A public service

I hope this is useful: a document listing the World Cup match times.

(They’re all set to the time zone in which I reside. If you’d like a list of match times set to a different time zone, let me know, and I’ll make one for you.)

The document can be printed on two sides of one sheet. I intend to fold up my printout, and to carry it in my pocket. I don’t want to always have to fire up the Internet to find out when the next game is.

The games will be played at different times every day.

(Why so?

This wasn’t always the case.)

Markup

From the New York Times:

“Train Tickets to 2026 World Cup at MetLife Stadium from NYC to Cost More than $100”

You’re free to stay home, I imagine free-market diehards retorting.

I’m also free to register my disgust.

🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮

One thing I like about Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? – Michael J. Sandel’s opinionated and popular introduction to political philosophy – is that it opens with a discussion of price gouging.

Not with such classic questions as:

Is there a duty to obey the law?

and

Can the state be justified?

– asked from a libertarian-friendly starting-point –

but rather with:

If a storm has cut off the electrical supply for many people, is it moral for merchants to double (triple, quadruple, etc.) the price of a bag of ice?

Unlike the classic questions, this one puts libertarians on the back foot.

Of course, there are differences between the scenario discussed in the book and the stadium-transport markup scenario.

(1) The exploitees in the latter scenario are pleasure seekers, not hurricane sufferers.

(2) They’re exploited by NJ Transit – a governmental agency – not by private merchants.

(3) They’re (mostly) foreign tourists, not members of the polis.

Sandel wants us to conclude that price gouging is wrong because it’s uncivil, or because it’s bad for the polis, or for some such community-based reason. (I’m pretty sure he wants us to conclude that. I haven’t read the end of the book.)

But in the World Cup transport scenario, price gouging (of foreigners, mostly) might actually be good for the community.

I leave it as a reader’s exercise to explain whether these differences matter morally and whether marking up the price is wrong.

An entry, posted late, requiring every ounce of strength to type

Notable World Cup “tuneup” results:

• Ecuador 1, Morocco 1 (cracker of a game)
• Brazil 1, France 2 (France dominant)
• England 1, Uruguay 1 (tedious)
• Colombia 1, Croatia 2 (dunno)
• South Korea 0, Ivory Coast 4 (look out for the “Elephants”)
• USA 2, Belgium 5 (too soon to gloat, alas)

Tomorrow promises to be grueling; today already was. Lily, Karin’s sister, will be married tomorrow afternoon. It’s the childcare that vexes. Samuel, at least, is accounted for: he’ll bear the rings. He successfully brought the cushion down the aisle during today’s rehearsal.

Abel and Daniel are another matter. The last thing the ceremony needs is a chorus of squawking. I scouted the building today for possible retreating-places. There aren’t many.

Today, before I chased around and, ocassionally, strong-armed Abel and Daniel, I’d already tired myself loading a humungous, old brush pile – which had plagued our backyard since we bought the property in 2021 – into our pastor’s trailer. Pastor Josh and I took the debris to the church and tossed it into the forest next to the parking lot. It’s not every day you get to dump stuff in a forest.

This has been a grueling entry to type, too, because my “shift” key has been sticking.

Body-text fonts, pt. 49: ITC Garamond

The Iranians are trying to have their World Cup games moved from the U.S. to Mexico.

Good. Luck.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Six-year-old Samuel, whom we don’t allow to use social media, has been talking about giving up social media for a week. 🙄

Not for Lent’s sake. For a Klondike bar. (“What would you do for a Klondike bar?”)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Chubby ITC Garamond is this month’s typeface. (This link is to the darker version, and this link is to the lighter version.)

My children are less “Charlie Bucket,” more “Mike Teavee.”

Paul’s bedtime reading

Iran’s team has withdrawn from the World Cup. The newspapers are taking it in stride.

Surely, I’m not the only dismayed soccer follower in the West?

Update (March 13): The team has not withdrawn (or been ousted).

I’ll let you know when I know what I’m talking about.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The war’s death toll has risen. And it’s beyond doubt that the U.S. killed those schoolchildren.

