Well-known commentator Gennady Orlov admitted to “Sport Day by Day” that he considers the World Cup in Qatar the main television event of 2022, and the Moroccan team the opening of the year.

– Soccer World Cup. Not just the ending, but the entire ending. What Asian footballers! They have always been fast, they have a reaction, so they do kung fu and other martial arts. They are all built on reaction. The reaction is from birth in a person. And this reaction allowed them to quickly work with the ball, but before it was episodes, and now they suddenly took the Soviet school of physical training as a basis.

During winter training, Soviet footballers paid a lot of attention to crosses. They understood that they were inferior to foreigners in the technique of working with the ball, because our fields were bad, and there was no tradition of such work. Here we were inferior to the best technical players in Europe and the world. And we made a bet that we would compensate for this with our physical fitness and kept the pace for 90 minutes. We did an interview with Yuri Pavlovich Semin, and I offered to speculate on this topic. What happened now? Why can’t Russian footballers keep pace for 90 minutes now? Well, not all of our teams can.

Why can’t they?

– Semin said that they switched only to high-speed work with the ball, but they refused that voluminous work. It happened somewhere during the transition from the USSR to Russia. More foreigners appeared and it seemed, how will you drive foreigners to run cross-country 10 km? They can’t and it’s not accepted. Yes, we have lost our endurance of Soviet football. Foreign rivals always reproached us: “Well, how much do you run? We can’t do that.” But you can run and run. And suddenly, now the Japanese and Koreans began to keep the pace for 90 minutes. This is the opening of the World Cup.

What is the Morocco team? It’s a championship blast! With the largest number of fans in the stands. All their players play in Europe and they are well prepared, this is on the one hand.

On the other hand, such an ending crowned the final part. I have been to 11 world championships and this has never happened. In the first half, Deschamps corrected himself and changed two players in the 40th minute. The second half is completely different and the French go to a draw – 2:2, and then – 3:3. What are penalty shootouts? This is luck, fortune, Russian roulette. We were lucky here, well, due to the fact that the Argentine goalkeeper turned out to be stronger. The game was then equal after 120 minutes, so the defeat of the French was not so strong. They just got unlucky.

– Can the Moroccan team be called the discovery of the year?

— What do you think? There cannot be two opinions. Of course, a discovery. They’ve never played like this before.

Argentina won the 2022 World Cup by defeating France in the final. Croats won bronze medals in the game with the team of Morocco.