Heartache With Hard Work

Spanish Bombs (live at Shea Stadium) – The Clash

Okay, so it wasn’t a final for the ages.  In fact it was a pretty dire game all around.  That said, there was a lot of tension in the build-up even if the product on display couldn’t really live up.

I attach the blame in the following proportions: 50% to the Dutch, 30% to the occasion itself, 15% to the Spanish, and the remaining 5% to Howard Webb.  To elaborate…

The World Cup final is in some ways doomed to this sort of display regardless of the teams involved.  In a game that matters this much, with teams of the sufficient quality to get there, teams are always going to play a lot more cautiously.  What was the last ‘classic’ World Cup final?  I guess you could make a case for 98, but it wouldn’t be much of a case.  Far more often these days you’re going to get cagey matches between teams who are extremely well drilled and capable of executing the game plan.

It’s not a coincidence that the 3rd place play-off involves far more ‘entertaining’ football every time.  When teams don’t really have anything to play for they’ll be a lot more free.  That’s the tradeoff, though.  You get more entertaining when the stakes are lower.  It’s fun to watch high quality teams play that way, absolutely, but I’ll take the cautious 1-0 in the final over the 3-2 goal-fest in the meaningless game.  Others may differ as is their wont.

The 15% of the blame for the Spanish is an admission by me that maybe tiki-taka is a bit more of a problem than I was willing to see in my last post.  Spain is really, really good.  But it’s undoubtedly true at this point that every other country in the world is going to play in a way designed to frustrate the beautiful passing.  The difference I see between Barca and Spain (who share 6-8 players, depending on who is on the pitch at any given moment) is Leo Messi.  Not surprisingly, if you add the best player in the world to the best team you get something virtually unstoppable.  Messi has the incisive eye for goal and the capacity to dribble through a crowd of 6 defenders and somehow emerge free on goal.  Both of those skills are somewhat lacking in Spain.  In fact, it’s the single true flaw in their game.

A fit Torres could have really changed that.  He’s not in Messi’s class, but he’s still one of the 5 or 6 best attacking players in the world when he’s on.  But apart from him, they don’t quite have a player with that nose for the goal.  Villa is ridiculously good, but he’s simply a different type of player–whose immense skill gets him a ton of goals, but who is at his worst when he’s asked to play centrally as the focus of the attack. Most of Villa’s best work came when he was out on the left, for example.

That’s the thing about Spain.  As much as people complain that they’re not willing to take shots…most of their best players are not actually all that good at shooting.  Xavi may well be the best player in the world (non-Messi division), but his game relies entirely on being surrounded by a cast.  He can’t score the goals himself.  To put it another way: stick Messi or Ronaldo on Burnley and they’d still contrive to score 30 goals.  Put Xavi there and he’d be marked into oblivion and only help marginally.  Iniesta always seems to pop up in the biggest moments (see, the World Cup final) but isn’t really a clinical finisher.  He can make the occasional mazy runs into the box but those are notable for their relative rarity.  Alonso can shoot from range but isn’t that impressive in the box. Of all people, Pique sometimes looks to be one of their most composed players in front of goal.  But he’s only there a few times a game.

All of this is to say that it’s not just stubbornness that has Spain playing the way they do.  They recognize the parts of the game where they simply dwarf the rest of the world, and force the game into those channels.  So the efforts by teams to shut down the game is the big part of the problem, but Spain’s dogged insistence that they’ll continue to play the same way (because they would expose themselves to more danger if they changed things) probably does deserve some of the blame.

