This, thankfully for some, will be the last of my footballing rants, for the time being anyway. Soon to come, I hope, will be tales of my adventures in Ukraine, including my debut as a restaurant and food critic, as well as some sordid tales from my current stint of teaching at a summer school in England. I’ve spent the past few weeks in a posh boarding school outside London mainly trying to prevent 9-10 year old barely-English-speaking Italian, Spanish and French brats from murdering each other in the classroom, as well as showing off my sporting prowess my going in with 2-footed tackles on unsuspecting 13 year olds. I’ve already broken one poor Greek kid’s finger on a mistimed challenge, but I also suffered a severely bruised chest, which is taking forever to heal and is quite agonising at times. I’m struggling to breathe deeply and raise my voice, a perilous state to be in whilst trying to control a classroom full of mayhem and chaos.
Some of those stories for another time. For now, my thoughts on the World Cup’s closing stages.
Highlights, lowlights and various other sidebars
The mark of a truly good team? In my opinion, truly good teams don’t let themselves fall behind. But when a team does fall behind, how they respond to that adversity is what I look for when assessing whether they are a ‘truly good team’. And that’s why Brazil, Argentina and to a certain extent Spain were interesting cases in this Cup. I had my doubts about the South Americans’ defences before the tourney (not so with Spain), and once those teams fell behind, I think we saw a bit of their true natures. Everyone suspected Argentina’s defence and suggested it would be their weakness, but I was continually baffled by talk of Brazil’s highly organised, pragmatic, defensive core. Really? I felt iffy about this, as mentioned here before, and the Dutch certainly exploited that weakness. Once they fell behind, the Brazilians turned petulant, ill-tempered and looked completely disorganised and out of sorts. Argentina showed a couple of flashes of getting back into their match against Germany, but were ultimately undone by a classier side.
This is why I was impressed with the US. In effect, they were down in all of their matches: 0-1 to England (thank you, Rob Green), 0-2 to Slovenia (should have ended 3-2) and effectively they were ‘down’ against Algeria seeing as they had to win the match. And then 0-1 to Ghana, before succumbing to a superb Gyan goal in extra time. So well done to them, they did themselves proud.
In defence of my predictions. Um, really? I picked France to win it (ouch), Serbia was my surprise pick, I said Slovenia would advance at the expense of the US, said Spain’s time had come after their Euro 2008 success, and probably worst of all, offered up a lazy and ill-researched take on Germany’s chances (haven’t we learnt by now never to underestimate the Germans?).
How can I defend myself? With France, forget it. All I can really say is that I love going with a contrarian pick, and I love backing a team facing adversity. Four years ago I picked Italy to win it on the back of [proven] Italian match-fixing allegations. This time round, France’s ‘luck’ in qualifying and the prostitution ‘scandal’ meant that they were just screaming out to be picked as winners. So much for that. They shamed themselves, they played and behaved disgracefully, and now the entire country seems to be mired in a crisis of identity as the post-mortem is still slowly being conducted from all corners of society. Take my word for it: we’ve seen the last of quite a few of these French players.
Such a far cry from 12 years ago. Here’s an apt comment from the NY Times: ‘A new France seemed to have emerged with the victorious black, white and North African team of 1998, only for the country to revert to type – rebellious, sullen, arrogant – this year.’
Serbia: though I didn’t know it much at the time – I read very little before unleashing my opinions on the blogosphere – they seemed to be a surprise pick of many, including the BBC and the Guardian. So I wasn’t the only one bamboozled on that one.
Slovenia: wait, I meant Slovakia, which means I was right! They got through to the 2nd round, just as I had predicted. Hell, if GW can mix the two up and get away with it, then so can I.
Italy and Argentina: I got these ones more or less correct. Italy lacked proven strikers and they’re definitely an ageing side. Maradona, as entertaining and lovable as he was on the touchline, proved unable to formulate a plan to get past Germany.
A few more words on Argentina and their style, along with another lament on the demise of dribbling. I thank Michael for sharing a bit of nostalgia with me on how, years ago, he would watch Carlos Tevez, as a teenager playing in South America, weaving and winding his way through the opposition, defenders clinging all over him, trying to bring him down only for him to persist and fight his way to getting a shot off. Contrast that to today, and perhaps coaching has something to do with this, where at the slightest touch, many players will go down in a heap, looking for the free kick or penalty (in the final, I’d bet my life on the fact that Robben would have gone down from that Puyol challenge had it occurred inside the 18-yard box). Thankfully, Messi seems a player who still prefers to stay on his feet rather than go down like a house of cards, though I have caught the odd dive out of him.
