover of Vogue Korea’s January edition. He was just the fifth man and second sportsperson to be the magazine’s cover star (the other was Olympic gold medal figure skater Yuna Kim), and… well, you can see why. Sad when someone lets themselves go like that, isn’t it?
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As for the rather prosaic business of football, the South Korean season only started in February, so he hasn’t had much of a chance to carry on his goalscoring form (although he scored in his second game back for Jeonbuk), but much of Cho’s time since Qatar has been consumed with talk of a move to Celtic.
The Scottish club were keen on bringing him and compatriot Oh Hyeon-gyu to Glasgow but they only ended up signing the latter. The sense in South Korea is that Cho will move to Europe, possibly Celtic but possibly somewhere else, in the summer instead, having sought counsel from national hero Park Ji-sung.
That he has already done his national military service — compulsory for all men aged between 18-35 — might make him more attractive. If he isn’t attractive enough already, of course.
Gonzalo Montiel
One of the great things about football is you don’t need to be great to achieve greatness. Take Gonzalo Montiel: to some, he’s the man who scored the winning penalty in the World Cup final, who clinched the game’s biggest prize, putting the final seal on Lionel Messi’s immortality. To others, he’s Sevilla’s second-choice right-back.
Montiel arrived back in the real world to… inactivity, serving a ban for a red card before the tournament. And his game time has been… limited. Behind club captain and blue-eyed hero Jesus Navas in the pecking order, Montiel has thus made only three league starts since the World Cup. And two of them went pretty badly: a 6-1 loss to Atletico Madrid and before that a 3-0 defeat to Barcelona in which all three goals could be blamed on him, to the point where manager Jorge Sampaoli (who has been sacked today) had to defend him afterwards.
“His performance has to do with the team’s processes,” said Sampaoli. “When the team is dominating and on the attack, it is important to generate play on the right. Without the ball, he found himself outnumbered, which did not help.”
But still, if you were offered a moderate career of being in and out of your club team, every now and then getting rinsed by Robert Lewandowski, but you won the World Cup for your country. Well, you’d take it. Wouldn’t you?
Antonio Mateu Lahoz
It’s been an eventful few months for Antonio Mateu Lahoz, the referee you’ll remember from the ticker-tape cascade of cards in the Argentina vs Netherlands quarter-final. The Spaniard dished out 18 yellow cards and sent off Denzel Dumfries after the penalty shootout had concluded.
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“FIFA must take care of this,” said Messi after that game. “It cannot put a referee like that for a match of such magnitude, of such importance. The referee cannot fail to be up to the task.” Emiliano Martinez was more succinct: “He’s useless.”
Lahoz took all that feedback on board and calmed his card sprees down after returning from Qatar. Just kidding: in his first game back, between Barcelona and Espanyol, he brandished 13 yellow cards and two reds. “He lost control today,” said Barca head coach Xavi. “Chaos” was Frenkie de Jong’s assessment, the Dutchman having played in both games but somehow escaping Lahoz’s notebook.
Since then, Lahoz has suffered something of a fall from refereeing grace. He was kept away from the Champions League knockouts and was instead given the Europa Conference League clash between Basel and Trabzonspor in February, although he did take charge of Arsenal’s exit from the Europa League against Sporting Lisbon last week, which also saw him produce a red card.
Recently, he refereed the big one in Saudi Arabia, as Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr lost 1-0 to Al Ittihad. There were rumours that Lahoz was planning to retire after all the negative World Cup publicity, but there doesn’t seem much prospect of him sheathing his cards just yet.
Szymon Marciniak
You simply have to take your hat off to referees sometimes. Specifically, the referee of the final: the biggest, most-watched and most-pressurised football game in the world.
Szymon Marciniak got everything right and straightaway, too, most notably spotting that Marcus Thuram had dived in the closing stages of normal time, then seeing Montiel’s handball for the second of France’s penalties when it wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone else watching live. “I had an easier life, thanks to the fact that Szymon was brilliant,” said Tomasz Kwiatkowski, who was the lead VAR for the final.
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Upon his return, he was everywhere, a seemingly ubiquitous presence on Polish TV, but he eventually got back to the day job — albeit in some slightly unusual places. He has refereed some Polish Ekstraklasa games, but he also travelled to Turkey for a few friendlies, Saudi Arabia for one game and popped up in Egypt for the grudge match between Al Ahly and Pyramids.
Back home, he also took charge of a second-tier game, plus he refereed at his local futsal tournament, the Plock Cup, where he took his World Cup medal and posed for pictures and signed autographs.
Szymon Marciniak w 42 urodziny sędziuje sobie lokalny turniej na hali XD
3 tygodnie po finale MŚ. Swój chłop, zero sodówki 🙂@Meczykipl @Sportowy_Kanal pic.twitter.com/6HRW7jWeAF— Marcin (@Nafciarz87) January 7, 2023
Vincent Aboubakar
It won’t go down among the greatest World Cup performances of all time, but Aboubakar’s time in Qatar was among the most entertaining.