Howard Webb only gets 5% of the blame.  I thought he did moderately well in tough circumstances.  He made some mistakes, but I don’t think they were the sort of mistakes that ruin games.  While the foul that actually produced the red card was pretty minor, the aggregate fouls from the Dutch were so extreme that virtually anything would have deserved a second yellow for repeated offense at that point.  The only real ‘mistake’ he made that undermined the quality of the game itself was his hesitance to send off a Dutch player early.  De Jong’s karate style kick probably deserved a straight red.  Van Bommel probably should have had a second yellow.  I can see why he was cautious, but as it turns out the administration of endless yellow cards was simply not going to quell the kicking and biting.  Maybe a red would have pulled them up short.  I’ve read a surprising number of people who say that Webb gifted the game to Spain, which seems very peculiar to me.  I think he made decisions that we generous to both sides but on balance the failure to seriously punish the out-of-control play from the orange team seemed far more significant than the non-call on the Robben breakaway or other Spanish-leaning rulings. If anything, he seemed to be treating the game as a problem of two teams playing recklessly, rather than a problem of the Dutch entering the game with a clear plan to foul and foul again.

Which is to say that, despite the blame I’ve already apportioned, the lion’s share of it remains with the Dutch.  They were far more interested in kicking Spanish legs (and chests!) than the ball for the most part.  From the very start, they committed to a strategy of rotational fouling, and counted on Webb to be scared of actually sending someone off. So even though he kept fairly doling out yellows, they never made any effort to change their game. It was a good bet by them, I suppose, but I can’t see how you can play that way and then be angry about getting a guy sent off in the second half of injury time–when you probably should have been down to 8 or 9 at that point.

It was horrific to watch, mostly for the sheer cynicism of it.  And it’s not just the many dangerous or reckless challenges.  It’s also simply the number of niggling fouls, with the clear intent of disrupting the flow of the game.  It’s a bad state of affairs when one team clearly has zero desire for the ball to remain in play for longer than 30 seconds.  It makes for a stop-start game that is not pleasing, even to those of us who think goals are overrated and tactics are interesting.

Anyways, taking a step back: I’m willing to overlook these problems.  I can understand why the Dutch did what they did, and to their credit it almost worked.  If Robben had finished his chance they might well have won.  And they were mighty close to reaching penalties.  But in the end the better team won.

I think Spain has done something truly astonishing in the last three years.  As holders of both the European title and the World Cup they’ve ensured themselves a place among the truly great national sides of all time.  The only real problem there is the impression that they won this World Cup by grinding out dull 1-0s is likely to erase a lot of the good will they built up with their delicious style in the previous years.  It will probably take another top-class performance in Euro 2012 for the general public to talk about Spain as a contender for ‘best team ever.’  In by book, though, they’re already quite close.  They’ve got as much skill as any team through the ages, and they play together as a team.  They’re disciplined, have a style of play that is flexible enough for it to produce stunning 6-0s and boring 1-0s depending on circumstance and necessity.

And they’re young!  Puyol may have played his last truly big game.  And Xavi probably won’t be up to it for 2014 (but may be for 2012), but a lot of the big guys are still in their early 20s.  If Xavi has to go, they’ve got this Fabregas character who can’t even make the starting 11 right now.  Casillas should be a world-class keeper for years to come.  Torres, Iniesta, Ramos, Pedro, Busquets, Pique.  All those guys could still be going strong (some maybe even better than they are right now) for 5 or 6 years.

I got a lot of predictions right in the past month, but I also got a lot wrong. Brazil did not win and Kaka was not even remotely close to the Golden Ball.  Villa did tie for the Golden Ball (though missed out on it due to having less assists).  I was pretty accurate up to the quarterfinals–where I got basically everything wrong–and then after it.

I may post on football again in a day or two.  I’ve got a few more things floating around in my head that may or may not take on a more coherent form.  And now that things are over with, I’m really missing the World Cup.  It seems cruel that we have to wait another 1400 days for the next one.  But I know that part of the magic is that it only comes along so often.  In the meantime, I’ll watch some baseball, and wait for the club season to start up again.  This is the year Reading get back to the Premiership.  I can feel it.

Thanks for everyone who put up with my World Cup coverage for the past month.  I promise to actually write about some music soon.