I sadly missed their match against Germany, but Argentina don’t really seem like a cohesive, organised team – doesn’t part of the blame for this fall with the manager? This goes back to my original thoughts all those weeks ago, where I discussed how the Argentines always relied on the number 10 to pull the strings and orchestrate the play, everything stemming from that individual’s talents. And again, this thought from the aforementioned NY Times piece: ‘Argentina always relies more on individual talent – often outrageous – than cohesion, a fair reflection of the nation’.
Surprise teams: well, I did say that every World Cup seems to feature an unexpected team making it as far as the semifinals, and I think we had that in Uruguay. No one thought it would be them. Or did they?
I’m very ashamed of myself over my Germany commentary, and I have to directly apologise to Tilman on this one. This is no excuse whatsoever, but I was flat-out lazy in my research. Even though they appeared at the top of my list of countries who wouldn’t win it, I actually added them in last, when I’d written all my other opinions and couldn’t think of what to say about them. I said Ballack’s absence gave them no chance, and that their strikers had been in ‘patchy form’. I knew that Klose – like Germany as a whole, not to be underestimated – hadn’t played much all season, but I knew little about the rest of them, and in a couple of Bayern’s Champions League matches, Muller hadn’t impressed me much. That was a lousy basis to go on and I should have looked into them a bit more. Mea culpa; Germany were great, and best of all, were an absolute pleasure to watch, counter-attacking football at its finest. Who ever thought we’d get Germany playing like Holland and Holland playing like Germany?
[Those of you familiar with Bill Simmons on Espn.com might be aware of his ‘Ewing Theory’, which in a crude nutshell goes like this: Patrick Ewing was the star center of the NY Knicks in the 90s and one year he got injured. Most people gave the team no chance, but Simmons argues that sometimes the absence of a superstar player gets the team to rally round each other and can even lead to more of a balanced line-up since teams can’t rely on their one star player. The Knicks made a great run that year, losing in the finals. In retrospect, maybe the Ewing Theory could have applied to Germany sans Ballack? I remember just before the 2006 World Cup, watching Ukraine in their warmup matches without Shevchenko, and they actually looked a more complete, balanced team, an opinion many Ukrainian commentators shared at the time. But once he’d recovered from injury he was an automatic choice in the starting eleven, and any talk of him being dropped was immediately quashed. Same goes with Raul and Spain, where for a long time no coach would dare drop him for fear of the public backlash. This year we also may have seen it with Ghana minus Essien.]
I hope Tilman doesn’t mind me directly quoting him here, because he made a couple of very astute points which I appreciated – if only I had more time to dedicate to researching my ideas, especially by consulting with my football-loving friends. To start with, his thoughts on France and Italy are perceptive:
‘My main point is that France and Italy are dead countries, empty inside. No impulses in politics, society, industry that would produce anything that could make us fitter for the future or so. They are countries in a cast. And....admittedly it is easy to say so now...that is what their game looks like.’
And England, who I didn’t say too much about, originally, got this scathing assessment:
‘England. Please. 5, 6 good players. The rest wouldn’t make it into the Polish, Slovenian, Croatian or Bulgarian squad. Plus, I don’t know what they play. What is this? What exactly is the plan to score a goal? I don’t see goals at the end of what they play. How that reflects on the country? It is like the stock markets and the financial crisis makers in London. They run, they crash, they run again, they crash, they piss fans and people off, but they won’t stop running and crashing...’
Well put. The last word on England from the NY Times again: ‘England always imagines it can [win the World Cup] when [it] comes around, only to rediscover its inhibitions and fatal limitations.’
In defence of my predictions when it comes to sporting prowess, right after I graduated from university, I spent a couple of years gambling quite a bit in [American] college football. I won’t bore anyone, myself included, with the minutiae of all that, but suffice to say that my overall win record was somewhere in the range of 75%, which meant I was able to pay off a small chunk of my student loans during that time. And I quit while I was way ahead. And some bookie still owes me $800 for the preseason bet I put on the Baltimore Ravens to win the 2001 Super Bowl at 40-1 odds.