He didn’t start either of Cameroon’s first two games, but scored an outrageous scoop off the bench in the comeback 3-3 draw against Serbia, setting up the equaliser for Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting. Rigobert Song then selected him from the start in the final group match against Brazil, where he scored a 90th-minute winner, removed his shirt in celebration and was promptly sent off for a second yellow card.
And it’s been nearly as thrilling since. Back then, he played for Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia — but you may remember them signing a rather high-profile new striker, meaning Aboubakar was surplus to requirements. Luckily for him, Besiktas were in need of a new centre-forward after Manchester United prised Wout Weghorst out of Istanbul, which they did to replace… the Al Nassr-bound Ronaldo.
Enner Valencia
Complete this sequence: Papa Bouba Diop, Philipp Lahm, Siphiwe Tshabalala, Marcelo (own-goal), Yury Gazinsky and…
Granted, it’s not the trickiest quiz, given the answer is right there above you. Those are, of course, the names of the first goalscorers from the last six World Cups. Enner Valencia joined those ranks when he found the net for Ecuador against Qatar, stroking home a penalty after having a goal rather spuriously disallowed in the third minute.
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He followed it up with another, a sensational header, leading observers all over the world to remark: “Oh yeah, Enner Valencia! I forgot about him. I wonder where he’s playing now?”
The answer, as it almost always is when someone asks that question, is Turkey. Specifically, Fenerbahce, and it’s a delight to report that he’s doing absolutely fabulously. His form was decent before the World Cup, but since it finished he’s been on an absolutely ferocious tear, scoring 13 goals in his last nine games, including an extraordinary performance against Kasimpasa when he helped himself to four.
Azzedine Ounahi
The World Cup is always a fertile ground for transfer speculation, a chance for people to spot a player and become convinced that he will solve their team’s problems. The prime candidate in Qatar was Ounahi, who fulfilled the role of a player who many people might not have been that familiar with but performed brilliantly.
However, when the transfer window opened there wasn’t really the expected clamour for his signature. Partly down to his form in Ligue 1 for Angers not quite matching what he showed for Morocco, partly down to a change in agents. There was interest from Napoli and Leeds, but nothing materialised until fairly late in the window when Marseille paid an apparent bargain €10million (£8.7m; $10.7m) for the midfielder.
His debut for Marseille, against Nantes, was described by one observer as “electric”. With his new club 1-0 up, he came off the bench to tighten the middle of the park, but ended up scoring a terrific goal to clinch the game for his side.
Since then, things haven’t been so good. He’s only started one game and was hooked at half-time. Otherwise, he’s had 15 minutes here, 25 minutes there, but hasn’t reached the heights he did at the World Cup.
Wayne Hennessey
Wayne Hennessey’s season has been something of a rollercoaster. In the summer, he signed for Nottingham Forest. They also recruited Dean Henderson on loan from Manchester United so realistically he knew he would be their second-choice goalkeeper, but it was still a Premier League contract in a World Cup year.
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He went to the World Cup as Wales’s No 1 but alas, the thing that we all remember him for is almost taking Mehdi Taremi’s head off during their group game against Iran, the subsequent red card (which, unbelievably, was initially only a yellow until the referee took another look) and the 2-0 defeat that followed.
Things haven’t been much better for him since. He returned to Forest and was thrown straight in: their first game back was against United so Henderson couldn’t play, but Hennessey shipped three goals in that one, then another four in his next chance against Championship strugglers Blackpool in the FA Cup.
Henderson then injured his thigh, meaning this was theoretically Hennessey’s big chance — only for Forest to be apparently so spooked by the prospect of him spending any length of time between the sticks that they signed Keylor Navas on loan from Paris Saint-Germain.
Salem Al-Dawsari
It will become a quiz question in years to come: who was the only side to beat Argentina as they won the 2022 World Cup?
The answer, as you fine and knowledgable people will remember, is Saudi Arabia; their victory over the champions secured in those hazy early days of the tournament. It all looked to be going as scripted when Messi rolled in an early penalty and Argentina had three goals disallowed for offside, but then Salem Al-Dawsari happened.
Firstly, Saleh Al-Shehri equalised, then five minutes later, Al-Dawsari curled one of the goals of the tournament into the top corner. That game ultimately became a footnote for the victorious Argentineans, but it wasn’t the last time that Al-Dawsari bloodied some much-fancied South American noses this season.
For he was at the heart of Saudi Pro League side Al Hilal’s unlikely passage to the Club World Cup final, scoring both goals (both penalties) as they beat Flamengo 3-2 in the semi-finals, then put up a decent fight against Real Madrid in the final.
Al-Dawsari was also at the heart of another big semi-final win: scoring once and setting up two in Al Hilal’s stonking 7-0 victory over Qatari side Al Duhail to reach the AFC Champions League final. If they beat Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds in the two-legged final this spring, Al-Dawsari will have his third title, equalling the record currently held by South Korean goalkeeper Kwoun Sun-tae.
(Top image: Salem Al-Dawsari; by Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)