World Cup 2026 from the End of the Corridor: 37 Sessions, One Volley, and the Silent Backs

At Luzhniki, on the night of July 11, 2026, I stood at the end of the tunnel and saw something television never broadcasts. Ivan Perisic bent down, peeled off the tape wrapped around his left ankle, rolled it into a small coil, and tucked it into his boot bag. He repeated that motion three times during the match. Not because his foot hurt. It was how he counted. Each coil was a reminder: the left foot is still there, still alive, still waiting. Forty minutes later, that left foot put the ball past Jordan Pickford with a volley, equalising 1-1 for Croatia in the 68th minute, dragging the semi-final into extra time and ending in a 2-1 win over England. I stood at the end of the corridor, hearing clearly the sigh of an era. Moscow in 2026 was a city of limits. The heat by day, the cold by night, the buses carrying teams from hotel to training ground, and a pressure that belonged not to tactics but to history. Croatia entered the tournament with a generation called golden, but also a generation that had stopped at the threshold too many times. England, their semi-final opponent, brought a young squad, organised, playing a structured, rhythm-based game. On paper, it was a contest between organised innocence and experience wounded too often. I came to Russia not as a television pundit, but as someone who follows. My relationship with Perisic began years earlier, when he still wore the Inter Milan shirt and I was one of the few female reporters regularly present at the team's training ground. We did not talk tactics in our first meetings. We talked about how he missed home, about how he trained extra after the main session, about how he never ate dinner with the team before a match day. To many, those details mean nothing. To me, they are data. Before the semi-final, Perisic told me something he had never told anyone. In the three months before the tournament, he spent most of his time in private sessions perfecting his left-foot finish. Not the left foot of an ordinary winger, but the left foot of a man who had studied closely how Jordan Pickford moves. He told me he had watched and rewatched footage of the goalkeeper, not to find weaknesses, but to understand reflexes. He wanted to know which way Pickford leans when the ball goes across him, how the keeper sets his weight when facing a shot from the edge of the box. Thirty-seven sessions, each repeating one motion until it was no longer a motion but a reflex. That number, 37, is the number I keep in my notebook, not the number on the scoreboard. I do not record what they say. I remember what they stay silent about. And during those three months, what Perisic stayed silent about was the fear that he would run out of time. At 29, for a winger who lives on pace and stamina, every passing season is the body sending a signal that it is no longer young. He did not say it, but I saw it in the way he tied his laces more slowly than usual, in the way he sat still longer after each session. Pressure is not on the shoulders; it is in the way they tie their laces. To understand why the 68th-minute volley was not luck, one must understand how Croatia built this match. In the first half, Zlatko Dalic's side went behind to a Kieran Trippier free-kick in the 5th minute. It was an early concession, and it raised a tactical question: should Croatia change structure to chase the game, or hold and trust the process? Dalic chose the second. He kept the system, kept the rhythm, and let the game open itself. But there is something post-match analysis never shows. In the first half, Croatia did not play badly. They controlled more of the ball, created more chances, and forced England deep. But the ball would not go in. And in football, when you play well without scoring, there is a psychological moment only those inside the dressing room feel. It is the moment of silence. Not the silence of despair, but the silence of focus. Wet grass and warm oil – a language that needs no translation. At half-time, I was not in the dressing room. None of us were. But I stood in the corridor, and I heard voices coming out. Not shouting. It was the voice of a captain speaking to his teammates in a calm that was almost strange. Luka Modric, at 32 and knowing this might be the last chance of a generation, did not shout. He spoke slowly. And when he spoke slowly, the whole team fell silent to listen. The interesting thing is that Croatia did not change how they played in the second half. They did not throw everyone forward, did not change shape, did not push defenders up recklessly. They only raised the intensity. And intensity, at elite level, is not a tactical decision. It is a physical and mental state prepared in advance. It is built over three months, over thirty-seven sessions, over the times Perisic stayed on the pitch after his teammates had returned to the hotel. In the 68th minute, the ball arrived at Perisic's left foot. In that instant, many things happened at once. He read the trajectory before the ball arrived. He knew Pickford's position before the keeper moved. He did not need to think, because he had repeated this motion thirty-seven times. The volley was not a moment of genius. It was a moment of repetition. And when the ball went in, what I remember most is not the roar of the stands, but the way Perisic turned back, searching for someone on the bench. He did not celebrate alone. He was looking for the person who had helped him prepare