Sing Me Spanish Techno – The New Pornographers

Two wonderful, wonderful games.  Each had their own tempo and form of entertainment.  The quality of soccer on display in the second one was phenomenal, which led to a game that always looked to be in Spain’s control but remained close throughout.  The former game was a bit less precise, but in some ways this was great because it allowed for a bit more expansive play.  These games also featured some great goals.  Van Bronckhorst’s opener has to rank among the goals of the tournament.  And Puyol’s goal was a thing of simple beauty–about as pure a header as you can hit.

In both games, the team that would have been heavily favored three weeks ago prevailed.  I don’t think this means the brilliance we saw from Germany and Uruguay prior to the semifinals was a fluke or anything.  But I do think this perhaps serves as a helpful reminder that form is always a bit random and the underlying quality needs to be held in mind.  Simply: Spain’s team is a lot better than Germany’s.  That’s no criticism of the Germans who have a fantastic team and might well be considered the favorites for Euro 2012.  But right now, they’re still a bit raw and just not good enough to deal with the overwhelming skill of the Spanish.  Maybe in two years, but not today.

When they’re on (and they were yesterday) Xavi and Iniesta are simply a class above any other central midfield in the world.  Add in Alonso–who doesn’t have quite their vision but is probably among the 20 or 30 best players in the world in his own right (look what happened to Liverpool when they lost him)–and a good (though not world-class) destroyer, and you’ve got a team that is unlikely to lose except on a fluke.  For all the talk of their ‘struggles,’ it’s worth remembering that they still have only lost twice in three years, and have only drawn a couple times, too.

Germany could have won the game, no doubt.  Despite the class of Spain, it remained relatively close, thanks in part to some outstanding individual performances from the Germans.  And while the wonderful attacking talent that scored them so many goals was mostly neutralized (because they simply couldn’t get the ball, and when they did Spain was almost never out of position at the back), it still only would have taken a moment of brilliance from Ozil, for example, to change things around.  Still, all things equal, I think 1-0 was pretty fair.  And if another goal had been scored it was probably more likely to have come for Spain than the other way around.

In particular, there is the goal that never was in the final minutes, when Pedro and Torres broke in a 2-on-1.  The defender came at Pedro who then had the easiest task in the world of simply rolling the ball over to Torres who would have had ages to pick out a shot one-on-one with the keeper.  No matter how out of form Torres has been, he would have 99.9% buried it.  But instead, Pedro lost his mind and tried to dribble toward the near post to attempt an unlikely shot–and then was dispossessed before he could even try it.  It was embarrassing, and one of the single stupidest decisions I’ve ever seen.  If Germany had managed to pull back a goal, Pedro might have been crucified.  A full day later I still can’t believe how terrible a decision that was.

Still, all of this is to say that this game seems to confirm what I expected it to: that both sides were going to regress to their established mean–and that Spain remain the better team.  To be clear, I don’t mean this game proves this to be true.  My argument is against relying on small sample sizes.  The long scale of evidence we’ve got tells us that Spain should have been favorites, and that the 50/50 odds that prevailed before kick-off were inspired by over-reliance on the evidence of a couple games.

All that said, things can change relatively quickly in football, even more in international football.  And underlying quality still needs to be organized and held together.  If Spain had been playing like France, for example, I’d have been far more willing to consider them pyschologically unstable and thus seriously downgrade their chances.  But that wasn’t the problem.  A team that is still playing pretty well but is stuttering a bit in scoring goals is not the same as a team falling apart.  It only takes a couple bounces (a goal that goes in rather than hitting the crossbar, a throughball that is weighted just an ounce more and finds the foot of the onrushing striker rather than getting caught up in the legs of the defender, etc.) for the former to click into place and suddenly ‘disprove’ their earlier struggles.  That was Spain, and to a lesser extent the Netherlands.  These were quality teams, dominating their games, forcing other teams to change their styles to deal with them.  That they were winning by one rather than two or three goals is relevant, but ultimately not that big a deal.