To sum it up: I’m going to retire from the prognostication business and leave all future predictions for someone with more expertise: Paul the Octopus. What an amazing record he had, perfect in the end. Unbelievable.
So much for this being South America’s World Cup. Some of my dearest friends were busily talking up the New v Old World divide in footballing fortunes, and everyone was calling this South America’s Cup. All I shall say is that I too was impressed by the early performances of South America’s sides, but was thrilled when 3 out of the 4 semifinalists came from Europe, and even more thrilled with the final matchup. I’ll be the first to admit that yes, I’m Euro-centric. I’ve been accused of it before and I won’t deny it.
As for Uruguay, I’m not sure what to think of them. Quite frankly, they were brilliant and mesmerizing to watch at times.
‘What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man, I owe to sport.’
Camus
Suarez: hero or villain? In a topic that will be debated to death for years on end – perhaps – what about that Suarez handball? Was it deliberate? Was it poor sportsmanship? Was it justice, considering that it all stemmed from a bogus Ghanaian free kick, which came from a blatant dive? I’m torn here, mainly because it’s hard to argue that Uruguay didn’t deserve to win that match and because Suarez is such an incredibly brilliant player. But I was and still am equally gutted for Ghana – that was just a heart-wrenching loss.
For further reading, have a look here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/07/world-cup-goal-neuer-football
But how impressive and gutsy is Gyan? After missing that penalty, he steps right up to take the first spot kick in the shootout, rifling it into the top corner.
I’ve not taken the time to research this – surprise, surprise – but if memory serves me correctly, I vaguely remember a similar thing happening in a group stage match at the 1994 World Cup, coincidentally involving Uruguay. A deliberate handball led to a sending off and a missed penalty, and victory for Uruguay. I also remember a Champions League match – I think a quarterfinal - a few years back, where a similar incident occurred, but the referee actually awarded the goal and sent the defender off, the announcers at the time saying that it was a judgement call on the referee’s part. Can anyone recall either of these episodes?
For my money, the two best matches of the tourney were Slovakia v Italy and Uruguay v Ghana. The latter was arguably the most pulsating 120+ minutes of football I’ve ever seen, and my stomach was in knots. Both teams were going for it, throwing all caution to the wind in an attempt not to let it get settled by the penalty lottery.
And thank goodness the final didn’t go to penalties. Before the match kicked off, I was marginally going for Holland, but after those first 25-30 minutes of nasty, reckless challenges, I was leaning towards Spain. When Iniesta scored, I was just as happy as the room full of 9-14 year old Spanish kids I was watching it with. A well-deserved win for the tourney’s most deserving, complete side.
Though…how must Switzerland feel now, having beaten the best team in the world, in a match they could easily have won 2-0 or 3-0? Spain looked shaky in that encounter, and I’m really glad that I was able to watch that match (I had just arrived in Lviv and had other plans which didn’t materialise).
The Netherlands: what an interesting case. Gone are the halcyon days of epic, free-flowing Total Football and here are the days of cautious pragmatism, minimal wing-play and conservative passing. Many a fan of any side these days won’t complain too much if their team reaches – and wins – a final. But surely a lot of soul-searching has to go on when your time is merely a shell of its former glorious self, and in the case of the Dutch, resorts to a vicious, scabrous approach of hacking down players to advance their cause. The final was an ugly affair, and I didn’t envy the referees’ task one bit. If that were a normal league match, Holland would have ended the first half with 8 or 9 players on the pitch.
A good word from a Dutchman writing in the Guardian recently, on how the Dutch have altered their style of play over the recent past:
‘We play like Calvinists, and this frightens us. Van Marwijk’s boys play a sober game, without frivolity. They play with economy and with profit on their minds. And this touches us on a profound level. The old Calvinist caricature of the Hollander has long been laid to rest, at least among the Dutch themselves. But at the same time, every Dutchman fears it may be right, that we are victims of a faith that forbids indulgence in the things that make life worth living – a stupefying football win, for instance.’
When you’re used to being treated to some of the most gorgeous football on the planet, it must prompt an awful lot of anxious self-analysing of the future of your team. It will be interesting to see where the Dutch go from here. I’d say they might have even alienated a lot of neutrals around the world, this author included.
