Costa Rica Loses To Serbia In First Match Of 2018 FIFA World Cup

As surprising as it was for me to find out that Costa Rica was playing in the 2018 World Cup, and the United States was not, I was even more surprised to find that Costa Rica’s first match of the tournament (at 8am on a Sunday morning no less) was being televised live on free TV in the United States, on the Fox network.

This is notable for me because as ‘cord cutters’, we do not subscribe to cable TV, relying instead on free over-the-air network TV and internet services such as Netflix.  I was not expecting to be able to watch any of the games on TV, so it was a pleasant surprise to wake up on this Fathers Day and be able to watch the Costa Rica team.

Except, of course, that Costa Rica lost the match 1-0 on a perfect free kick by Aleksandar Kolarov early in the 2nd half of the game.

I’m no expert on the sport as I rarely watch games on TV and I’ve only witnessed two matches in person, so I don’t know a lot about strategy and how teams tend to play, but I have to say it was very frustrating to see Costa Rica’s style of play, which was very defensive with little attacking. But apparently that is their style, which served them well in the last World Cup and in the qualifying tournaments leading up to this one.

It seemed to me that Serbia controlled the ball far more often than Costa Rica did, and when Costa Rica was in control, they generally were backing up to their own goalie and were very tentative in moving forward, whereas Serbia did a lot of attacking when they had the ball.

In the end it wouldn’t have mattered if Costa Rica had managed to score, but they came up just short in their few opportunities. Their defensive style of play definitely seemed to frustrate Serbia, and the Costa Rica goaltender made several very nice saves and deflections to keep Serbia down to that single score.

The last chances for Costa Rica came in extra play – 5 minutes was initially added, and then a few minutes on top of that, giving Costa Rica additional chances, and about five minutes into extra time they had a great opportunity to score but couldn’t convert.

Given that they lost their first match of the 2014 World Cup and still made it to the quarterfinals, they still have a shot this time of moving forward, but the big bad Brazil team awaits them, so progressing in the tournament will definitely not be a walk in the park.

Hopefully I’ll have more opportunities to see Costa Rica play in this World Cup, and in other tournaments going forward, so I can be a bit more versed and understanding of the game and how they play. Even though they lost this match, I enjoyed watching it, and starting to understand their players and get an appreciation for the team.