A twist on a post from last week.

I wanted a France-England final to the 2018 World Cup, and I think most soccer fans did, too, and I posted to that effect. The headline to that one was: Croatia Needs to Get Out of the Way

Since I went unheeded by Croatia, which came back from a goal down to defeat England 2-1 in extra time, let’s try this another way.

The headline, above, reflects my fear that France and its ultra-cautious coach, Didier Deschamps, could turn the final into the same sort of dreary event we saw in the semifinals: France 1, Belgium 0, Fans Forgotten.

After that match, frustrated and unhappy that France bunkered in after its one goal, Belgium’s Eden Hazard said: “I would rather lose with Belgium than win with France.”

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Most of the 2018 World Cup has been entertaining. Or at least interesting. Not often we get to see the likes of Iceland, Morocco, Egypt and Panama in the tournament, and see what they are all about.

A case can be made that many of the traditional powers had crummy tournaments — and we are looking at you, Germany, Argentina and Spain. The inability of the teams from North America, Africa and Asia to compete evenly with the Europeans and South Americans … is an ongoing problem.

But the biggest concerns are more basic and more easily seen by even the most casual of fans: Abuse of referees, and the blight of “simulation” — that is, diving; that is, cheating — and Fifa does not seem interested in fixing those two glaring problems.

First, referee abuse.

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I have no personal beefs with Croatia.

I was there once, for part of a day, as a member of the U.S. journalists’ traveling party heading for the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, in 1984.

We flew from New York to Zagreb, and then organizers put us on buses to downtown Zagreb, where we were seated at a white-table-cloth restaurant in a fine old hotel that no doubt dated back to the Habsburgs.

Zagreb was dark and dreary, and dirty snow was in the gutters, but this was February 1984, and we didn’t expect much more from the place.  Zagreb and the rest of Croatia were part of Yugoslavia, at the time; the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.

My recollection is that we had a fine lunch. (And also were under-dressed.) Then we were taken to the Zagreb train station to pick up “the Olympic Express”, which was to take us the final few hours to Sarajevo.

I don’t think it was the fault of Croatia that the train was hours and hours late, and that the waiting room sat about 12 people, all of whom were chain-smoking locals, and the journalists were forced to pace the platform to stay warm/alive. A train did show up, eventually, but many of my colleagues were stinking drunk by then and comported themselves with less dignity than usual, and perhaps we were lucky the authorities in Zagreb had not swept up all of us till everyone was sober again.

So, no. No real issues with Croatia. In fact, I would like to see Dubrovnik some day.

All I want from Croatia … is to see them go out of the World Cup tonight in their semifinal match with England.

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I never played soccer as a child. Never saw a match. Didn’t own a soccer ball. Never knew anyone who followed the game.

The extent of my pre-adult exposure to soccer probably was occasional videotape on ABC’s Wide World of Sports; presumably World Cup highlights; lots of Pele.

By the early 1980s, I was the sports editor of a newspaper, and for fun I occasionally mocked soccer and the failing North American Soccer League. I suggested the “spotted ball” game was (and always would be) for foreigners. “As American as borscht,” I wrote. “A game John Wayne would never play.”

Yet by 1989 I would be in a heaving soccer stadium in Port of Spain, Trinidad, covering The Shot Heard Round the World, a would-be expert and explainer of a game I had ridiculed only a few years before.

As we prepare this week for the semifinals of Russia 2018, for my own amusement I am going to attempt to remember how I got from soccer skeptic to (would be) soccer savant.

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England and its relationship to its soccer team has mostly been unhealthy since, say, 1966 — when England won its first and only World Cup championship.

During the 30 years that I covered international soccer, 1986 to 2015, I saw England and its team muddle through the same scenario every four years.

It was an arc of unrealistic expectations, many of them stoked by overly optimistic English journalists … followed by disappointment at a big event … which fermented into fan and media anger toward the players … followed by a search for a scapegoat or three (starting with the coach, generally) … followed by English fans/journalists vowing never again to let themselves be deluded into thinking England was anything but a fringe player on the world soccer stage … and England fans would never give a fig about them every again.

And then it would start all over again, and in four years all of England would have talked themselves around to winning it all again.

Which brings us to the current World Cup, Russia 2018, where England has advanced to the semifinals for the first time since 1990.

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What a curious match Brazil versus Belgium turned out to be.

It was a sort of soccer experiment:

“What would happen if 11 crazy-fast Munchkins with elite technical skills … met up with 11 mostly big and beefy guys with decent technique but marginal speed and quickness?”

The soccer scientists perhaps could have chosen a less significant event than a quarterfinal match at the World Cup to answer the question, above, but since Fifa scheduled the thing, calling it Brazil versus Belgium …

And the answer is?

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Belgium is a pretty anonymous country, considering where it is located — bordered by France, Germany and The Netherlands, and just across the water from England.

That’s a pretty busy neighborhood, with four countries tourists love to visit.

And then there is Belgium.

I probably am not unique in this: I have spent a fair amount of time in western Europe, including in the four aforementioned neighbors, but I have never stepped foot in Belgium.

But, then, why would I?

Belgium is hiding in plain sight. But its soccer team would like to do something to address that, at the Russia 2018 World Cup.

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I now am a fan of England, at Russia 2018. And not just because the rest of my preferred teams have been eliminated.

As noted a few weeks ago, I was around a lot of English soccer, in six-plus years in Abu Dhabi, and if you are a fan of the Premier League, as I now am, you cannot help but become sucked into the Three Lions vortex.

(Also, I can understand what England’s guys are saying, even the Geordies. Never discount that.)

So, yes, I was pleased to see them oust an ill-tempered Colombia side … via shootout!

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During the Watergate scandal of the mid-1970s, the Washington Post source known as Deep Throat told a reporter that he needed to “follow the money” to unravel the story.

When it came time for LeBron James to choose where he would play for the 2018-19 NBA season, and beyond we could have homed in on one reliable piece of evidence:

Where his son would be going to high school.

Former NBA star Gary Payton relayed the information to BlackSportsOnline way back on June 9: LeBron’s elder son, “Bronny” James, who aspires to an NBA career, had enrolled at Sierra Canyon School, a private school in Chatsworth, California, not far from downtown Los Angeles, a school that has attracted all sorts of celebrity offspring.

Lakers fans might have benefited from that knowledge and purchased tickets for the coming season before LBJ announced/confirmed today he was joining the Lakers for four seasons and $154 million, a development which will drive the cost of Lakers tickets through the Staples Center ceiling.

Think it through:

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There are two kinds of people in the world.

Those who believe Lionel Messi is the best soccer player in the world … and those who believe Cristiano Ronaldo is.

The World Cup staged a sort of referendum today on what has been decade-long struggle between the players and their fans: Who is better? Who is more valuable? We were able to compare and contrast as Messi’s Argentina and Ronaldo’s Portugal played in the first knockout round at Russia 2018?

And how did that turn out?

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