If football is a simple game complicated by idiots, then several players in Qatar have done their bit to redress the balance.
Technique, tactics, strength, fitness and equipment have all evolved to take the sport to a level unimaginable when legendary Liverpool boss Bill Shankly was coining his one-liners, but sometimes the uncomplicated approach remains refreshingly effective.
On Sunday night Spain and Germany – World Cup winners in 2010 and 2014 respectively – produced a high-end masterpiece of passing, pressing and counter-pressing but it required substitutes Alvaro Morata and Niclas Fullkrug to give it meaning.
Morata, the terminally doubted striker with 29 goals from 59 appearances for his country started on the bench while Marcos Asensio, an attacking midfielder, played as a nominal centre-forward.
Fullkrug, a burly frontman playing second-tier football last season who only made his debut for Germany a week before the World Cup, saw ten goals in 14 Bundesliga games this term finally winning the argument with the ‘yeah but can he dos’ of the doubters.
Both produced sublime, simple finishes which provided the blue-chip game with its only goals.
We have been here before. In 1986 the World Cup belonged to Diego Maradona but the goal-hanging Gary Lineker wore the Golden Boot. Four years later hosts Italy boasted the aristocratic Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli in attack but it was the blue-collar Sicilian Toto Schillaci who finished the tournament as top scorer.
In Qatar, Cody Gakpo has emerged as the fuss-free striker to beat.
Nominally a winger, the towering 23-year-old is centre-forward for Netherlands and has scored goals reminiscent of Ruud van Nistelrooy, another PSV attacker with Manchester United links.
In an era where elite attacks grind down defences with movement, speed and feints, breaking through when there is nothing left to attack, running up the score when opponents have nothing left to defend, Gakpo has shown it is still possible to win with the first strike, the overwhelming show of power.
While the teams which define the early part of the 21st century – Messi’s Barcelona, Spain’s treble title winners and Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City – work their way to goal before delivering the fatal blow, Gakpo’s glancing header against Senegal, left-foot thumper against Ecuador and right-foot drive against Qatar were goals of emphatic simplicity that could have been scored by Bobby Charlton or Alan Shearer.
A direct approach to goalscoring has lifted Gakpo to the top of the fledgling Golden Boot standings in Qatar, three efforts so far putting him alongside the homeward-bound Ecuador striker Enner Valencia, Kylian Mbappe and England’s own Marcus Rashford.
For all the thrills and skills of the France talisman, Mbappe has also scored goals of ruthless directness while Rashford got in on the act with a no-nonsense free-kick against Wales that brooked no argument.
The World Cup could yet be won by art and craft but Valencia, Mbappe, Rashford and above all Gakpo have shown that, for now, simplicity is king.
MORE : Qatar set another unwanted record as World Cup hosts lose to the Netherlands
MORE : England fans terrified about ‘ITV curse’ striking again for World Cup 2022 Senegal match
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