World Cup day seventeen – the end of the line

End Of The Line – Traveling Wilburys
Am I Wrong – Love Spit Love

Ghana 2 – 1 USA

Well, what is there to say?  After a number of miracle escapes, terrible decisions to overcome, and various crises, the US team is out of the tournament.  It’s been a lot of fun to root for them, and while it was enticing to think they had a somewhat plausible root to the semifinals, I’m not going to shed too many tears over lost opportunities.  They fought bravely and are deserving of credit for what they did accomplish: first place in their group, and coming just inches away from the quarterfinals.

Ghana were probably the better team, though it was a close call.  They absolutely dominated for the first 30 minutes, during which the US looked sluggish and completely overwhelmed.  Once again, they gave up a stupid early goal and put themselves in a hole.

It’s not a coincidence that the major fault for the goal probably has to rest with Clark, who gave up possession far too easily in an extremely dangerous place.  When the lineups came out, I posted the following: “Clark, Bornstein, and Findley starting? I hope Bradley knows something I don’t about these guys. Yikes.”  Turns out that if Bradley did know something I didn’t, it didn’t translate onto the field.  Clark was dreadful and Findley (shockingly) missed an amazing opportunity to score when he was one-on-one with the keeper.  To his credit, Bradley very quickly recognized the error of his ways–something that a lot of people wouldn’t have been willing to do.  Edu was far more stable than Clark, and added a more credible threat going forward to boot.  Feilhaber wasn’t fantastic, but offered a passing strength in midfield that allowed for Dempsey and Donovan to be far more expressive.  The US was ascendant in the second half and–if not for some poor finishing–would have won the game.

But…that’s sort of the theme of recent years for the US team.  I think people complain far too much about Altidore.  Even when he’s not scoring he does a lot for the team (in the Heskey sense), and he’s still pretty young.  He may never be a Drogba but there’s no shame in that.  Still, he was infuriating yesterday for his inability to score.  All the same, I didn’t agree with Bradley’s move to pull him.  While he wasn’t scoring, he was doing some serious damage given how high of a line Ghana was playing.  The simple ball over the top which proved so devastating against the US (and England) was posing serious threats to Ghana, too.  But Gomez just doesn’t have the bulk or muscle to threaten in that way.  And this was especially troubling because as the US legs started to run out all they could do was play increasingly desperate long balls in the final 20 minutes.  It was weird–just as Ghana retreated their high line and the US pulled off its big striker, they resorted to those sort of moves.

Of course, the easy blame can return to Bradley’s decision to start Clark and Findley.  If he hadn’t done so he wouldn’t have needed to waste two substitutions early and could have got some fresh legs on.  The only problem with that theory is that the lack of US depth means we don’t really have ‘impact subs.’  The drop in quality to get Holden or Beasley or someone on is probably not worth the hit of losing a starting player.  Though perhaps Findley might have been more useful as a late game substitute.  Though, again, if he can’t finish and can’t pass I don’t really see how he can help that much at any point.

Anyways, there’s no point in dwelling too much on the failures.  This was a really fun run, and it’s been great watching players I love (Dempsey and Bradley in particular) really shine.  Even more, it’s been great finally shedding my dislike of Donovan.  It was never really rational for me to dislike him, but it took until the Slovenia game for me to fully appreciate him.  He was really excellent in the tournament and I hope he can translate that into a big payday and a couple solid seasons in Europe.

Enough about that, there were some other big games that deserve at least a brief comment.

Uruguay 2 – 1 South Korea

Uruguay continue to do just about well enough.  They were impressive in the first half and then stolid to the point of breakdown in the second.  But my pre-game prediction more or less held true.  Their capacity to change the tone of the game made it hard for South Korea to turn control into victory.  They’re a tough nut to crack and while I still can’t see them outplaying a genuinely top-quality team, they’re good enough to get lucky once or twice.  At this point, they’ve probably got a 10-15% chance of winning the World Cup, which is pretty astonishing.