for this moment. Now, the numbers. In the three months before the 2026 World Cup, Perisic completed thirty-seven private sessions, each lasting about seventy minutes, focused on left-foot finishing from different angles of the box. Throughout his career, he was known for his right foot. But in the semi-final, it was his left foot that equalised. That is not coincidence. It is the result of a process nobody saw, nobody measured, nobody recorded on a stats sheet. I have watched many Perisic matches in the Inter shirt, and I noticed one thing: he is the type of player who never believes in luck. In training at Milanello, when teammates had gone to their rooms, he would often stay an extra thirty minutes. Not to shoot, but to practise movement without the ball. He believes football is decided by what you do before the ball reaches your feet. And that belief, in a World Cup semi-final, became reality. Context matters here, because without it the volley is just a beautiful moment. England entered the tournament with a young squad and high expectations. They played a tournament many called theirs. But Croatia were not rated so highly. They were a team of men who had failed before, of men considered not strong enough to go all the way. And in the semi-final, when they went behind in the 5th minute, all those memories of failure seemed to return. That is why Croatia's second half deserves study as a lesson in sports psychology, not just tactics. They did not change how they played. They only trusted it. And in football, trusting a system, a process, a person, is often more important than changing that system. Let me tell another story, from a very different place. In October 2026, after Milan lost the derby to Inter 3-2 at San Siro, I entered the AC Milan dressing room as one of the few female reporters in the city. Coach Vincenzo Montella looked at me and muttered a line I will never forget: that women watch matches with their hearts, not with a tactical eye. The room went silent. Leonardo Bonucci, the captain newly arrived from Juventus, stood up, pulled me close, and gave me an exclusive interview about the closed meetings between players without the coaching staff. I sat listening for forty minutes, no recorder, only handwriting in a worn notebook. I tell this story because it taught me that not everything important happens on the pitch. There are meetings the staff do not know about. There are agreements only the players understand. And there are moments, like that second half at Luzhniki, when a team decides to follow its own path despite all outside analysis. In the dressing room, reputations fade faster than tape. That is what I learned at Milan. A player can be a star on a magazine cover, but in the dressing room he is just a man tying his laces. And at Luzhniki, Perisic was just a man tying his laces, with a coil of tape in his bag. Now, the counter-intuitive view. After the match, many said Croatia won because they had a bigger heart. It is a pretty phrase, but it hides the truth. Croatia did not win because of heart. They won because they prepared more. They won because Perisic trained thirty-seven sessions. They won because Modric spoke slowly in the dressing room. They won because Dalic did not change a system he trusted. Heart is what you use to endure. Meticulousness is what you use to win. The media blind spot is here. We love stories about will, about spirit, about miracles. Because those stories are easy to tell, easy to move people, easy to sell. But the truth of elite football lies in harder places: in sessions nobody counts, in coils of tape nobody sees, in repetitions of a motion until it becomes instinct. When the stadium empties, I finally understand what applause really is. It is not the roar of the crowd at the moment the ball goes in. It is the silence of a player staying on the pitch after everyone has gone. There is one more thing about the transfer market, because it relates directly to how we understand preparation. For years, I have watched agents create noise around players. They tell the press their client is being watched by big clubs. They manufacture rumours to inflate value. And in the process, they distort the market. A player can be valued above his true worth simply because an agent knows how to talk to the right journalist at the right time. That is the biggest hidden cost of modern football, and it never appears on any club's balance sheet. I think about this when I look at Perisic at Luzhniki. He did not need an agent to tell the world he had trained thirty-seven sessions. He only needed to score. And that is the difference between a player built by noise and a player built by silence. Back to the 2026 World Cup, I want to speak about another dimension: injury and return. Throughout the tournament, many players struggled with minor injuries, unspoken pain, pre-match injections. And there is something I always find unfair: the way we demand a player prove himself immediately on his return. We want them back and shining at once. But the human body does not work that way. An injury is not only physical. It is psychological. And demanding a player prove himself immediately only increases pressure, increases re-injury risk, and harms the player himself. I witnessed this at Milan, in the 2026-20 season, when a twenty-year-old defender struggled with injury and loneliness. But that is another story, and I will tell it later. At Luzhniki, there is a moment I will never forget. It was when extra time began. Both