Update: I really hope the news about something so important is beyond doubt.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve also updated my unchangeable and definite reading list of the next two months. I’ll try to finish not five, not ten, but twenty-four more books before the late-April conclusion of my 2025–2026 cycle. And so it’s particularly cruel of the Web bots to pepper me with ads for the new John Galsworthy PBS show. I just can’t fit all nine of those novels into the schedule. If only Abel didn’t cling to me all day long.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Little suspecting the incalculable consequences that the evening was to have for him, he bicycled happily back from a meeting of the League of Nations Union. There had been a most interesting paper about plebiscites in Poland. He thought of smoking a pipe and reading another chapter of the Forsyte Saga before going to bed. He knocked at the gate, was admitted, put away his bicycle, and diffidently, as always, made his way across the quad towards his rooms. What a lot of people there seemed to be about! Paul had no particular objection to drunkenness – he had read a rather daring paper to the Thomas More Society on the subject – but he was consumedly shy of drunkards.

Frankly, Paul Pennyfeather’s life sounds lovely (except for that ominous bit about “incalculable consequences”).

The good news is, the Forsyte show looks missable.

Iran at the World Cup?

“Trump to POLITICO: ‘I Really Don’t Care’ if Iran Plays in World Cup”

Again, I wish FIFA would choose a host that did care.

Iran’s withdrawal is likely. Maybe we’ll know more after the U.S. completes the expected four-to-five weeks of bombardment. Because then the war’ll be done-and-dusted, won’t it? Because, as Trump himself professes, Iran already “is a very badly defeated country.”

If Iran does play in the World Cup, this eye-popping scenario will be possible:

Iran is currently scheduled to play New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15, Belgium in Los Angeles on June 21 and Egypt in Seattle on June 26. If both the U.S. and Iran finish second in their respective groups, the two countries could face off in a July 3 elimination match in Dallas.

The two countries played what were, in effect, elimination matches (in the group stage) in 1998 and 2022. Iran won the first meeting; the U.S. won the second one.

More trouble for the World Cup

Some dozens of recent killings in Mexico have stirred up anxiety about that country’s ability to safely co-host the World Cup.

The U.S. has safety worries, too. E.g., who will pay for the extra stadium guards and police in little Foxborough, Mass.? Not the 18,000 townspeople, who are threatening to deny FIFA the use of their locality.

Good for them.

See this New York Times article.

“We may get a little more [than usual] in meals tax and hotel tax,” a local official explains:

But this is not a moneymaker for this town. In fact, it’s probably more of a headache than it’s worth.

This is nothing more than seven events up there. If [the] World Cup wasn’t coming, we’d probably have seven concerts in that time. We’re not gaining much of anything by hosting this event.

So it goes when a country that doesn’t really care about soccer – or about, you know, the world – is awarded World Cup hosting rights. You run up against locals who refuse to sacrifice. Which is what hosting these games is. FIFA always has made money for the rich and compensated the masses with an experiential high. But these particular masses don’t care about soccer or foreign visitors, so they aren’t going to get that high.

FIFA should give more games – or all of the games – to Canada. I’m curious what the people of, e.g., Edmonton or Regina would say. Those cities have pretty stadiums; I’ve looked at them on Wikipedia.

Body-text fonts, pt. 46: Albertina

This’ll rankle people: “2026 World Cup ‘Pride Match’ to Feature Egypt and Iran” (BBC).

A 2026 World Cup fixture designated by organisers as an LGBTQ+ “Pride Match” will feature two countries where homosexuality is illegal. …

The plans were put in place before the teams involved in the fixture were selected or the draw for the 2026 World Cup was made.

The moral of this story is … [I leave it as an exercise for the reader].

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Re: the font.

In a not-too-wild alternate reality, universities decline less severely, and I obtain gainful employment. I teach classes and publish ten-page articles: some, in top journals; others, in Curaçaoan semi-annuals. Each article is repeatedly anthologized.

In time, I issue a pithy book. Then another. Then a third and a fourth. (I write bestselling mysteries on the side.)

I’m respected enough that it doesn’t matter with whom I publish the fourth academic book. Perhaps I choose Indiana, out of loyalty to the state; perhaps, a trade press (Norton? Penguin?). Perhaps I self-publish and do all the typesetting myself.

The first book, I publish in the “Cambridge Studies in Philosophy” series; the third, a dauntingly terse work, with “Princeton Monographs in Philosophy.”