It’s become popular to complain about Spain’s style of play.  Frankly, I think this is just a case of football fans being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate.  Obviously it would be fun to see a team so good they could score 3 or 4 goals every game by playing incisive, inch-perfect passes every 15 seconds.  But that is just fanciful.  No such team exists.  To complain about Spain in the real world where actual human beings live means you have to pick a different way.  And the alternatives are pretty much limited to defensive shell, kick-and-rush, or the counter.  No one likes the first, presumably.  The second is rightly mocked as the classic, tactically inept classically English style.  The third creates opportunities for breakaways that make your heart race.  But it also entails long stretches of absolutely nothing happening.  People want a mythical style that involves both teams racing up and down the pitch every second of the game.  It’s just not going to happen.

Which is to say: enjoy what Spain does have to offer.  There is a lot more excitement in the game than watching people run.  The skill Spain puts on display when they’re simply passing the ball around is far more interesting to me than almost anything else in the game. And the brilliance that comes from the moments when they do pick out a hole in the defensive makes for brilliant and exciting goals.  On top of that, I really do appreciate trying to sort out the tactical elements of the game.  I can recognize that this isn’t interesting to some people, but I think they’re missing out.  4-2-3-1 may limit breakaway goals, but it’s fascinating to follow the players and see how their position and connections actually accomplish this.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the cottage industry of criticizing Spain and the Dutch for failing to destroy teams is aggravating.  They’re in the finals of the World Cup, and it’s not like they got there entirely through luck or by trying to prevent their opposition from playing football.  They got there by being better at the game than the opposition, and taking advantage of the opportunities that were provided to them.  If you want to make a purely aesthetic argument, well, different strokes and all.  I can’t really say that one style is definitively better than another.

But all the complaints about their lack of a plan B, or their inability to play in different ways, probably needs to account for the success they’ve had.  In particular, the reason why Spain has been so good at preventing the opposition from scoring is due to their commitment to hold back a lot of players.  It’s worked tremendously well.  And the reason they don’t get killed on the counter is that they count on their skill to unlock defenses without relying on throwing bodies forward.  It’s a coherent and successful system.

My predictions for the tournament suffered an unrecoverable body-blow with the quaterfinals.  My two finalists both lost there, for example.  But apart from that, I haven’t been doing too bad.  And while Kaka has zero chance at the Golden Ball, Villa is still a good bet for Golden Boot.

The Golden Ball, actually, is a pretty interesting discussion right now.  Villa is the clear front-runner, on the assumption that they’ll give it to a player from the finalists.  And if the Dutch win, it’s probably Sneijder.  But while they each have been very good, they haven’t been magical or overwhelming.  For all the reasons stated above, these two teams haven’t really been about offensive flair–they’ve been about shutting down the games.  Still, unless something crazy happens in the final, you’d have to think it’s between those two.

If they wanted to give it to a non-finalist, though, things would get a lot more interesting.  Forlan has been the best player in the Cup–and I don’t even think it’s that close.   Not only has he scored great goals, he’s also set the tone for the entire game, has torn apart defenses and created space for others, has held up the ball better than anyone (a crucial task for Uruguay when they’ve employed their more defensive approach).  Ozil has also been great, and Schweinsteiger.

Anyways, there’s only two games left.  And only one game that matters.  It’ll be sad when it’s all done and we have to wait four more years…

Final predictions:

• Spain 2 – 0 Netherlands
• Germany 2 – 1 Uruguay

I think Spain is the real deal–one of the best teams ever.  I think the Dutch are a solid outfit with the potential to work some magic, but also a bit fragile.  While I wouldn’t be shocked by a Dutch win, I think Spain has to be the clear favorite.  I see a game fairly similar to the one they just played against Germany, where they control the ball and stifle the opposition.  I just think they’ll get the second goal that they ought to have scored in the semis.

I don’t think Germany will care about the third place game, while Uruguay might put a bit more into it.  But I still think Germany’s class takes them through.

South America – Shout Out Louds

Oh my.  Can we finally put to rest the meme that the 2010 World Cup is dull and lifeless?  That was based almost entirely on a few drab low-scoring games in the first week, but on the whole has never really applied.  But the knockout phase has been as full of excitement and entertainment as any World Cup you can think of.  We’ll see whether the final three games are any good, but if things hold this could be remembered as a real classic.

