The World Cup finally came alive yesterday.<\/p>\n
Not simply because Canada scored a dramatic late winner against South Africa.<\/p>\n
But because the tournament itself has changed.<\/p>\n
The calculators have been put away.<\/p>\n
Nobody is worrying about goal difference.<\/p>\n
There are no third-place tables.<\/p>\n
No qualification permutations.<\/p>\n
No wondering whether somebody else’s result might rescue your tournament.<\/p>\n
From now on, it’s beautifully simple.<\/p>\n
Win…<\/p>\n
…or go home.<\/p>\n
I must admit, I rather like it.<\/p>\n
For the past couple of weeks we’ve watched teams defend as though their lives depended on it.<\/p>\n
Eleven men behind the ball.<\/p>\n
Settling for a point.<\/p>\n
Keeping things tight.<\/p>\n
Trying not to make mistakes.<\/p>\n
It was understandable.<\/p>\n
In the group stage, avoiding defeat can be just as valuable as chasing victory.<\/p>\n
But not anymore.<\/p>\n
If you’re a goal behind with ten minutes to play, there isn’t much point in losing cautiously.<\/p>\n
Eventually, somebody has to take a chance.<\/p>\n
Canada did.<\/p>\n
They kept pushing.<\/p>\n
Kept believing.<\/p>\n
And right at the end they found the goal that takes them into the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
It got me thinking.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened to taking a chance?<\/p>\n
Modern life often feels like one long group stage.<\/p>\n
We play it safe.<\/p>\n
We stick with the familiar.<\/p>\n
We don’t apply for the job because someone else might be better.<\/p>\n
We don’t start the business because it might fail.<\/p>\n
We don’t tell people how we really feel because they might not feel the same.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we’re so busy trying not to lose that we forget how to win.<\/p>\n
Of course, I say all this as someone who still parks at the far end of the supermarket car park to avoid somebody opening their door into mine.<\/p>\n
Apparently, I’m quite happy encouraging everyone else to take risks.<\/p>\n
Just not anywhere near my car.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that’s why I enjoy knockout football so much.<\/p>\n
It strips everything back to the basics.<\/p>\n
No safety nets.<\/p>\n
No second chances.<\/p>\n
No complicated mathematics.<\/p>\n
Just courage, commitment and the belief that one moment can change everything.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it does.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
But you’ll never know unless you have a go.<\/p>\n
Canada discovered that last night.<\/p>\n
Maybe there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us.<\/p>\n
After all, the biggest risk in life isn’t always taking a chance.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it’s spending so much time playing safe that you never discover what might have happened if you’d just gone for it.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #19 \u2013 Whatever Happened To Taking A Chance? The World Cup finally came alive yesterday. Not simply because Canada scored a dramatic late winner against South Africa. But because the tournament itself has changed. The calculators have been put away. Nobody is worrying about goal difference. There are no third-place tables. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[91,146,79,158,98,157,102,106],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-grumpy-old-man","category-humour","category-soccer","category-world-cup-2026","tag-british-humour","tag-canada","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-knockout-stages","tag-modern-football","tag-south-africa","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}