Argentina defeated Brazil 1-0 in front of 95,569 fans at the MCG, Lionel Messi took an unassuming bow in front of his adoring fans and the merchandise stalls did a brisk trade all night, but one couldn’t help departing Australia’s sporting colosseum just a little miffed by the cynicism of a hype-heavy Superclásico.
Argentina’s winner came in the 44th minute, when a short corner ended up at the feet of Ángel Di María – the game’s most compelling player throughout – who curled in a deep, troublesome cross. Nicolás Otamendi’s glancing header hit the upright but it was Gabriel Mercado who tapped home the simplest of chances from the rebound. Otherwise, genuine excitement came in fits and spurts.
On a bitterly cold Melbourne night, teeth didn’t stop chattering until the sixth minute, when Di María latched on to a through ball from Paulo Dybala and sliced his left-footed shot into the upright from a tight angle. Argentina were controlling possession in the early stages, setting a template for the rest of the night. Spiky, omnipresent but often unpolished Di María was in everything, including the hands of the trainers.
It took a quarter of an hour, but Philippe Coutinho became a menace on the right side for Brazil. On 18 minutes Augusto had their best chance of the first half, but curled his long-range strike high when Argentina’s defence had been split open. Soon after Coutinho pounced again, and had only keeper Sergio Romero to beat, but laboured over his opening to be closed down.
Low-level niggle and needle started to increase, but middling intensity in the contest and crowd restlessness was confirmed by a Mexican wave at the half-hour mark. Otherwise, the best it got for Brazil was a long-range miss from Fillipe Luís after Willian made the better-positioned Jonatan Maidana look many more than his 31 years.
As for Messi, a deft touch here and there was about it, the great champion showing only brief glimpses of his lustrous best. Not so Di María, who imposed himself on the game through sheer force of personality.
Brazil started off brighter in the second half, as Willian took it upon himself to raise their collective tempo and make things happen, and Brazil grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck. Brazil’s best chance of an equaliser came on 62 minutes but proved tragicomic; both Gabriel Jesus and Willian thundered wide-open chances into their closest upright, and the moment passed.
In patches, you couldn’t have imagined a more muted crowd of this size, especially once both sides started shuffling the deck with substitutions. A yellow card was issued to Paulinho for his second clumsy act of the night when he brought down Rodríguez. Briefly adopting the local Australian Rules vernacular, Rafinha got one too barely a minute later for charging into Messi’s back. There was also a late injury to Gabriel Jesus, who was stretchered from the field in the final minutes following a head knock.
As for the success or otherwise of a tour many consider a meaningless junket, you would have to assume many among the arena’s third-highest ever football crowd left happy, certainly the hordes of bright-eyed children in Messi shirts. But the whiff of a mild con will linger.
The prospect of a face-off between Messi and Brazilian superstar Neymar prompted very real buzz when this game was announced in February. Quiet night aside, Messi has done his bit, charming local fans in the past few days and even going so far as to lead two children onto the arena tonight as his team-mates handled one each. Not so Neymar, who chose an off-season rest.
The sheer size of the crowd is certainly nothing to be sneezed at, but the more troubling figure was always more likely to come a night earlier, when only 29,785 fans turned up at 53,500-capacity Adelaide Oval to watch the Socceroos in a context-heavy World Cup qualifier.
Worthy of note too is that Superclásico ticket sales hummed along unabated despite months of headlines like “Brazil don’t want to play Argentina in MCG clash, says Tite”. That one came via the since-deposed Argentinian coach Edgardo Bauza, who went in a short space of time from calling this encounter “special”, and stressing that his side were looking forward to the trip, to providing one of the least inspiring preambles to any football match in recorded history.
“Because it comes after the club season the players don’t really want to know about it,” Bauza, freed from his obligations, said in March. “They want to go on holiday, they’re planning which beach they’re going to be lying on with their women. And then you tell them that they have to go to Australia! I ran into [Brazil coach] Tite in Europe recently, and I asked him if he wanted to go and play the game. He said that he didn’t. ‘OK,’ I told him, ‘let’s play out a 0-0 draw so neither of us gets attacked by our press.’ And we burst out laughing.”
Other Brazilians who joined Neymar in skipping out were Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino, plus Marquinhos, Miranda, Marcelo and Dani Alves. Appearing in their place were names that might well have come from the rosters of an unlicensed video game; fine in the A-League, not so much when you’re dropping a good deal of a week’s wages to get the whole family through the gate.
Those in attendance paid anywhere from A$79 to A$475 for a seat, and learned that such a thing as a “platinum restricted view” exists. Just $229 for one of those. When Canada became the first international side to play on the MCG in 1924, their tour left them £372 in debt. Early indications are these sides have done a little better.
One useful thing these big-money tours do is reveal the strange philosophical undercurrents in Australian football fandom. Two weeks ago, as part of a bargain-basement broadcast cobbled together by the ABC, a local comedian named Aaron Chen became an internet hate figure for an Andy Kaufmanesque pre-game vox pop, and the national broadcaster was excoriated by senior figures in the Australian game. Its sin: not taking seriously a “Liverpool” team containing the 39-year-old, four-years-retired Jamie Carragher. When you think of it that way, maybe Melbourne got a bargain.