As much as I hate to say it, it’s looking more and more like this offensively-minded, flamboyant, attacking version of Germany is for real.  They’ve scored 4 goals in three separate games, two of them against supposed ‘top 10’ teams.  They were rampant against Argentina, who I (and many others) had tipped for a place in the finals.  They scored within 3 minutes and while it took another hour for the second to go in, it’s not like they were under tremendous pressure.

For Argentina, this can only be a massive disappointment.  For all their attacking talent they couldn’t manage to put together much.  People have said that Messi was a failure in the tournament, which I think is crazy.  Despite not scoring on some 30 (!) shots, he was extremely good.  Even in this game, where he was somewhat shut out, he still managed a few brilliant moves.  There were a lot of genuine failures in this cup (Rooney, the entire French team, Cannavaro, etc.)—I don’t see the point in accusing genuinely great players who were merely good (Messi and Ronaldo) of being frauds.

Going forward, I still remain a little skeptical about Germany.  No doubt they’ve taken every opportunity provided by the defensive frailties of their opponents.  And they’ve done a fantastic job of capitalizing on the early leads that they’ve taken.  When a team has this kind of counter-attacking power, it’s devastating to go behind to them early.  It forces you to chase the game and expose yourself at the back.

Still, for all the claims that Germany has been awesome while Spain has stuttered, I think you have to attribute a lot of that to the teams that they’ve played.  I think you’d have to say that Portugal and Paraguay are not as GOOD as England and Argentina, but they are certainly far more resolute at the back.  Both of those teams played to shut down Spain.  Their whole goal was to keep the game tight and muffled.

We’ll have to see how the semis actually goes, but I still tend to think that Spain’s ability to hold the ball is going to pose more trouble for the German tactics.  And I also think that their passing prowess will be far more likely to expose the weakness of the German back four.  A lot depends on whether Torres plays, and if he plays, whether he can be even moderately useful.

Which leads to a discussion of the other quarterfinal.  According to a lot of people, this was another example of Spain being toothless and relatively ineffective.  I guess, though they were pretty solid for the most part.  And while it took a long time for the goal to come in, they had a number of very good chances in the last 20 minutes as Paraguay began to tire.

The real excitement for the game, though, has everything to do with the controversy of the disallowed goal, and the craziness of the dueling penalties.  For the goal, I can see both sides.  This is a classic place where the technical offside law and its practical enforcement in actual games generates some problems.  I don’t really see how you could argue that the offside player WASN’T interfering with play (by drawing the defense away from the onside player)—except that oftentimes that is precisely how a referee would rule.  It’s the sort of circumstance where I don’t know that either team would have been tremendously justified in complaining.

For the penalties, on first viewing I thought the one on Pique was pretty soft, but after seeing it again, it definitely was.  The reason I initially thought it was not a penalty was because I couldn’t believe he would do something as absurd as he did—effectively trying to dislocate a shoulder by pulling on it across the penalty box.  But Paraguay missed, and within a minute had conceded a penalty on the other side.  Again, some people complained that it was soft but it seemed pretty nailed on to me.  The real fun started when Alonso buried his penalty only to have it called back for encroaching.  Another example of the conflict between the letter of the law and the actual enforcement.  Encroaching happens on literally every penalty (including the Paraguay one a few minutes before, AND the second Alonso penalty), but is almost never called. The craziness only expanded when Spain probably should have gotten another penalty off the rebound when Fabregas was knocked over right in front of goal.

After that flurry, it never really looked like Paraguay would win.  When the Spain goal finally went in (after ricocheting off the crossbar three times) it seemed like a foregone conclusion.

I’d also like to point out that one of the big themes from the opening rounds was the dominance of South America and the weakness of Europe.  Well, we’ve now got 3 European teams and one South American one (the 5th place qualifier from the region, in fact), which casts some doubt on the validity of the earlier premise.

