World Cup winners and losers: Slapstick celebrations and lucky escapes

Thursday’s games at the World Cup saw the group stages come to an end in somewhat surreal circumstances. Here are the day’s winners and losers.

Winners

Slapstick fans. During the celebrations that followed Adnan Januzaj’s wonderful goal for Belgium against England today, his team-mate Michy Batshuayi picked up the rebounding ball and blasted it with his foot.

Unfortunately for the hapless Belgium striker, he hit the ball straight at the post, which meant that a split-second later, it cannoned into his face.

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Chaplin and Buster Keaton would have been proud. Given Batshuayi’s series of misses against Tunisia, though, he might well have been aiming for the side-netting.

The Belgian forward comes across as a guy who can laugh at himself, thankfully, so we’ll no doubt hear his version of events soon.

The group stages. As the World Cup moves on to the knock-out rounds after today, few could dispute that the first stage of the tournament has been a pleasure to watch for the most part.

The big stars all had their moments. Every team scored more than once, just a single game ended goalless, and none of the underdogs embarrassed themselves, while there were mercifully few instances of real unpleasantness either on or off the pitch.

Only one match has been truly dreadful — the Denmark v France non-event — and even the least-anticipated game of the tournament, today’s encounter between Panama and Tunisia, produced three goals.

And there have already been some moments that will go down in World Cup history, most of them involving Germany — Toni Kroos’ last minute winner and his team’s exit only days later are sure to be replayed for many years to come.

Losers

Akira Nishino. The Japanese coach’s bewildering team selection for their match against Poland might not have ended in disaster, but that was due far more to luck than judgement on Nishino’s part.

True, he only became manager of the national side in April, which allowed him just one match at the helm before naming his World Cup squad. But that still doesn’t excuse Nishino making six alterations to Japan’s line-up when their qualification was still very much in the balance

Ahead of kick-off, the manager’s decision was greeted with bewilderment by both Japanese supporters and neutrals. There seemed to be two obvious conclusions to draw.

Firstly, Nishino was convinced that Colombia would beat Senegal in today’s other Group H match. While Colombia had been excellent against Poland in their last game, anyone who saw the South Americans play today would have been puzzled by Nishino’s absolute faith in them.

After being second best in an underwhelming first-half, Colombia eventually won the game with a goal scored from a second-half corner. But their victory was scrappy, marginal and anything but inevitable.

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The second conclusion to draw was that Nishino felt a responsibility to give fringe players a run-out regardless of the risks that it entailed. But even assuming that Colombia would win, to progress Japan still needed to avoid losing by a greater margin then Senegal.

And this made Nishino’s decision to omit key players all the more puzzling. Given that Japan would benefit from keeping hold of possession in a game of this nature, leaving Borussia Dortmund’s Shinji Kagawa on the bench was a big surprise.

But even more bewildering was the omission of captain Makoto Hasebe. The tenacious, wily, seasoned defensive midfielder is a cornerstone of one of the toughest teams in Europe to break down, Eintracht Frankfurt, and seemed to be tailor-made for this kind of match.

Poland were to go a goal up early in the second period.

When Hasebe was belatedly introduced late in the second-half, his manager had told him to pass on instructions to the Japan team. What then ensued was one of the most bizarre spectacles of the tournament.

Due to FIFA’s “fair play” rules, it seemed that Japan would progress as long as they didn’t concede any more goals or pick up further bookings. As a result, the Japanese players now stopped attacking altogether and simply kicked the ball to each other deep in their own half.

And Poland, already eliminated and happy to pick up their first victory of this World Cup, just allowed them to keep doing it.

The game continued in this surreal manner until the final whistle, and Japan went through to the next round courtesy of “fair play” rules — despite having engaged in some of the most unsportsmanlike behavior of the tournament.

Robert Lewandowski. Anyone who watches Bundesliga soccer will tell you that the Polish striker really is one of best number 9s in Europe. And it’s true. In fact, he has been for more than half a decade now.

But convincing anyone who doesn’t watch Bundesliga soccer about Lewandowski’s brilliance on the basis of this tournament alone is pretty much impossible.

The Poland captain’s performances at this World Cup were summed up by his 73rd-minute miss today, which a great many readers of this article would have put away.

In fact, it’s hard to think of any Bundesliga-based striker in Russia this summer who played worse than Lewandowski.

Next: World Cup winners and losers: Comedy goals and a national tragedy

At this rate, the atmosphere during Bayern Munich’s pre-season tour is going to be funereal.