Back to Reality: Does the World Cup Still Matter?

As a football spectacle, Germany 2006 was pretty grim: It was all about cast-iron defensive organization and packed midfields strengthened by double columns of steel at their base. It was Italy’s ability to keep a clean sheet, rather than the exploits of its strikers that got it to the final. And even there, they prevailed over France largely by virtue of David Trezeguet’s error by a matter of fractions of an inch in striking his penalty. France had done the bulk of the game’s attacking, although to be fair to Italy, it had taken the game to Germany in the semifinal and reaped the reward. Still, the Italian stars of the tournament are not Luca Toni or Francesco Totti, but Gennaro Gattuso, Andrea Pirlo, Fabio Cannavaro, Gianlucca Zambrotta and Fabio Grosso – and the magnificent Gianlugi Buffon, easily the best keeper at the tournament. Italy scored 12 goals, you’ll be surprised to learn, in their seven matches (because it always felt like they were getting by 1-0).

France did slightly better with its 9 goals over 12 games, but again, it was rarely Thierry Henry who was bagging ‘em. Henry and Toni, of course, shared the grim task of being a lone forward searching for scraps in front of a five-man midfield. Same as Pauleta for Portugal, Rooney for England, Crespo for Argentina and so on. Germany were the exception among the final four in playing a 4-4-2, although even then their strikers didn’t set the tournament alight. Sure Klose finished methodically for his five goals, he didn’t exactly terrify defenses. Defensive organization prevailed in Germany. As Simon Kuper noted early on, it has now become commonplace for a Cinderella team coached by a well-seasoned Dutch, German or Serbian pro to demonstrate the kind of defensive organization capable of holding just about anyone at bay. Look at Trinidad, who held off both Sweden and would have done the same to England had Crouch not gotten away with using Brent Sancho’s dreadlocks to hoist himself up for the opening goal. And very few teams were willing to play the sort of football necessary to overwhelm a well-drilled defense. Read the rest of this excellent post by Tony Karon…

The match fixing scandal

The results of the match fixing scandal have come out. According to UEFA.com

Serie A champions Juventus have been relegated to Serie B along with ACF Fiorentina and S.S. Lazio at the conclusion of the Italian tribunal into sporting fraud, while AC Milan will start the coming season with a 15-point deficit in the top flight…Fiorentina and Lazio have been relegated too after tonight’s verdict by a federal commission. The Florence club, who finished fourth in Serie A in May, will start the 2006/07 season with minus 12 points, while sixth-placed Lazio join Fiorentina in dropping down a tier and have a seven-point penalty for the new term.

As for Juventus

Italian magistrates decided to demote the Turin giants to the country’s second division while also giving them a 30-point handicap for the impending Serie B campaign. In addition, Juventus have been stripped of their last two league titles, from 2005 and 2006.

AC Milan stay in Serie A but with a deduction of 15 points, all will be:

barred from competing in Europe – Juventus, Milan and Fiorentina the Champions League; Lazio the Uefa Cup…Inter, Roma, Chievo and Palermo, who finished third, fifth and seventh and eighth are in line to take the places of the penalised clubs in next season’s Champions League.

More at BBC Sport.

Also see the response of Juve’s Chairman Giovanni Cobolli Gigli.

It will be interesting to see if the top players at AC Milan will stay at the club, despite the handicap in the league and no prospect of Champions League football. I should think that most would stay but there has been strong links between Gattuso and Manchester United. However I expect a mass exodus from the other demoted Serie A clubs.

Some observations on the world cup

A world cup of set pieces: Especially in the knock-out stages, teams relied on set pieces, rather than scoring from open play. France relied on set pieces against both Spain and Brazil. Even Argentina scored twice from corners against both Mexico and Germany. Negative England could only beat Ecuador with a Beckham free kick. Ranieri observed:

“The tactics are playing a bigger part now than they did at the group stages, and that works against the goalscorers. There is less space on the field because so many teams are playing three central midfielders. That forces teams to try to create chances from set-pieces rather than open play….”