What interests me tonight is the second book, issued, obligatorily, with Oxford. (“Obligatorily” because Oxford has just about cornered the market of the best academic books. The alternate reality isn’t so different that the major players have changed.)

The trouble with Oxford, as a publisher, is its meager font menu and tiny print size.

My Oxford font choice is Albertina for its long-tailed lowercase “y.”

(This specimen is from Barry Cunliffe’s By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia, a lovely book that I got from the exchanging-box outside my library, for free.)

World Cup groups

… have been drawn. Gratifyingly, there are no weak groups: all are groups “of death.” Literal death.

Just kidding. These are not the groups. (Besides, the tournament has been expanded from 32 to 48 teams.)

(I should acknowledge that I didn’t create this image; I found it on the Internet.)

The actual groups are these:

Group A

Mexico

South Africa

South Korea

TBD: Czechia, Denmark, Ireland, or North Macedonia

Group B

Canada

TBD: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Italy, Northern Ireland, or Wales

Qatar

Switzerland

Group C

Brazil

Morocco

Haiti

Scotland

Group D

USA

Paraguay

Australia

TBD: Kosovo, Romania, Slovakia, or Turkey

Group E

Germany

Curaçao

Ivory Coast

ECUADOR

Group F

The Netherlands

Japan

TBD: Albania, Poland, Sweden, or Ukraine

Tunisia

Group G

Belgium

Egypt

Iran

New Zealand

Group H

Spain

Cape Verde

Saudi Arabia

Uruguay

Group I

France

Senegal

TBD: Bolivia, Iraq, or Suriname

Norway

Group J

Argentina

Algeria

Austria

Jordan

Group K

Portugal

TBD: DR Congo, Jamaica, or New Caledonia

Uzbekistan

Colombia

Group L

England

Croatia

Ghana

Panama

Locations and times have been decided, too. Ecuador will play in: Philadelphia, against the Ivory Coast; then, Kansas City, against Curaçao; and lastly, East Rutherford, New Jersey, against Germany (in what will be Ecuador’s first World Cup rematch; the countries first played in 2006).

Our Aunt Linda in K.C. is keen to host any relations who’ll attend the Curaçao game. But tickets are rapaciously expensive. I can’t imagine I’ll attend unless I win a sweepstakes out of a cereal box.

Besides, if I travel to K.C., I’ll have to spend precious hours away from the television. I’ll miss Japan vs. Tunisia or some other partidazo.

A note on Curaçao, the smallest nation ever to qualify for a World Cup. This hardly ever happens, but … I didn’t know Curaçao’s location on the map. I knew that Curaçao is one of the Dutch Antilles, but, mentally, I grouped it with islands southeast of Puerto Rico. Actually, it’s off the coast of Venezuela – practically in South America.

I’m ashamed not to have known this. In my defense, Curaçao became a sovereign nation only in 2010.

November’s poem

Tonight I recall Amy Macdonald’s stirring intonation, fifteen years ago, of “Flower of Scotland” (it preceded a defeat at Hampden Park).

I heard the anthem sung again today before Scotland played Denmark. Too rousing, I thought. Just watch, the Scots’ll come out pistols blazing and then get drubbed again. And, after McTominay scored a chilena in minute 3, Denmark did outplay the Scots, up and down the field – even, from m. 61, a man short. But the Scots, against the run of play, converted a tap-in (from a near-olímpico), then a blast from outside the box, and finally a lob from the center circle. They won, 4 to 2, and qualified for the World Cup. Yes, they were poor, but they clattered over the line. ESPN’s Scottish pundits were delighted.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

O Flower of Scotland

When will we see

Your like again

That fought and died for

Your wee bit hill and glen

And stood against him

Proud Edward’s army

And sent him homeward

To think again

The hills are bare now

And autumn leaves

Lie thick and still

O’er land that’s lost now

Which those so dearly held

That stood against him

Proud Edward’s army

And sent him homeward

To think again

Those days are past now

And in the past

they must remain

But we can still rise now

And be the nation again

That stood against him

Proud Edward’s army

And sent him homeward

To think again

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Roy Williamson, 1967)

Not Robbie Burns, not William McGonagall, just ordinary folk dreaming of having thrashed the English centuries ago and of maybe doing it again some day.