Prediction for tomorrow:

• Netherlands 2 – 1 Uruguay (after extra time)

Uruguay has been impressive so far, but I think they’re going to get found out here.  I don’t think they’ll get torn apart by any means, but I predict some reversion to the mean for Uruguay and for the Dutch to raise their performance a bit (as they’ve done in basically every game so far).  Uruguay will be missing Suarez, and have concerns about their central defenders as well.  For a team with a pretty big reliance on the core talent this could be a big problem.  I see Uruguay managing to thump in an ugly goal fairly late to force extra time, but posing no serious threat  after that and going out with a bit of a whimper.

UPDATE: Predictions for the second semis game:

Spain 2 – 1 Germany

I don’t feel confident about this one.  I could see it being a tight and claustrophobic game that ends up 1-0 to either side.  I could see it being a free-flowing and crazy game that ends up 3-3.  I could see virtually anything in between.  Germany has obviously looked much better so far, but I’m still not really convinced about them.  Spain is the opposite: they haven’t really impressed, but remain the best team in the world on pure talent.  I’m going to go with durability of quality over small sample sizes.  But these teams are close enough in quality that it’s hard to really call one a serious favorite.

Wow.  Really, not much more to say than wow.  My time is a bit limited so I’m not going to post full recaps, and honestly I was so amped up with the energy and passion and excitement of the games that it’s mostly just a blur.

All I really want to say is that I’m excited at the prospect of the Dutch finally getting a World Cup trophy, after their agonizing misses of the past.  And that I’m absolutely devastated about the end of the Ghana-Uruguay game.  It’s not quite as sad as I was about the US getting knocked out, but it’s pretty darn close.  The moment when I thought the ball had crossed the line was bad enough, when it was clear that it was a clear handball to keep it out that was worse.  And then, to have a penalty kick that would literally be the last kick of the game, to potentially send an African team into the semifinals, my heart was in my throat.  If he had made it, it quickly would have passed into World Cup lore, becoming the sort of thing people talked about for decades to come.

When he missed, I was absolutely shattered, and felt like the chance was gone.  That Ghana couldn’t possibly recover.  That they’d be too cautious and miss a chance while Uruguay–who are as cool and calm as any team I’ve seen in my life–would simply convert and move on.

Sadly, that’s exactly what happened.  Nothing against Uruguay, who have been a revelation and deserve plenty of accolades (except for Suarez who I’ve grown to hate over the past couple weeks–he’s a dirty player all around), but my heart was with Ghana all the way.

Tomorrow it’s even more excitement.  I’m backing Argentina and Spain to win–not exactly controversial, but after the excitement of today, I believe that anything can happen.

No big surprises in the final set of second round matches.  Despite this being the ‘tournament of upsets’ the knockout stage has been pretty much as expected.  The teams that won their groups beat the second-place finishers in 7 out of 8 games, with only the US loss to Ghana standing out.  And there are not many people who considered the US to be a particularly strong group-winner.  This sets us up with a fairly interesting set of games from here on out, with Uruguay seeking to re-establish a position for themselves among the elites, with Spain and Brazil looking like they might well end up in the final that everyone predicted, with Ghana seeking to prolong Africa’s World Cup experience a bit longer.

Paraguay 0 – 0 Japan (Paraguay through on penalties)

Well, I predicted a draw and a Paraguay win on penalties.  So that part was spot-on.  I did not, however, predict such a drab and lifeless game.  Truly terrible.  Paraguay set up to play for 0-0 and Japan didn’t have the class to break them down.  After 10 minutes or so I was so fed up with them that I started counting:

Over 8 minutes, I observed 3 completed passes by either team in the attacking half of the pitch. Three.  Each team futzed around in their own half for a few sideways passes, and then crossed the line only to be dispossessed or to hit a speculative long pass that overran everyone and went out for a goal kick.

Ugly and awful.  Shades of the Slovenia-Algeria game, or the Algeria-England game.  It wasn’t even as interesting as some of the other 0-0s which were about dogged defending and precise moves.  Neither of these teams did anything to convince me they deserved to be in the knockout rounds, much less the quarterfinals.  God help us if Paraguay manages a freak result like the Swiss did and somehow gets past Spain.

