true heroes of the pitch

My two longtime favorite players.  Whether it's at Barca or for Spain... they are true heroes of the pitch.  After their performances in this World Cup, I don't think they'll have to pay for another meal or drink for the rest of their lives.

These goofy photos are FC Barcelona postcards that I purchased in Barcelona in 2008.  I carry them with me at all times.  Is there something wrong with that?  Why are you looking at me so funny?

Onward!

I'll post my own idiosyncratic thoughts about the Spain v Germany match tomorrow... until then you can read Jonathan Wilson's excellent and cohesive article about the match instead.  He's spot on.  Also, German coach Joachim Low was a total gentleman after the match with his comments.  Not always the easiest thing to be.  As usual, Germany were good, difficult opponents. 

I'm more relaxed now than I was a few hours ago, but my brain is still squiggly.  But I'm happy.  Very, very happy. 

may his pernicious soul rot half a grain a day! he lies to the heart...

 
I have no idea why I got in the car with him.

She promised me that she'd use the $20 for food.

If you had seen his eyes when he asked me... would you have called him a liar?

She seemed so sincere.  I really did think she had changed.

He said someone must have stolen it when he wasn't looking.

Why the hell did I sleep with her again?  After everything she's done to me!

I believed her.   I believed him.
I hate you.

I can't believe what a fool I was to have trusted Diego Maradona.  There's no question regarding the brilliance of Maradona the player.  But the coach?  I had suspicions from the start.  In fact, I thought he was a terrible choice.  I wasn't alone.  Numerous Argentinians, and admirers of the team from around the world, voiced similar outrage over his role as head of the national squad.  How could this crazy artist of the pitch, this holy fool of the beautiful game, command a team into the most prestigious of all football arenas... the World Cup?  Well, obviously he can't.  We know this now after Argentina's severe beat-down by Germany.  We know this now, because some of us still can't get the images of the assault out of our heads.  I know this now because I trusted this man to lead the charge when I knew deep down, even at the beginning of the tournament, that Argentina's road to glory was folly.

Thankfully, this incident doesn't hurt like the 2006 loss to Germany in the quarterfinals did.  Not sure why.  Maybe it was because Argentina didn't even score in this one.  If we had put up a real fight, if Messi had actually connected with the net, it would perhaps be a different story.  But punches still bruise and I feel achy all over.

Over the last few weeks, Maradona had convinced me that maybe this team really did have it in them to go all the way.  Like I said, I initially wrote them off.  Argentina, because of the way they approach the game, are dear to my heart.  But so is Spain and I've been praying for a realistic Spanish run for the cup since 2008 when pretty much the same squad won the European Championship, a treasured moment in my football-watching life.  Beautiful football won the day, style and short tidy passing conquered Blitzkrieg strength and power, and there was free money and booze for everyone!  Ah, yes, it was wonderful.

Argentina couldn't figure out how to diffuse the German onslaught.  I hope Spain can remember how they did it to them in the Euro final.  It's not impossible, as Serbia reminded us all when they clipped Germany's passing game.  But Serbia was all about defense... and Spain don't truck with that anti-football bullshit.  So... we'll see in a few days.

In the meantime... I'm going to keep my hate on for Maradona.  Pendejo!

random thoughts about the swiss, spanish, and united states teams

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?  The cuckoo clock.

-- Harry Lime (Orson Welles) justifying his murderous amorality in The Third Man (1949).  

The Swiss have given us much more than the cuckoo clock and being the punchline to one of the finest films of all time: actors Ursula Andress, Irene Jacob, Bruno Ganz; painters Henry Fuseli, HR Giger, Paul Klee; sculptor Alberto Giacometti; philosopher/writer Jean-Jacques Rosseau; psychiatrist CG Jung; revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, just to name a few of the more notable individuals, all hail from Switzerland.  Oh, and Celtic Frost.  Aren't they Swiss?  If not, they should be.

But when it comes to football, the Swiss are duds.  Yes, they routinely make the World Cup (they've appeared nine times, reached the quarter-finals three times, and hosted it in 1954), though they play a sort of unimaginative, defensive-oriented football that only a countryman could love.  Yet somehow... they managed to beat Spain in the first round of this year's World Cup.