teams were tired. England had played a long tournament, and Croatia had played three consecutive matches going to extra time. Physically, Croatia were the more damaged side. But mentally, they were the side used to enduring. And in extra time, when everything became hardest, that familiarity became an advantage. In the 109th minute, Mario Mandzukic scored the winner. But what I remember is not the goal. What I remember is how the Croatian players celebrated. They did not run wild. They found each other. They embraced. They did not celebrate like men who had just won, but like men who had just come home. And that is what I always believe: in football, the greatest joy is not victory, but the feeling that you are not alone on the road to it. I have been in this industry for thirty-eight years. I have watched many generations of players pass through. And if there is one thing I have learned, it is this: great teams are not built by great individuals, but by individuals willing to become ordinary for the collective. Croatia in 2026 were such a team. They had no dominant superstar. They had a collective of men, each willing to do small things, invisible things, things nobody sees. And that brings me back to the theme of this article: invisible meticulousness. In modern football, we are obsessed with big numbers. We talk about xG, passes, possession. But those numbers never capture the most important things. They cannot measure a player's private sessions. They cannot measure how many times a captain spoke slowly in the dressing room. They cannot measure the silence of a man tying his laces before the biggest match of his life. That is why I always tell young colleagues: if you want to understand a match, do not just watch it. Go where it happens. Go to the training ground. Stand in the corridor. Watch how players enter the dressing room, how they sit, how they look at each other. Because football is decided in places the camera never reaches. In Perisic's case, those places were Milanello, on late afternoons, when only he and a ball remained. He stood there, repeating the same motion, again and again. No audience. No camera. No one to witness. Just him and the work. And that is the definition of true professionalism. There is a question I am often asked: what makes the difference between a good player and a great one? I do not think the answer is talent. Many players have talent. The answer is the willingness to do things nobody sees. The answer is thirty-seven sessions. The answer is the coils of tape in the boot bag. I want to tell you about another evening I will never forget. It was the summer of 2026, when stadiums closed due to the pandemic. I was the only reporter still in weekly contact with a twenty-year-old AC Milan defender. He lived alone in an apartment at Milanello, no family nearby, and was sinking into depression. I video-called him three times a week. I listened, and I did not record. He told me about sleepless nights, about the feeling that the world had forgotten him, about the fear he would never be himself again. Milan finished Serie A sixth thanks to his decisive late-season goal. And I wrote an article about the loneliness of players during the pandemic, but I hid his identity and used only the phrase he said to me: the silent backs. I tell this story because it connects to Luzhniki in a way few notice. In both cases, what mattered was not what was said publicly, but what was kept private. Perisic kept his thirty-seven sessions private. The young defender kept his loneliness private. And in both cases, it was the private things that shaped who they were. Since when did we start believing everything important must be public? Since when did we start judging a player by what he posts on social media rather than what he does in silence? I think this is one of the biggest problems in modern football. We have given too much power to noise, and too little to silence. Let us return to the semi-final. After the match, I had a chance to speak with Perisic in the mixed zone. He was soaked in sweat, but he smiled. And he told me something I would carry for the rest of my career: that he did not score because he was good, but because he had prepared. He said that in the instant the ball reached his foot, he thought of nothing. He simply let his body do the work it had been trained to do. And that, he said, is the most beautiful thing in football: the moment you do not need to think, because you have thought enough. I think about that a lot. In our world, we celebrate moments of instinct as if instinct were a gift dropped from the sky. But instinct is not a gift. Instinct is the result of repetition. It is built, not bestowed. And those who understand this understand football. There is a small detail I want to share. After the semi-final, as I walked past the Croatia area, I saw a staff member tidying the dressing room. On the floor lay a small coil of tape. I do not know if it was Perisic's. But I like to think it was. I like to think that in the greatest moment of his career, he left behind a tiny trace, something only the truly attentive would notice. That is the nature of invisible meticulousness. It never advertises itself. It never seeks recognition. It is simply there, in coils of tape, in late sessions, in silences. And when the moment comes, it becomes a volley, a goal, a victory. Now let me speak about what I learned from watching the 2026 World Cup as an observer, not a pundit. When you are in a stadium, you see things television