Another issue was how coaches packed the midfield, playing a lone striker. France, Italy, England and Portugal all played with similar systems, albeit by shifting the shape of the midfield. Most of their games in the later stages were virtual stalemates. They were separated either by penalty shooutouts or a single set piece. On the other hand Klinsmann played a 4-4-2, but with dynamism that saw players shifting positions akin to Dutch total football. How many times did we see Phillip Lahm in an attacking position, a player far more reliable than Ashley Cole. The Germans played a system that matched their players, England played a tactic that was imported, it didn’t match their game, which leads to…

It’s what you do with the ball: Sounds simple, right? This maybe shocking but England actually attempted a passing game, in the knock-out stages, with one lone striker. Now if you go to the match stats against Portugal you’ll find that England had 49% possesion of the ball. Bear in mind England played with 10 players for nearly half of the 120 minutes. To hold the ball with 10 players, for 49% of the play, against a passing team like Portugal is some feat. But if anyone observed the game, they would know England played most of the ball with players in their own half, with a lot of aimless play. Sven’s tactics were like a square peg in a round hole. While teams like Italy and Portugal can build from the back, England players were not used to such a slow tempo game, an agressive high tempo game is not necessarily a negative thing as the Germans have proven. Their last three games (against Argentina, Italy and Portugal) saw their possesion at 47%, 42% and finally 48%. In all three games they had many scoring opportunities. Talking about possesion football, this leads to the final point of the post…

Phil Scolari is not infallible: Some of his tactics baffled at times. While Portugal dominated many of their games in terms of possesion, they hardly threatened in the later stages. They were toothless against both England and France. Pauletta was woeful at times, hardly sniffed a chance, well excluding a chance that hit the side netting against France. Instead of bringing on an extra striker to play along Pauletta or at least substitute him with like for like (maybe Nuno Gomes?), he took him off, and played Ronaldo through the middle, after bringing on an extra midfielder e.g. Simao. Surely a Sven moment…

“The immaculate headbutt”

From Maradona’s blasphemous “Hand of God” goal to Zidane’s headbutt, football just keeps giving! I think we can call Zidane’s head butt “The immaculate headbutt”. Never have I seen such a perfect headbutt.

What is football anyway?

A very good article by Marcela Araujo at the Guardian’s football blog. She quotes Menotti as saying “The World Cup has nothing to do with football,” Than says:

What is football anyway? Menotti meant that the USA as host nation would not have any adverse impact on the game since the World Cup is no more than “a big business venture orchestrated by Fifa”.

and says

Both views are valid. The problem with the World Cup is that it attracts a much broader audience than regular leagues. Clearly, some long-suffering fans who have put the hours in come rain or shine, who have learnt formations and memorised scorelines, who have experienced the range of emotions dealt by the cruel hand of fate and followed the ball since time began find the notion of fairweather fans enjoying the show only once every four years somehow offensive…

and finally I would disagree with this

Football nationality has nothing to do with real nationality, a leading Scottish-born sportswriter who lives in England said to me last week. Because football is not real, he added. But some of the exchanges ignited by the event feel real.

Well football may not be “real” but neither is “nationality”, nation states are constructs, just as football, only the effect of the later are far reaching.

A scrappy semi-final

I originally predicted portugal to edge a decent, if nothing more, France. Neither side created any major openings in what was a scrappy semi-final. While the Germany Vs. Italy semi-final was an open contest with end to end football, it was disappointing to see such a poor match in the semi-finals of the world cup. What baffled me the most were the substitutions of Scorlari, taking off Pauleta for Simao, while playing Ronaldo through the middle. After the substitution Portugal were even more toothless, it even baffled me more that he did not bring on an extra striker such as Nuno Gomes. As against England Portugal did not seem to pose any major goal mouth threat to the French. But at the same time neither did the French, and if it wasn’t for a questionable penalty this match could have easily gone to penalties. What became apparent is that the 4-5-1 formation that both the French and Portuguese had chosen virtually reduced the game to a near stalemate (this negative formation has become a major talking point of this tournament). If it wasn’t for one dubious penalty decision there would have been no goal to separate both teams. That’s the luck between winning and losing when both teams are so very close in terms of quality.

