Everything is connected. A whistle blows in Doha and within fractions of seconds, via a lattice of mobile phone networks and whispers and nudges, its sound has somehow travelled the 30 miles to Al Khor. And the cheer around the stadium gives the game away, and on the Germany bench Hansi Flick senses a change in the air, and he takes a look around, and he glances at his bench, and he knows, he just knows. He turns back to face the pitch. But his hands are in his pockets, and his thoughts are elsewhere.
Everything is connected. A World Cup group stage consists not simply of three discrete games but one cogent narrative, and if you don’t pay attention at the start you may well miss something that you need later. Here Germany loaded all their usual programmes, moved the ball with pace, did their jobs, scored four goals. But although they didn’t know it yet, none of it was any use to them. The game had already gone, and it had gone in eight wild minutes against Japan at the Khalifa International Stadium nine days earlier.
