Pantheon Cup

There are nights when a scoreline lies, and nights when it tells the whole, brutal truth — this is the latter. Iron Man has drilled his side into a single moving organism, pressing in unison, hunting in packs; across from them the Justice League have assembled more individual brilliance than any team in this tournament and not one shared idea of how to defend. The high line steps at five different speeds, the fullbacks gallop forward and forget to come home, and into all that open green grass strides Black Panther, who needs only an invitation. By the half-hour it has stopped being a contest and become a lesson.

This has the makings of a glorious mess — Luffy throwing bodies forward with that fearless, joyful abandon of theirs, Sanji leading the line, Usopp lurking over every dead ball, Nami pulling the strings — and at the back, the eternal comedy of Zoro, forever drawn to the wrong man. The Avengers are calmer, more deliberate, content to work it wide for Hawkeye and to trust the impossible arms of Spider-Man behind them. It promises goals, and it promises chaos.

Hanuman is a wonder — a one-man midfield, lungs that never tire, carrying it from his own box to the opposition's and back again — and that, precisely, is Hindu's tragedy, because no one runs off him, no one covers behind him, and every yard he gallops leaves a door ajar. The Avengers, in their cool collective way, keep walking through those doors. It is brilliance against organisation, and we tend to know which one wins.

Two sides who treat defending as an inconvenience, but only one of them can hurt you from anywhere — Usopp, the sniper, with that range from dead balls, and Sanji prowling the very last shoulder. The Justice League, for all their gifts, cannot organise a back line to save their lives, and their fullbacks keep charging upfield with no thought of the journey back.

If you came for defending, you have come to the wrong fixture — this is two attacking sides trading blows with gleeful disregard for the niceties at the back. Hanuman carries Hindu almost alone again; Luffy come at you from every angle imaginable. Neither goalkeeper will be much protected by his own.

Two squads bursting with attacking talent and organised by absolutely no one — a festival of goals and a famine of pressing, runners drifting free at both ends as though marking had been outlawed. Hanuman and Wonder Woman trade the headlines; the defenders trade glances. It is glorious and it is absurd, and a point apiece will send both of these gilded sides home.

A chess match disguised as a brawl, and a glimpse of a final to come. Shikamaru sits deepest of all, screening, conducting, slowing and quickening the pulse of the game with the laziest flick of a pass; Goku answers the only way he knows, by running and running and pressing the first ball out of defence until something, somewhere, gives. Naruto have the ball; Goku has the relentlessness. Neither will yield an inch.

Everything about Hero Association hinges on a single question — does Saitama care today? — and the early answer is a long, slow shrug. He will not press; he will not track; he barely jogs, and so a disciplined, Genos-marshalled side is left a man light every time they lose it. King, meanwhile, makes not a single tackle and has no need to: his shadow alone has Vegeta snatching at his chances. Goku simply waits, and probes, and looks for the seam.

For an hour, this is Gandalf's game — the old conductor slowing it to a crawl, keeping it tidy, sparing those ancient legs every needless yard, and Middle-earth's low block holds firm. But Goku and Vegeta keep making the same patient runs in behind, again and again, knowing that time is the one opponent the old can never beat: sooner or later, the legs go. And they do.

Structure against mood once more, and Naruto wield theirs beautifully — Shikamaru threading it again and again into Sasuke between the lines, those pockets left wide open by Saitama's indifference. Hero Association's hope rests, as ever, on the one man who never stops trying: Mumen Rider, all heart and no gift, hurling himself at lost causes.

Naruto have studied this and built their whole plan around one weakness — the space behind those ageing fullbacks — and they send Rock Lee to torment it, his running stretching the back line to breaking point. Middle-earth take an early lead from a set piece, the old magic flickering, but the legs must somehow keep pace with that engine. They cannot.

And now, with qualification already gone and nothing whatsoever riding on it, Saitama decides — at last — to care. He drops in, he links, he presses, he is everything he refused to be when it mattered: the most complete footballer on the pitch, performing for an empty stage. It is, in its quiet way, the saddest brilliance of the whole tournament.

Across the halfway line, two versions of the same idea: the one-eyed god who wrote the original, and the one-eyed grifter selling a knock-off of it on American soil. Wednesday’s side go long to Sweeney and try to turn the night into a back-alley fight, Czernobog leaving a little of himself in every challenge. The All-Father just watches it come — a yard deeper than anyone else on the pitch — and takes each ball off the bounce before it can do harm. Loki, meanwhile, sets up his stall by the touchline.

Greece carry genuine menace — Hermes and that searing pace, Apollo and that lovely finish — but they carry, too, the temperament of a pantheon forever at war with itself, and that is the fault line running through their whole tournament. Thor, meanwhile, lurks for every dead ball Loki can conjure. One spark, and this could detonate.

Sun Wukong is a delight and a menace both — that somersaulting, shape-shifting wing play, beating his man and beating him again, giving the Nordic right an afternoon of torment. But behind him there is nothing, no cover, no structure, and at the other end Thor waits in the box for the inevitable corner. Flair, gloriously unmoored, against power.

A snarling, physical affair, and once again Greece cannot keep eleven on the pitch. American go route one to Sweeney, win their headers, let Mr. Nancy carry it in transition, and are perfectly content to wallow in the ugliness. Greece have the prettier football in flashes through Apollo — but the indiscipline, always the indiscipline, undoes them.

End to end and gloriously careless at the back — a five-goal thriller that history will later view through a cloud, for Wukong's drug test is coming, and the peaches of immortality will not amuse the authorities one bit. On the grass, though, none of that yet: his pace keeps stretching American, and Sweeney's great frame keeps hauling them back into it.

Two sides for whom defending is somebody else's problem entirely — pace and trickery conjuring the goals, slack and absent-minded set-piece marking surrendering them. There is quality in abundance on the ball and almost none of it off the ball, and when the dust settles, a point apiece will do neither of them the slightest good.

This is the fixture engineered to silence a one-man attack, and at its heart stands Toph — immovable, unbothered, holding her line and winning her duels, refusing to be shifted a single inch. Zlatan is starved of service, marooned up front, and around him his mortal supporting cast tire early against Avatar's endless movement. Can the lone wolf find the one moment he always seems to find?

Patience against a parked bus — Egypt sit deep, Anubis reading every flicker, and for an hour Avatar cannot find the smallest crack in the wall. But this is a side coached to its fingertips, and the key, when it finally turns, is Katara's combination play, those quick one-twos prising the block apart at last.

Shinto carry a real threat from their thunder-and-wind set pieces, but their fault is written in their very nature — Susanoo's temper, forever a red card waiting to happen, and Amaterasu's habit of vanishing from the contest for great stretches at a time. Against a side built to punish space, indiscipline is fatal.

Egypt's deep, disciplined block frustrates Zlatan's supporting cast all evening — but the man himself has never needed much, a yard and a sight of goal and the rest is his. Horus puts Egypt ahead against the run of very little, and for a while the bus holds. And then the wolf decides the game on his own.

A scrappy, stop-start affair, Shinto short of fluency and missing Amaterasu's influence for long spells. But there is one constant in this whole tournament, as reliable as the dawn — Zlatan will score. His presence in the air and his range from distance settle it.

Two cautious, careful sides who take no risks and press not at all — a game of chess in which neither player will advance a single pawn. The only way through a wall like this is a set piece, and so it proves; a tidy, forgettable draw that suits the needs of neither.