Scotland 3, Greece 1

I post this effusively-narrated goal in honor of a favorite movie of Karin’s that we saw this weekend (after a wedding, no less): So I Married an Axe Murderer (1992).

Roger Ebert calls it

a mediocre movie with a good one trapped inside. … The good movie involves a droll and eccentric Scottish-American family whose household embraces more of the trappings of Scottishness than your average Glasgow souvenir shop.

“I don’t know if a market exists for feature-length Scots-bashing,” Ebert continues, “but the domestic scenes … had me laughing out loud.”

Not me. I guess the times have changed. What I kept thinking was, more should have been made of the parallels with Chabrol’s Le boucher.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I wrote an entry called “Gastrointestinal Woes” and read it to Karin. She didn’t veto it, exactly, but her evident discomfort persuaded me to excise most of it.

This paragraph remains. (TRIGGER WARNING !!!)

Karin’s mom gave Samuel a “sensory” swivel chair for his birthday. (A chair like this one – a cheaper one, maybe.) Samuel named it “Mr. Spinner.” He and Daniel had great fun spinning in it until Daniel puked up his breakfast Pop-Tart. I heard the howling and saw the mess and thought it was blood until I noticed the sprinkles.

The excised bits were much worse.

Body-text fonts, pt. 43: Spectral

Last week: Paraguay 0, Ecuador 0.

Tonight: Ecuador 1, Argentina 0.

We concluded South America’s World Cup qualification tournament with:

• qualification
• a victory over the World Cup champions
• a final position as runners-up (trailing only the aforementioned champions)
• a total of five goals conceded in eighteen games – the joint-lowest total in the tournament’s history
• a streak of five “clean sheets” (games with no goals conceded)
• a streak of eleven undefeated games

I think it was after the goalless draw in Uruguay, with eight games to play, that I predicted we wouldn’t lose again.

The bad news is that tonight, Moisés Caicedo received two yellow cards and was ejected. The second yellow card was extremely doubtful. The referee, who’d been obliged to eject an Argentinian, seemed to be trying to even up the numbers.

I’m sure we’ll appeal to CONMEBOL. Let’s pray that no suspension is enforced.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Having recovered from injury and illness, I mowed the shin-high backyard grass. It was slow going, but painless … until, some hours afterward, my hip and ankle began to trouble me.

Then, today, I threw out my back.

Either I get sidelined due to a foot puncture – or sinusitus – and suffer; or I recover, then mow, then suffer.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The font Spectral is common on the internet, especially on Substack (which only allows, what, four fonts?).

Too small? Click here; read the “Thunder Gun Express” of Substack posts. It’s just a very long summary of Niccolao Mannuci’s very long travelogue and history of Mughal India – the “Thunder Gun Express” of books.

Which I only learned about yesterday. It’s the awesomest book I’ve heard of. I’m not kidding.

Even if the Bible were turned into a wild AI-generated movie, it wouldn’t be as spectacular as this book.

But I doubt I’ll ever read the book, so thank goodness for the Substack post.

Limping

I stepped on a fancy Hot Wheels ambulance. It had sharp tail fins. It made a dime-sized crater in the arch of my foot.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A few recent club transfers involving Ecuadorians:

• Pervis Estupiñán from Brighton to Milan (permanent transfer)
• Piero Hincapié from Leverkusen to Arsenal (loan with purchase option)
• Kendry Páez from Chelsea to Strasbourg (temporary loan)
• Jeremy Sarmiento, Brighton’s last remaining Ecuadorian, to Cremonese (another loan)

It was expected that Joel Ordóñez and Kevin Rodríguez would be swooped up from Club Brugge and Union Saint-Gilloise, respectively; but they weren’t. So, they’ll have to spend another season lighting up the Belgian league.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ecuador’ll play in Paraguay tomorrow night. We’ve qualified for the World Cup. Paraguay is on the World Cup’s doorstep.

So, our motivation is low, Paraguay’s is high, and Paraguay is playing better than usual (if nowhere near as well as from 1996 to 2011).

And we’ve only ever lost in Asunción.