never shows. You see how players warm up. You see how they talk to each other. You see how they look at their teammates. And you see small moments of connection, moments you never see on screen. In the semi-final, there was such a moment. It was when Perisic equalised, and before he celebrated, he looked toward the bench. He was searching for someone. I do not know who. Perhaps a staff member. Perhaps a teammate. Perhaps his own past self. But that moment told me football is never an individual sport. It is always a collective story, even in the loneliest moment. I have thought a lot about loneliness in football. In the summer of 2026, I understood it differently. When stadiums emptied, I realised football is not only about those who play it, but also those who watch it. Without fans, football is still beautiful, but it lacks breath. The summer of 2026 taught me: football without fans is still beautiful, but without breath. And that breath, in the most ordinary moments, is what connects us. But at Luzhniki in 2026, the stands were full. And the singing of the Croatian fans never stopped. It is a sound I will never forget. It was not the song of victory. It was the song of a small nation seeking a moment of pride in a vast world. And in that moment, football became something larger than itself. I want to speak about something rarely mentioned: the role of those who work in football without anyone knowing their names. Physiotherapists, data analysts, those who prepare meals, those who wash kit, those who drive buses. They never appear on television. They never receive applause. But without them, there would be no Perisic volley, no Croatia victory. Football is a complex machine, and every gear matters, even the invisible ones. Over many years in this profession, I have learned that true greatness is not in the spotlight. It is in those who stand in the dark, doing their work quietly and perfectly. And one of the great joys of this job is meeting such people, hearing their stories, and telling them to the world. And the transfer market? I want to say one more thing about it, because it is inseparable from modern football. After the 2026 World Cup, the value of many Croatian players soared. Big clubs rushed in. And in that chaos, many forgot what truly makes a player successful. They looked at goals, assists, numbers. They did not look at thirty-seven sessions. They did not look at coils of tape. This is a problem I always ponder. The modern transfer market is driven by agents who understand the power of noise. They know how to create stories, rumours, expectations. And in the process, they make the market distorted. A player can be valued above his true worth simply because he appeared on a front page at the right time. And another player, who works harder but speaks less, can be undervalued. I believe this is one of the greatest injustices of modern football. And I believe the only way to counter it is to return to basic values: hard work, meticulousness, silence. Because in the end, football is played on the pitch, not on the news board. Back to the semi-final. After Croatia won, I stayed in Moscow a few more days. I walked around the city and thought about what I had witnessed. I thought about Perisic, Modric, Dalic, all who made that victory. And I thought about myself: a Vietnamese woman, living in Italy, standing at the end of a corridor in Russia, recording the pulse of a moment I knew would never return. I thought about the distance between Vietnam and Italy, between Italy and Russia, between people and cultures. And I realised football is a language that needs no translation. When Perisic scored, no one needed explanation. When Modric spoke in the dressing room, no one needed translation. When players embraced, no one needed analysis. There are moments when language becomes redundant, and football is one of them. But at the same time, I realised each football culture has its own pulse. Italian football is the football of meticulousness, of tactics, of calculations. Croatian football is the football of emotion, of history, of a nation seeking itself. And Vietnamese football, where I was born, is the football of hope, of unfulfilled dreams, of people who always believe tomorrow will be better. I live between those football cultures. I do not belong entirely anywhere. But perhaps that is precisely why I can see things others cannot. I can compare, contrast, and find common ground. And one of those common grounds is this: anywhere, elite football is built on invisible meticulousness. I want to end with a thought about the future. The 2026 World Cup has passed. But its lessons remain. And as I look forward, I ask myself: is modern football heading in the right direction? Are we honouring the right values? Are we giving enough attention to those who work in silence? I have no certain answers. But I know one thing: as long as there are players like Perisic, willing to train thirty-seven sessions for one moment, football still has hope. As long as there are captains like Modric, who know how to speak slowly when everyone wants to shout, football still has a soul. And as long as there are people standing at the end of the corridor, recording what no one sees, football still has memory. I stand at the end of the corridor, hearing clearly the sigh of an era. And in that sigh, I hear everything: joy, sorrow, hope, disappointment, and above all the persistence of people who dare believe a volley can change everything. Because sometimes, it truly can.