Algeria’s players were strewn on the turf, their faces covered, their chests heaving. Their coach, Djamel Belmadi, seemed frozen by shock. Tears streamed from his eyes. The moment they had been waiting for, the goal that would send them to the World Cup, took 118 minutes to arrive. They had their last-minute winner. And then, in an instant, so did Cameroon.
Across three continents, it was that kind of evening: one of frayed nerves and quickened pulses, of fine margins and small details, of exquisite suffering and perfect joy. Nowhere was that encapsulated better than in Blida, a city a little south of Algiers, where Algeria and Cameroon took turns breaking each other’s hearts.
The Qatar World Cup has been 12 years, dozens of arrests and one F.B.I. investigation in the making. Its qualification process has been one of interruptions and complications and delays, the result first of the coronavirus pandemic and then of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even now, scarcely eight months out from the tournament’s opening match, the field is not yet complete, not fully.
Tuesday, though, was the day when much of what was left took shape. In the space of six hours, there were seven slots to be filled in Europe and Africa, each of them decided in the straight shootout of a head-to-head playoff. For 14 countries, this was the culmination of the past two years and more. This was the moment of no return.