The rise of histrionics and play-acting? Or, plus ca change? Much like everyone else, I hate the diving, the writhing in pain and agony over niggly challenges, and players clutching their faces after getting brushed in the chest with an elbow. Don’t they realise they’ll be exposed as frauds by millions of viewers? But I’ve come to realise that this is now merely the latest ‘tactic’ adopted by the wiliest of players, and that far from condemning it, many actually seem to applaud them for this latest skill, the more so when they get away with it. I’ve gleaned this from talking to quite a few people over the past few weeks, and only when your team is a victim of such chicanery do people object. This is pretty tragic, in my book, and I hate seeing this.
Idiotic locals and one of my biggest sporting bugbears. Whilst watching England v Germany in a pub full of yobbos just outside London, after Lampard’s goal was disallowed one heavily drunken fool exclaimed, ‘that’s the worst call of this World Cup!’ Fair enough point, and perhaps he was right. But I couldn’t help playing the role of devil’s advocate, and so once the hoopla and initial hysteria had died down, I casually remarked on the two perfectly good American goals that had been disallowed. Bad move. As always in these situations, my accent exposes me as a complete fraud. Almost always I’m met with something along the lines of ‘you’re a bloody Yank, what do you know?’ (but often far, far worse) I won’t claim to be an expert, but after years of observation in British pubs over the years, I’d say I know more than 95% of the people in them. And the absolutely absurd, moronic things I hear are utterly astounding. The examples are too numerous and tedious to relate here, but the jingoism and ignorance about football never fail to astonish me.
But here’s one of my great pet hates when it comes to sport: after the post-Lampard ‘goal’ insults had tapered off, it transpired that none of the locals had watched anything other than England matches. These are the same locals, and types of people, who say ridiculous things like ‘Rooney is the greatest striker in the world’, ‘Ashley Cole is the best leftback on the planet’, and ‘England’s midfield is most amazing thing since sliced bread’, without actually watching anyone else play. I can’t stand this. Please, please, please don’t make such statements unless you follow loads of other teams and are qualified to make that assessment.
On three occasions, whilst back in the UK, I faced hostile opinion from the locals when I was brave enough to venture forth my opinion and correct some preposterous statement. Only once was I able to have a decent, good-natured discussion. English pubs are scary places to be during football matches.
Another thing I noticed in this World Cup. It was good to get back to an English-speaking country for the knock-out round where I could finally fully understand the commentary and always be aware of the score and time remaining (for whatever reason, Russian and Ukrainian TV never show the score or clock, which drove me up the wall). But what’s with all the Messianic talk these days? I lost count of the number of times I heard commentators say things like ‘the USA will come again’ and ‘don’t count out Uruguay, they will come again’. In both of these cases, the respective teams did actually equalize within mere minutes of the commentator uttering these prophetic words. I had never noticed such talk before, and it kind of creeped me out.
So, did I enjoy it? It wasn’t very pretty football, most of the time. The quality of the finals seems to deteriorate every four years, and there’s absolutely no doubt about it that the most exciting, end-to-end international football can be found in the Champions League. From a selfish point of view, I’m not sure whether I am able to develop my theory any further – I watched a handful of matches with an astute eye and open notebook, but too many of them were watched in a bleary-eyed haze of vodka and beer whilst travelling. For the most part, I enjoyed it, though this is coming from someone who once watched a 2nd division Nigerian match and claimed it was great football. It’s all relative, really.
Still, I’ve been afflicted with a shade of post-tourney depression. After most World Cups, I get pretty down after it’s all over, but at least now I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied until the next big tournament rolls around, Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.
The best part? No more of those wretched f---ing vuvuzelas. And thank goodness for that – those things were an earsore, drowning out the chanting, hissing and boos and making my head swarm at times. In person, I can’t even imagine how terrible it must have sounded. My fear in 2012 is that we’ll be subjected to the Eastern European ‘weapon’ of choice, the obnoxiously annoying horns that were a feature of every Ukrainian league or national match. They are almost as bad, and I fear that they will become a phenomenon in two years’ time. I certainly hope not. I’m all for respecting local traditions, but can’t we have just the slightest bit of sophistication and artistry when it comes to noise-making? That’s why nothing will ever beat English chanting and its originality, flavour and passion. It’s glorious stuff, and best of all, there’s nothing artificial about it.
That will be all for the football chat now. I’ll resort to my usual lines of thought – booze, women and travelling shenanigans – in future posts.
