Image from Andrés Cuenca at Reuters.
This article/blog/write-up is part of a longer World Cup write-up I’m currently working on. The section about Uruguay’s run got out of hand and became its own, separate piece. If you want to read that write-up when it releases, follow me on Twitter or Instagram to be informed when it releases! Either way, I appreciate you being here.
As I watched Uruguay play Ghana and looked with dread at the scoreline between Portugal and South Korea—as I watched our greatest-ever player get subbed off and then watched him cry from the bench—as I watched us exit a World Cup in the group stage for the first time in my life, I only had one thought: “at least it can’t get any worse.”
It would be ridiculous to expect today’s Uruguay to achieve the feats of the World Cup-winning 1930 and 1950 squads, let alone the feats of the golden generation we had in the 2010’s. Between 2010 and 2018, a period spanning three World Cups and three Copa Américas, we had a world-class strike partnership, world-class defenders, and the leadership of the legendary Óscar Tabárez (the longest-serving coach of any single national team). In 2026, the situation is as follows.
- We don’t have a goalkeeper with functioning hands.
- Our best defender and captain was injured before the tournament started. Our second-best defender got injured before the first game in a mate-drinking incident.
- Our best striker is a 26-year-old already playing in Saudi Arabia and not even managing to be a regular presence in that league.
And yet, I really expected us to do better. We won the U-20 World Cup three years ago, and Peñarol won the U-20 Copa Libertadores the year before that. We were under the leadership of one of the most intelligent and influential coaches in the history of the sport. We had Real Madrid’s captain. We had the best-looking home kit of the entire tournament. Most of all, we had garra charrúa.
But not a single player from that U-20 team actually went to this World Cup. In fact, three years later, only 6 of those players even play in European leagues. Our youngest player is a 24-year-old Facundo Pellistri whose development was thoroughly shattered by a too-early move to an incompetently-run Manchester United team. It has been clear for a few years now that there is a serious problem with Uruguay’s pipeline to senior football, at least at the elite level: we have promising young talents that get picked up by teams in Saudi Arabia or the US, rather than getting picked up by elite European teams like every Brazilian does the moment they turn 18. If our players go to Europe, they languish in low-level teams or fail to make an impact at clubs too big for them. Our league doesn’t develop players well enough, and we don’t export players to the right places to develop, either.
And our of-age players aren’t that much better off. Ten years ago, our best striker was also the best striker in the world, playing alongside Messi and being the only player to break the Messi-Ronaldo duopoly with a Pichichi of his own. He was an unbelievable goalscorer, a great creator and supporting player, and a passionate, fiery, unignorable presence on the pitch. He also bit people, but, hey, that builds character. Darwin Núñez failed at Liverpool and decided to take his talents to Saudi Arabia, spelling the immediate end of his career as a top-level professional footballer at the unbelievably young age of 25. Now, he seems to care more about getting a new haircut and posting on Instagram than he does about wearing our shirt. We don’t have a leader: Federico Valverde is an utterly incredible player, but he is best as a side character, an accompanying presence that reinforces an already strong team. His spell as Real Madrid captain was recently blemished by a Tchouaméni-related concussion; his spell as Uruguay captain has been blemished by our most humiliating World Cup performance yet.
After receiving news of Spain’s failure to beat Cape Verde (which, at the time, everybody thought was a crazy fluke), I thought that the Saudi Arabia opener would be a great opportunity for Uruguay to get on top of our group; by doing so, we could avoid Argentina in the round of 32, instead having a relatively easy path to the quarter-finals. We were the better team, attacking and creating much more than Saudi Arabia did. This did not make us score, nor did it stop them from scoring instead, putting Uruguay in a deficit that we worked hard to undo for the entire rest of the game. While we were … fine … before the goal, the losing position seemed to light a fire under the players, who significantly improved as the game went on. Unfortunately, so did Saudi Arabia’s goalkeeper, Mohammed Al-Owais (who, by the way, plays in the second tier of Saudi football), and we remained 1-0 down until, late into the game, Maxi Araujo rescued a point.
Two moments in this game stood out to me. The first occurred in the 35th minute: Darwin had a header saved by the Saudi goalkeeper, and then hugged him. Look, I have nothing against players from opposing teams respecting one another. But as a striker on the World Cup stage, the opposing goalkeeper should not be someone you’re hugging it out with. Helping up from an injury, maybe. Hugging? Hell no! Especially when you’re a player that’s so often been criticized for a lack of passion, one that abandoned his promising career for an infinite money glitch and one that has been unfavorably compared to Suárez throughout his entire professional life. One that hasn’t scored a damn goal. The second concerns Agustín Canobbio, who came on at half-time as part of a bevy of reinforcements meant to help with our embarrassing performance. He immediately made his presence known, doing his best to dribble and run all over the pitch. Then he was grazed—grazed, I tell you—on the thigh by a Saudi boot, and he immediately screamed in pain and went to the referee to request a red card. Then a penalty. Which was, you know, whatever. Lots of players exaggerate injuries and demand excessive action; it’s just part of the game. What really burned this into my memory, though, was that Canobbio continued to complain about his apparently destroyed thigh for the entire rest of the game, going so far as to lift his shorts up to show a clearly unblemished spot on it to the press after the game. I grew up watching a Uruguay team with a reputation for physical play, hard tackles, and fighting spirit, one that everybody else would hate to face, one whose players were hated due in large part to their willingness to die for the shirt. And there I was, watching a guy play pretend in front of millions, wearing a shirt that should be considered damn near sacred. It was a miserable game, but at least it ended with a point. All we had to do was beat Cape Verde to guarantee making it to the knockouts. A first-time World Cup team full of players nobody’s ever heard of against a team with four stars atop its badge.
Sadly, we both know what happened next.