The Swiss "style" is not the sort of football that aims to win the hearts and minds of neutrals or lovers of an attacking, progressive style.  Current Swiss coach Ottmar Hitzfeld is not interested in dazzling the crowds with some new alchemically-laced hybrid of Brazillian tiki-taka-style with Northern European strength and power with the Dutch Totaalvoetbal ideal (which, to be honest, the Dutch don't really play any longer).  He's simply interested in grinding out results by forsaking the width of the field for the claustrophobia of the inside, clipping the opposing team's ambition for flight on the wings, and only risking an offensive move on the counter-attack when there's nowhere else to go but forward.  Only score when you've run out of all other options.  It's a tactic that oddly, brilliantly works against teams like Spain, as the strict Swiss taught them in that first round 0-1 shocker.  It's the Swiss version of catenaccio, the legendary and infamous Italian style of football obstinacy.

Hitzfeld, though, did not swipe his version of the defense-first tactic from the Italians' playbook... he got it from US men's national coach Bob Bradley.  Specifically, studying videos of the 0-2 US victory over Spain in the 2009 Confederations Cup semi-finals, a shocking defeat for the current European Champions.  In that match, Bradley--who has never been at the top of anyone's list of all-time great football tacticians--managed to stymie the living gods of fluid, creative, gyroscopic football with American grit and teeth-gnashing defense.  But the US team not only managed to kill off the Spanish offense, they managed to score against them as well.  This was no ordinary win.  This was a shockwave of mammoth proportions.  Bradley's boys did something that  no other team had managed to figure out the previous summer during Euro 2008--they toppled the greatest football team on earth.  Forget Dunga's squad of efficient though lackadaisical Brazilian hitmen, who are labeled "The Greatest Football Team" by every ignorant fan and announcer who wouldn't know brilliant tactics if they mainlined them.  Luis Aragones's Spanish squad, a team deep with talent and ingenuity, proved to the skeptics that imaginative, devil-may-care football could work during large and important tournaments, contradicting all of the unbelievers who regurgitate like clockwork the old line that only defensive-minded, ugly football wins championships.

Aragones abandoned Spain for managing Turkish side Fenerbahce immediately after the Euro 2008 triumph, but new coach Vicente del Bosque has continued the team's breakneck style of precision passing, possession, and midfield majesty.  The team has loads of talent, a deep bench, and is attractive to watch.  It's art of a kind and puts the over-hyped Brazilians to shame.  But since losing against the US and now the Swiss, supporters and admirers of the Spanish team are now faced with a horrifying reality--Euro 2008 might have been a one-time deal for this line-up.  The team may have effectively broken the curse of not having won a major title since the 1964 Euro Championship, yet Spain is currently finding it difficult to tap into that wellspring of ingenuity and flashing inspiration that has served them well.  Bradley and Hitzfeld have both shown that it is possible to flush out Spain's love of commandeering the sides of the pitch by boxing them in the middle, then making them pay on the counter-attack when Spain finally loses possession.

It's a good tactic, though one that isn't foolproof.  As with playing a progressive, forward style of game, this stubborn anti-football also comes with risk.  If the bus you park in front of the net isn't strong enough to take the onslaught of shots, if all eleven devils don't step up bravely and defend, defend, defend (anti-Total Football)--a team like Spain will eventually exhaust you, and eventually crush you.  Your defense must be just as bold, aggressive, and dexterous as the opposing team's forward momentum.

After watching Spain win against Honduras yesterday (2-0), I'm still not sure what to think about them.  I came into the tournament swaggering with confidence, just like them, sure that they would sweep on through the group stage like true champions.  But that hasn't happened.  Striker Fernando Torres can't connect with anything (such a petulant, brittle player, but lethal when the blood is up), the cerebral yet brave Iniesta is still not in the best form, and the team seems... well, uninspired.  They look like all of the Spanish teams that have come into previous World Cups and underperformed.  The US, on the other hand, are playing with passion and, despite some cautious openings that have cost them goals, real confidence.  I'd love to see them not concede early goals... but the fact that they've bounced back with real American gusto gives me more than hope that they can beat Algeria decisively and make it out of the group.

Switzerland... hmmm.  They're technically still in the Cup despite losing to an energetic though sloppy Chile yesterday (1-0), although in their match against Honduras they will be missing their midfielder Valon Behrami because of a red card.  No matter.  All the Swiss need to do to beat Honduras is park a bigger bus in front of the net and hope Spain lose to Chile.  This Cup has been full of surprises.  Hell, Greece could beat Argentina (the game I'm watching while I type this).  It's nil-nil at the moment (68') and I don't really think it will happen... but you never know.  Stranger things have happened.  And as this tournament has shown us... anti-football is once again on the march.

more misc. links

Just some quick links before the Algeria v England match gets under way in a half-hour or so.

