CHICKENPIE.Akron Stadium, Guadalajara, Saturday night. The two-time World Cup winners needed a draw. They got Alex Baena. The 24-year-old Spanish midfielder ran onto a bouncing ball 25 yards from goal and let it drop over his shoulder; Fernando Muslera, the 39-year-old Uruguayan goalkeeper who has worn the sky-blue jersey for the last twenty years, came off his line, hesitated, and tried to sweep it clear with his left foot. The clearance hit Baena's shin. The ball looped over Muslera's head and into the empty net. Akron went quiet on one side. The other side did not. Spain were ahead. Uruguay were not coming back.
Fede Valverde, Real Madrid, Uruguay's captain, was the best midfielder on the planet two seasons ago. On Saturday night he was hooked in the fifty-sixth minute for a centre-back. He walked off with his armband limp at his side and did not look at Marcelo Bielsa. The stadium scoreboard did not need updating. Valverde's body language had already told the whole story. The man who usually runs the most on the pitch had stopped running. The man who usually demands the ball had stopped asking for it. By the time he reached the dugout, the stadium had already started filing out the Uruguayan end.
Spain did not need to be brilliant. Unai Simón had one save to make in ninety minutes, and that was a comfortable one. Pedri sprayed passes. Lamine Yamal, who is eighteen, did things that defenders twice his age cannot do. Nico Williams ran at the Uruguayan back line and made Darwin Núñez look like he was running in sand. But the night belonged to a single mistake from a goalkeeper who had made a thousand better decisions in the same shirt.
I gave Uruguayan football nothing. — Marcelo Bielsa, after the match
Bielsa came to the press conference and delivered three sentences. He said he took responsibility for all the disappointment. He said he had given Uruguayan football nothing. He said the players had given everything they had. Then he told a reporter who was asking a slow question to spit it out, damn it. It was the most Bielsa press conference possible. The Argentine has not changed. The team around him has fallen apart.
In stoppage time, Agustín Canobbio lunged at Pau Cubarsí with both feet off the ground and got the red card the moment demanded. Uruguay had two men sent off across the tournament — Canobbio here, and Rodrigo Aguirre in the opener. They had zero wins. They finished with two points from three games, behind Spain and behind Cape Verde, a country of five hundred thousand people who turned up at Akron and did what Uruguay could not. The two-time world champions are out at the group stage. The first time in twenty-four years. The third time in the entire history of the tournament.
Spain top Group H. Lamine Yamal has a knockout round to keep doing what he has been doing all summer. Cape Verde — half a million people, ten Atlantic islands, first ever World Cup — are in the round of 32 alongside them, and their next game is against Argentina. Bielsa, meanwhile, will go back to his apartment in Montevideo and sit with the weight of what just happened to a programme he has managed for two years. The Argentine leaves with the same temper he arrived with, but the trophies and the quarterfinals and the magic of Bielsa-ball at Leeds United are a long way from Guadalajara on a Saturday night in June.
Daily Art Caricature by Chickenpie — World Cup 2026.