Germany 4 – 1 England

So much to talk about in this game.  I’m going to start with a hobby-horse before getting into the rest of it.  Lampard’s goal, the one that was disallowed despite being miles over the line, deserves all of the attention it’s going to receive in the coming days.  Pundits are going to complain about all the discussion of it, and say the following: “if England weren’t so rubbish, it wouldn’t matter anyways” or “Germany still would have thumped them 4-2.”  I have two retorts.  First, we don’t know that.  All the talk before the game was about the lack of experience in the German side.  How would they have reacted to losing a 2-0 lead in the space of 3 minutes?  How would England have fared if they didn’t have to chase the game (and thus expose themselves to the breaks that produced goals 3 and 4)?  Might Gareth Barry have turned into a legitimate football player?  Okay, probably no for the last one.  But still…

And completely independent of this debate, I think it still matters.  FIFA is an embarrassment for its refusal to even consider measures to improve the quality of officiating.  It’s not the officials’ fault, at least not entirely.  When they have only 8 eyes for the entire pitch they’ll never come close to the precision that a million cameras can provide.  That FIFA refuses to arm them with this information–in the name of empowering the referee–is infuriating in the extreme.

Perhaps in later days they’ll speak about the 2010 World Cup as the moment when the tide shifted.  The Henry handball to get France in, the ridiculously disallowed US goal, the terrible flops and dives that produced cards and sending offs, the catastrophes that threatened to ruin two amazing games today.  Fix this, and fix it now.

But back to the rest of the game, Germany were great and silenced a lot of their critics.  They look incredibly dangerous, and it’s amazing how well the team plays together.  Somehow the Klose of four years ago has re-emerged, and Ozil is absolutely living up to the hype.  England, while not as bad as some the post-crashout freakouts will claim, did not look great.  Rooney, again, was terrible.  Barry could have been replaced by a 4×4 post in the middle of the pitch and might have done less damage.  Terry and Upson were torn apart.  Still, for the middle 30 minutes of the game, they looked the stronger team, and I really do think the loss of that second goal made things a lot more difficult for them.

On the bright side, Lampard was great.  Okay, that’s pretty much the whole bright side.  So yeah, England deserved to go out based on the quality of their play, but you still have to wonder about what could have been…

In particular, what could have been had Walcott ever come good, if Ferdinand could have lasted one more fit year, if Hargreaves had been able to come back and return to his prior quality, if they had decided a long time ago to let Rooney play the role he did for Man U this year instead of insisting on the 4-4-2 or the 4-2-3-1.  I feel bad for them, while simultaneously thinking that they’re most a bunch of prats who got what they deserved.  I’m okay with that ambiguity.

Argentina 3 – 1 Mexico

I didn’t publish my predictions for the games today, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I got this one spot on.  Not only the score, but the manner in which it would happen.  Okay, so I didn’t predict that the first goal would be acres offside, but I did think Argentina would get at least one off some idiotic defensive malfunction, which is exactly what happened.

Messi, for me, has probably been the best player in the tournament so far.  And yet he still hasn’t scored a goal, having been denied again after a display of dribbling to get himself open in the box that would have produced one of the goals of the tournament if not for a stunning save from the keeper.

If Argentina does win this without Messi scoring, but with him playing this well, you’d really have to think he’d win the Golden Ball even without the goals.  For his sake, I hope he scores a hat trick in the next round, just so there can be no doubters.

Argentina showed exactly why they could win the whole thing, as well as why they could crash out against Germany in the next game.  They’re so weak at the back and gave Mexico a lot of very simple chances.  Still, the actual goal that Mexico pulled back wasn’t due to any kind of defensive failure but instead was the product of an absolutely brilliant move from Javier Hernandez.  His first touch to receive the ball, his turn to put himself in perfect position, and his rocket shot…it was unstoppable.  I haven’t watched him expect in this tournament, but he looks worth every penny that Man United paid for him.

Predictions for tomorrow:

• Netherlands 2 – 0 Slovakia
• Brazil 3 – 2 Chile

The Dutch really should win that game. Slovakia were awful in their first two games, but showed some real quality against Italy, so you don’t want to completely rule them out. Still, I think this will be a relatively easy win.  In the other game, my head tells me to predict a dour 1-0 win from Dunga’s Brazil, but I’m going to let my wishes run a little wild and predict a five-goal thriller, with Chile going up 2-1 early in the second half and two late goals from Brazil to win it.