Spain 1 – 0 Portugal

Portugal set up with basically the same plan as Paraguay, with the added idea that leaving Cristiano Ronaldo alone at the top still gave them a possible route to a goal.  Still, as good as Ronaldo is, he’s not going to be able to construct one out of nothing, particularly when he’s starved of the ball.  I don’t like the guy, but in footballing terms I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him.  Portugal has been set up in a fashion to severely limit his ability to influence games; it hasn’t really been his fault that he didn’t shine in this World Cup, but he’s going to get the blame.

This game didn’t do a lot to build my confidence in Spain’s ability to win the thing: a narrow victory from a somewhat fortuitous goal doesn’t suggest a team that ought to win it.  But the quality remains there, and they’ve got Paraguay next who they really have to beat.  That would leave Argentina or Germany in the semis, neither of whom matches up particularly well against them, I don’t think (though I did pick an Argentina ‘upset’ there in my pre-tournament bracket–mostly because I think Messi will have a game for the ages).  I’d still put Brazil as the favorites, but Spain has a very good shot.

A couple of rest days now before the quarterfinals.  I’ll do previews of those games tomorrow evening.

In the meantime, let’s all remind ourselves of just how poorly the EPL has fared in this tournament so far.  Tevez has been great, and there have been a few stalwart performances from some of the mid-range guys in the league.  But if you compiled all the ‘massive disappointments,’ a huge percentage would come from there (Rooney, Van Persie, the entire England team, Torres, the French Arsenals, Anelka, etc.)

No big upsets, nothing nearly as exciting as the first two days of the second round.  Just two displays of old-school attacking teams playing far less exciting football than their legacy implies, but doing so with enough force and quality to relatively easily put away their challengers.

I have very little to say, actually.  The Dutch looked slightly more dangerous than in their group games but still haven’t really impressed.  Robben’s goal was beautiful, sure, but you have to feel like the Slovak defense really ought to have dealt with it.  He didn’t do anything unexpected or surprising.  Still, four wins in four games is pretty impressive–particularly for a team that supposedly isn’t playing very well.

As for Brazil, well they scored three goals and conceded zero.  They didn’t do a ton on the attack, but created some good chances and finished them expertly when they were provided.  On the other side, the defense looked pretty damn impregnable.  I see no reason to change my prediction for them as tournament winners.

That said, if anyone can beat them it may well be the Dutch.  We’ll see in a few days, and I’ll try to provide a full preview then.  Still, for now let me just say that I tend to think that game will go poorly for the Oranje, mostly because they are going to get caught on the counter.  They’ll over-commit and get burned.  That might all change if they can get an early goal which would allow them to play a more cautious game.  And they have enough attacking brilliance to make a goal out of virtually nothing.  Still, the Brazilian back line is fast and strong, and is not going to get turned around like the Slovaks did by some fancy (or not so fancy) running from Robben.

The real x factor has to be whether Robin Van Persie is actually any good.  I was convinced before the tournament started that he was going to destroy some people, but so far he has looked utterly lost and useless.  If he manages the sort of game that made Arsenal fans shiver last fall, the Dutch might have a good chance. If not, they’ll soon join the rest of Europe back home.

Predictions for tomorrow:

• Paraguay 2 – 2 Japan (Paraguay to go through on penalties)
• Spain 2 – 1 Portugal (1-1 at full time)

I really have no business predicting the first game.  I’ve got both of those teams wrong pretty much across the board.  So I’m playing it safe and calling penalties.  The second one is the really tasty one.  I see Portugal giving Spain a really hard time, but I think it’ll end in a bit of a whimper–much like the US game with Spain scoring early in extra time and Portugal not doing a ton to trouble them after that.

Final thought: after all the low-scoring group games, every knockout game has had at least 3 goals.  That’s been fun.  Hope I haven’t jinxed it now.

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.