Still, I’d wager, we’ll earn our first point there. Our defense just doesn’t let in goals.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Current mini-book: Ed McBain’s Cop Hater (1956), the inspiration for the novels of Sjöwall & Wahlöö. Inspired by the show Dragnet, which every other cop procedural is indebted to, e.g. the one that goes:

In the criminal justice system

Sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous

In New York City

The dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies

Are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit

These are their stories

(Dun, dun)

Cop Hater is set in New York, but the place names have been changed.

Wikipedia says the first edition has 166 pp. and the revised edition has 236. I must be reading the text of the first edition. In my omnibus, the novel’s page count is 116.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Current late-night viewing: Da Vinci’s Inquest (1998–2005), starring Canadians who haven’t crossed over to Hollywood. That, in itself, is refreshing. I’m also enjoying the lingo. Royal Canadian Mounted Police = RCMP = The Horsemen. I keep expecting a guy on horseback to show up and harangue the cops at the precinct in Downtown Vancouver, but no, it’s always a twerp in a suit.

Lots of autopsies are performed. The nude bits are blurred out (unlike on Britain’s Silent Witness, which uses famous guest actors to play the corpses).

Da Vinci streams, free, via various apps.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I think the weather has started cooling for good this summer. We’re getting a nice rain tonight. The back lawn is about nine inches tall. I would’ve mowed on Saturday, but my foot had a painful gash in it.

An entertaining draw

– but a goalless one – between Peru and Ecuador. The Peruvians are a hairsbreadth from elimination. I’m sorry about that. They play hard but can’t score goals.

Peru: sixteen games played, six goals scored. 😢

Ecuador: sixteen games played, thirteen goals scored, five goals conceded. Three of the five were conceded during the first three games. These are amazing statistics. I wonder if any defense in CONMEBOL’s history has been so stingy (that is, since this qualification format was adopted in the mid-1990s). I’ll find out. Not tonight; after all the games have been played.

Average (i.e., mean) scoreline involving Ecuador: Ecuador, 0.8125 goals; opponent, 0.3125 goals.

Average (i.e., mode) scoreline: 0–0.

No wonder it has seemed so dreary. I should be grateful. This is historic.

Together with Venezuela’s defeat to Uruguay, this draw ensured Ecuador’s passage to the World Cup. Brazil also qualified. Uruguay and Paraguay each need one more point from two games (or else that Venezuela not obtain six). Colombia’s position also is strong. The Bolivians trail Venezuela by a point; either Bolivia or Venezuela will claim the play-in spot.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Protests this weekend. Stay safe! Better yet, stay home! Some protests are effective. My hunch is, these won’t be. They’ll just embolden the government to crack down further. This is a powder keg, and all it needs is for some cop or protestor to kill or get killed.

Don’t like how things are going? Vote.

A drab draw

Ecuador 0, Brazil 0.

Ecuador and Paraguay – the second- and third-placed teams – have each scored just 13 goals in 15 matches.

Both teams could qualify for the World Cup on Tuesday, with two games to spare.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Re: South America. My reading group’s next book is this classic:

One group member already has pointed out this similarity:

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel, earlier this week: “I want to be rich.”

And tonight:

Samuel: “What is prosperity?”

Karin: “Having all you need, and more.”

Samuel: “I want prosperity.”

They grow up so quickly.

This blog entry is for Jesús

… the nurse who gives my children their shots.

It was Abel’s turn to get poked. He glared when Jesús came into the room.

“Children recognize me,” Jesús told Karin. “I was at Walmart, and a child saw me and ran away. His parents gave me dirty looks.”

Jesús is super nice.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s old news, but … Paris Saint-Germain shredded Inter, 5–0, with the best team performance in any final in the history of the Champions League. (I’ve observed just one other comparable performance: Barcelona’s, in 2009, which caused a very good Manchester United team to chase shadows. Milan’s drubbing of Barça in 1994 is supposed to have been impressive, too, but I didn’t see that game.)

Were I forced to choose, I’d name Vitinha as PSG’s standout player:

Willian Pacho started in defense and repeatedly charged into the opponents’ half to intercept or wrest away the ball. He was astounding. They all were, the Parisians.

Pacho has returned to Ecuador to play in Thursday’s World Cup qualifier, against Marquinhos – his club-mate – the captain of Brazil and PSG.