On the 21st minute, Muslera conceded a pathetic, embarrassing goal off a low free kick that would not have gone in against any other goalkeeper in world football. While Bielsa had rightfully removed Viña and Núñez from the starting 11 after their performances against Saudi Arabia, he forgot to remove Uruguay’s worst player, and it was two of his mistakes that ultimately doomed us. We did play quite well after Cape Verde scored, getting two goals to end the first half, with Araujo adding to his tally and Canobbio redeeming himself. We were up at the break and on cruise control against an unthreatening attack and terrible midfield that we could easily play around.
Then, a routine throw-in led to Mathías Olivera completely fumbling a pass inwards, resulting in Helio Varela’s interception. This already horrifying scene was made even worse when the cameras panned to show 40-year-old Fernando Muslera well outside his box, running towards the ball in what can only be described as a moment of madness. It was as if the spirit of Manuel Neuer had possessed him, but left his goalkeeping gloves and footballing brain at home. My country had just made the biggest goalkeeping blunder of the entire tournament and drawn level against Cape fucking Verde. And maybe, just maybe, this could have been okay. With the leadership of Suárez or Godín, with the clutch finishing of Cavani or with the motivating presence of Tabárez, we could have scored a third. But, in a World Cup, on-paper quality matters a whole lot less than want, than motivation. And this Uruguay team’s biggest flaw (a prestigious title considering the sheer number of them) is that they just. Don’t. Fucking. Care. Spirit isn’t enough to win a World Cup, but without having spirit, you end up dropping points like this. I went on Twitter after the game to see somebody had made a calculator for our odds of making it through as a third-placed team while losing to Spain. We had already resigned ourselves.
But I had hope. We had done the impossible in 2010 and in 2014. We still had players with plenty of quality, and maybe, just maybe, being in such a horrible position would motivate them, just as going behind had motivated them in the previous two games.
The worst part is that we weren’t even bad. Sure, we were wearing the stupid, gimmicky away kit with a centered badge that everybody but me liked. Sure, we were a much worse team on paper and weren’t coming off a 5-0 rout. But we had 5 shots, only one less than Spain, and defended extraordinarily, keeping Lamine Yamal and the rest of his team quiet. Not that a draw would’ve been enough to see us through, seeing as how Iran failed to qualify for the round of 32, but at least a draw would be something. Unfortunately, Muslera had other plans, and as he let Álex Baena’s shot slip through the fingers I didn’t even know he had, I felt the same horrible, sinking certainty I felt four long years ago as I watched Suárez cry. Only nobody on our team cried. Everybody was frustrated, sure, but that frustration only manifested in chances we couldn’t put away. I do think we would’ve probably drawn if it wasn’t for Muslera’s blunder, but we had the opportunity for a goal of our own and completely missed it. The only player that truly seemed affected by all of it was the real protagonist of Uruguay’s World Cup; Agustín Canobbio. Throughout the match, he played as hard as he could, covering lots of ground, trying his best to dribble through defenders that outclassed him in every way imaginable, and tackling hard to win the ball back. While his performance in the first game embodied everything wrong with Uruguay’s modern team, his swansong against Spain reminded me of the team we used to have. After the 90th minute, with elimination basically confirmed, Canobbio lost the ball to and then horror-tackled Pau Cubarsí, earning a red card in the process. He immediately grabbed the referee by the shirt, arguing while being pulled away in the ensuing scuffle.
To be clear, I’m not endorsing Canobbio’s behavior here. It was a completely unnecessary and extremely violent tackle, and a more-than-well-deserved red card. But, holy shit, at least he cared. At least he cared enough about the tragedy unfolding in front of his eyes, the tragedy he was unable to prevent with just one set of legs (one of which was, lest we forget, irreversibly damaged by Saudi Arabia), to let his frustrations be shown. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I didn’t feel seen in that moment. Like Canobbio, I couldn’t do anything about any of this. Like Canobbio, I find slight grazes to the thigh annoying. Like Canobbio, I’m not a particularly good football player. The anger that he let out on an innocent Cubarsí was the anger that every Uruguayan watching felt throughout the entire tournament. It was the anger that, back in the day, would have fueled our players to do the impossible and win when nobody thought they could. It’s a feeling that, spread thin through an entire team of passionate, committed players can be channeled into the most beautiful game on Earth. But, concentrated as it was then, it can only really be used to hurt. And God, did it hurt.
(For me, I mean, although I’m sure Cubarsí was in a lot of pain too.) It was the most fitting end to a campaign that I would love to forget, but one that has sadly etched itself into my permanent memories through the scale of its mishaps. We did end up in third place, but 2 points were not nearly enough to be in the top 8 best third-placing teams. Being eliminated in the group stage of this largest-ever World Cup, the first World Cup to allow 75% of its teams to go through, put us in a prestigious group with the following football powerhouses: Haiti. Turkey. Tunisia. Iraq. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Panama. Qatar. Czechia. Curaçao. New Zealand. Scotland. South Korea. Jordan. Last but not least, Uzbekistan.
The next World Cup, partially hosted in Uruguay, will mark the hundred-year anniversary of the first-ever World Cup. The World Cup that was hosted in Uruguay because we had been so dominant in the two prior Olympic Games. The World Cup that marked our third major international competition win in a row. The World Cup on which our identity as a nation is staked. For Uruguay’s sake, I hope things change before then. This performance has to result in major, positive shake-ups in the AUF. Something like this can’t be allowed to happen again—especially not on a date and in a place that is so special.
Our golden generation is over. Let us rebuild. We have everything we need to become a country that can compete with Argentina instead of New Zealand. We have one of the strongest footballing cultures and histories in the world, some of its most talented young players, and, most of all, we have a passion for the game like no one else. Or at least, we’re supposed to have that. I’m not sure where it all went.