Hopefully the French luck will run out against Italy, a team that has given the tournament a class act on how to gather between both stoic defending and intelligent attack. There is nothing in this French team that makes me think they can beat a superior and excellent Italian team. I’ll stick to my original prediction before the tournament started, Italy will be the outright winners.

Gambling on young talent

Despite their defeat the Germans can be proud of their performances in the world cup, a semi-final place with a relatively young team is some achievment. Teams like Holland, Germany and Spain have impressed and will build for future tournaments. Most importantly, coaches like Van-Basten and Klinsman were more than prepared to gamble and play the likes of Van Persie and Odonkor. On all accounts they have been vindicated, maybe Sven should have learnt from their example and played the fresh looking Aaron Lennon from the start or even gamble with Walcott (seeing he brought him along to the tournament), but fresh thinking was lacking from conservative Sven. What has been particularly refreshing this tournament is the way a new crop of talent have preformed, the likes of Odonkor, Van Persie, Reyes, Cesc Fabregas, Rafael van der Vart and Lennon have pointed the way forward for their respective teams.

“We have to develop that mentality at make-or-break moments in tournaments”

The difference between underachieving and winning is scrupulous planning. According to The Guardian “England missed more penalties in Gelsenkirchen on Saturday night than Germany have missed in their entire World Cup history – that was the statistic in circulation at Germany’s camp in Berlin yesterday. Germany have taken part in four penalty shoot-outs in the World Cup, won them all and scored 16 of their 17 penalties in the process.” Gary Neville admitted “They are masters at it, masters of winning on penalties . . . we have to develop that mentality at make-or-break moments in tournaments.”

Is it just down to luck, I don’t think that is entirely true.

“The full story of Lehmann’s preparation emerged yesterday. He won the 1997 Uefa Cup with Schalke against Internazionale after making a penalty save. His manager at Schalke was Huub Stevens, who is responsible for a personal database of 13,000 penalty kicks. Lehmann used this archive against Inter and, prior to the Argentina game, he telephoned Stevens.”

and

“The 36-year-old goalkeeper already had the benefit of the German FA’s database – they had copied Stevens’ approach – and having collated the information about who takes Argentina’s penalties and how they take them, Germany’s goalkeeping coach Andreas Kopke wrote it on a piece of paper ripped from a hotel notepad. On it was written details such as “[Julio] Cruz – stand tall, don’t move, dive right”.

It’s all hugs and kisses

According to (www.gestifute.com) Ronaldo says “I would also like to make it clear that there is no problem at all between me and Rooney. I insist: no problem at all. At the end of the game, we exchange a series of text messages just as we had on the day before. This reinforces that I have a fine relationship with Rooney. Between the two of us, everything is clear. In fact, he didn’t just send me congratulations for going forward in the World Cup, he also told me we have a great team, and if we carry on as we have, we will get a long way. He wasn’t angry with me, or about anything that happened. And more: he told me to ignore the things written in the English press on this subject, they only want to stir things up.” So we can discount the idea that Rooney wants to split him in two. Even if he did he wouldn’t have the chance, Ronaldo’s supposedly off to Real Madrid.

Update: Rooney denies deliberate stamp

Latest news on Team England (TM)

The tabloids give us the latest footie news, always a reliable source. An insider for The Sun says “Wayne said he would split him in two and smack him in the head. Who can blame him?” Charming Wayne. We have ourselves a lovable brute.

While the Mirror reveals that after the penalty defeat, “Swedish ice-man” Sven Goran Eriksson broke down and wept in the dressing room.

And it seems Becks has good reason to cry as The Star reveals new boss Steve McClaren may well drop him from the team altogether. Beckham won’t be available for the friendly against Greece on August 16th as scans revealed the ankle injury he suffered against Portugal will keep him out for six weeks. But even after that it is believed McClaren is keen to usher in a new era with the national team, and Goldenballs is not part of it.

Imagine if Sven stayed on for another penalty shoot out defeat, he’d be certifiably insane.