Last night’s quarter-final between France and Morocco wasn’t quite the classic many of us had hoped for.<\/p>\n
On paper it looked wonderfully balanced. Two talented sides, plenty of familiar faces, and with so many Moroccan players earning their living in France, there was almost the feeling of a club match with national anthems.<\/p>\n
Instead, it felt rather cautious.<\/p>\n
France took the lead through Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 after seeing his penalty saved, Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 added a second, and only then did Morocco begin to play with the freedom we’d all been waiting to see.<\/p>\n
By then, it was just a little too late.<\/p>\n
It made me wonder why so many of us wait until we’re behind before deciding it’s time to get going.<\/p>\n
We’ve all done it.<\/p>\n
The dentist appointment that somehow becomes next month’s problem.<\/p>\n
The leaky tap that’s “not too bad” until the kitchen floor resembles a paddling pool.<\/p>\n
The Christmas shopping that begins on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
The tax return that gets completed with one eye on the clock.<\/p>\n
Even the garden. We promise ourselves we’ll keep on top of the weeds, and before you know it they’re applying for planning permission.<\/p>\n
Life has an annoying habit of rewarding those who start today rather than tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that’s why football is so wonderfully unforgiving.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t care how good your intentions are.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t award points for deciding to attack in the last twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
The first whistle counts just as much as the last.<\/p>\n
Morocco finally showed everyone what they were capable of.<\/p>\n
The trouble was that France had already done enough.<\/p>\n
There’s an old saying that you should never leave until tomorrow what can be done today. Judging by the first hour of last night’s match, nobody had mentioned that in the Moroccan dressing room.<\/p>\n
Mind you, I shouldn’t sound too smug.<\/p>\n
Only yesterday I finally got round to sorting out the shed after promising myself I’d do it “next weekend” for most of the summer.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed the match more than I expected.<\/p>\n
Football has a funny way of reminding us about our own little habits.<\/p>\n
It turns out that leaving things until later rarely becomes easier.<\/p>\n
Usually, it just becomes later.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Stick your thoughts below \u2014 especially if the match ruined your evening too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #30 \u2013 Whatever Happened To Leaving It Too Late? Last night’s quarter-final between France and Morocco wasn’t quite the classic many of us had hoped for.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[177,176,79,189,109,160,188,178,102,106],"class_list":["post-1230","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-football-humour","tag-france","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-leaving-it-late","tag-modern-life","tag-morocco","tag-procrastination","tag-quarter-finals","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","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=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1231,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions\/1231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}