War plans; an inauspicious debut

From The Atlantic. If you can access it, read it. It describes shocking security breaches, callous disregard for human life, reckless emoji use, etc. Also shocking (but not surprising) is the current administration’s hatred of … Europe. Someone should force the Vice President and his cronies to turn off their phones, sit still, and watch some alluring travel videos by Rick Steves. …

This has been the wildest news story of the week.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I take it back. Wilder, if less consequential, was Ecuador’s decision to start 17-year-old Darwin Guagua against Chile tonight. The boy hadn’t even debuted at the senior level for Independiente del Valle, his club.

The soccer federation appears to be trying to show off young Ecuadorian players so that European clubs will buy them. Federation officials probably are cutting backroom deals with local clubs and then pressuring the national team’s coach to field certain players.

Guagua had been about to enter Friday’s game as a late substitute. But when the Venezuelans scored, our coach, Sebastián Beccacece, left him on the bench. So, tonight, Guagua got to start. (I doubt it was what Beccacece wanted.)

The Chileans ate Guagua alive. We effectively ceded our left flank to them for half of the game.

Apart from that, our performance was … good. Kind of awesome. Unbalanced though we were, we contained the Chileans until halftime and dominated them afterward. The result was a goalless draw. Enner put the ball into the net but was narrowly offside.

We remain in second place. No other team gained ground on us this week, except Argentina.

Incidentally, guagua, in the indigenous languages of the Andes, means baby.

The case against living in las Malvinas

… a.k.a. the Falklands.

Argentina came within a point of qualifying for the World Cup, defeating Uruguay, who fell in the standings. Ecuador rose to second place. We’d dropped to fifth because Brazil and Paraguay won their games; but then we beat Venezuela, 2–1, in what should have been a cakewalk but became rather fraught when Venezuela scored.

Enner scored twice for Ecuador but missed a penalty kick, as is his way. Other outstanding players were midfielder Pedro Vite and goalkeeper Hernán Galíndez. The latter dislocated his finger; Pervis pulled it back into place.

Five games remain for each team. We’ll play on Tuesday, in Santiago. The Chileans are last.

Karin took Samuel to the emergency room last night because we worried that he had appendicitis. He didn’t, thank goodness. Today we’re all much happier.

Colombia 0, Ecuador 1

I recant.

We are AWESOME.

This is the best goal that Enner has scored for Ecuador.

We made a very good Colombian team look ordinary. We did it with the ball, the first half-hour – and without it the last hour, sans one player.

The Colombians created opportunities; but it was evident, early on, that they were going to have “one of those nights.” I sat back and watched them miss their tap-ins, point-blank shots, potshots … every kind of shot.

(I prayerfully sat back.)

We’ve conceded just four goals in twelve games.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin and Samuel are ill. Daniel and “Pip” and I aren’t – yet.

The first snow fell last night. It’s time to start my winter reading:

• Dostoevsky, various
• Kafka, The Castle
• Jack London, various
• Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night

I already have begun reading The Long Winter from the “Little House” series. The Ingallses endure a South Dakotan blizzard … in October.

Ecuador 4, Bolivia 0

With an eye on their upcoming home match against Paraguay, the Bolivians rested almost all of their starters. They brought a team of youngsters to Ecuador.

One of them committed an atrocious handball in the penalty box.

Not a good strategy in the Era of VAR.

Red card.

Penalty kick converted – barely – by Enner Valencia … who, two minutes later, assisted Gonzalo Plata.

Game over.

This was a cakewalk for us. I’ve never seen a game handed over quite so blatantly.

“Not a real game,” said the Peruvians who narrated my broadcast. I agree.

I had prayed for an anxiety-free contest. Boy, wasn’t it ever. It was dull.

After the fourth goal, and with half an hour remaining, we brought on a handful of subs who ran around like headless chickens, trying to score. They didn’t.

It could have been five, six, seven goals.

We’ve played eleven games; scored only ten goals (four of them last night); stayed comfortably within the qualification zone. Failed to inspire. I’ve yet to enjoy any of our matches. Our defenders are superb. Our attackers are bottomless wells of disappointment. The coaches tried too hard to defend early in the cycle, and we never got into a goalscoring groove.

We’ll play in Colombia on Tuesday. That might be our hardest remaining contest.