Uruguay’s brilliant backbone fails in quarterfinal exit
Uruguay, a team built around two brilliant strikers and a tough, disciplined defense may have made their last run with this particular group.
Uruguay are easily the smallest country to have won the World Cup, having done so in the inaugural tournament in 1930 and inflicting the infamous Marcanazo defeat on Brazil 20 years later. They don’t play with the flair their larger neighbors in Brazil and Argentina do, but with defensive organization and a direct style that while not always easy on the eyes, has produced results. This year’s quarterfinal run has been no different.
The defensive set up, headed by Atletico Madrid center-backs Diego Godin and Jose Gimenez, saw them record three clean sheets in the group stage and a 2-1 triumph over Portugal in the round of 16. Unfortunately that match also saw striker Edinson Cavani pick up an injury that ruled him out of the quarterfinal against France. Though a player of that caliber will always be missed, statistically and tempo-wise Uruguay didn’t seem to suffer too much in his absence.
Uruguay don’t dominate possession in games like Spain or Argentina, and even in defeat they showed they really don’t need to. France may have had the majority of possession (57 percent), but Uruguay had just as many shots (11), twice as many on target (four) and didn’t concede a corner while winning four of their own.
Rather than a slightly blunted attack letting La Celeste down, it was their infamously tough defense and goalkeeper, Fernando Muslera, who compared to French stopper Hugo Lloris had a much lighter workload. (Lloris made an amazing save before halftime that social media is already hyping as the save of the tournament). Raphael Varane’s header was excellent, but the center-back had far too much space in the box.
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That’s not to say Uruguay boss Oscar Tabarez should have used his center-backs to mark an opposition defender, especially with Olivier Giroud and Kylian Mbappe floating around, but one stutter-step from Antoine Griezmann shouldn’t have caused that much confusion in such a disciplined defensive unit. The other defensive flub that effectively killed Uruguay’s hope for a second semifinal this decade was a poor play by Muslera on a shot by Griezmann.
Uruguay have the young talent — Gimenez, Rodrigo Bentancur, Lucas Torreira, Maxi Gomez, among others — to bounce back strongly in Qatar 2022, but for Luis Suarez, Cavani, and Diego Godin, this probably represents their farewell to World Cup competition, certainly at their peaks.
If they had gone out in a rout it would feel less sour than it does, but the sight of Gimenez bursting into tears in the closing moment of the defeat only reinforces the idea Uruguay lost in the cruelest way (other than perhaps penalty kicks, anyway), as their greatest strength turned, for two torrid moments, into a weakness.