The first one is bit about how the Swiss beat Spain in that first round 0-1 match.  Seems that Swiss manager Ottmar Hitzfeld has Bob Bradley's tactics to thank.  Strange but true!

Second... work isn't getting done around the world.  I could have told you that was going to happen.

And last but certainly not least... in preparation for their match against England, the Algerians watched Gillo Pontecorvo's brilliant The Battle of Algiers (1965).  Brilliant.  Let's hope they practiced their offensive "skills" as well.

misc. links

While I wait for the France v Mexico match to start, I thought I'd post a few cool links of things that caught my attention today.

First... World Cup: Science Fiction.  Stunning images from space of the countries participating in the world's favorite sporting event.

42 photos of the action on the pitch and of supporters around the world.  Excellent stuff.

The Spanish media is not giving the national team any breaks after their shocking loss to Switzerland.  As with Lisa, I'm not too concerned about Spain's performance.  It happened.  No need to panic... yet.

"Here’s a few numbers that the site EPL Talk put together from various sources on the tv audience that the England v USA game drew:

Around 17 million people in the United States watched the game at home — a number bigger than any of the first four games of the current NBA final.

The England match drew more US viewers than every game of the 2010 Stanley Cup hockey Final. The June 9 broadcast of the Stanley Cup Final on NBC was the most-watched NHL game in the United States in 36 years with 8.28 million viewers — about half of the amount that watched an opening round group match in the World Cup.

Overall, the first five matches of this year’s World Cup drew around double the audience that tuned in four years ago. How’s that for growth?"

That above quote comes from a great article on how well the World Cup and football in general is doing in the US.  Pretty damn well.  The sport is here... we're here... deal with it.

round one down

Five days... 16 matches... 26 goals. I know people are bitching about the lack of goals, but I think things are going okay for the most part. Of course I'd love to see more goals. There have been plenty of scoring opportunities--did you see Spain in the second half, people?--and plenty of bad luck tagging along. Damn these capricious soccer gods.  These are early days... it'll get furious soon enough.

Today, for instance, in the South African v Uruguay match, the first match of the second round. Uruguayan striker Diego Forlan finally came to life delivering two goals--one a spectacular, powerful long-range strike that rebelled against a deflection and still found net; the second one a lethal penalty kick--which magnificently commandeered the midfield like the intelligent veteran player he is. Bravo. I was sorry to see that Uruguay's victory came at the expense of the South Africans (the real underdogs of this tournament), but this is football and football is frequently heartbreaking. If your heart isn't breaking now, odds are that it will be by the end of this thing.

So I'm not worried. I bristle watching so many teams resort to defense first measures, but those sort of tactics are to be expected during big tournaments like this. I'll probably do a post at some point about the different styles on display here... for now, though, I just want to prepare for Thursday's matches. And try to put the Spain loss behind me. From elation to concern to worry to horror in the span of 90 minutes. You know... football.

anxious and confident... waiting for the world cup

With less than two days to go before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa gets rolling, it's probably safe to say that I'm not the only football fan out there anxiously surfing the net reading blog posts, news stories, and tweets regarding the tournament.  Also, I'm glued to the television watching old World Cup matches on ESPN Classic... trying to manage to get some work done in the process as well.  Though honestly, it's been more of the former than the latter.

Of course, once the tournament ends in a month, I'll be relieved, exhausted, and anxious to forget about loyalties to country for a welcome return to league play.  As Lisa posted last week, despite my anxiousness for it to begin and my sometimes unfortunate romance of the game and the tournament... the World Cup is rarely pleasurable, hardly comforting in the manner that being hopelessly in love should be.  It's agony, pain, and masochism of the highest order.  What that says about my personality... well, I'll leave it at that.

But unlike previous years, I actually have confident, though cautious, optimism for the US team.  Still not a fan of the lumbering defensive-minded hybrid of catenaccio that coach Bob Bradley favors, but we look fit, solid, and confident.  Not overly-confident, mind you, like Ingerland, bloody Ingerland.  Confident in a good way.  So I have high hopes that we'll beat England on Saturday.  The World Cup rarely goes as predicted, though, so take my wish-fulfillment with plentiful salt, lime, and the tequila of your choice.

The last time we played England (I believe) was on May 28, 2008 at Wembley in London.  Two of us had just returned from three months in Spain and had plans to go see the game live... but we ended up watching the match at a pub down from our B&B instead... in a room full of English supporters.  We were roundly humiliated, as was the American team who lost 2-0 against a slovenly English squad. 

Last year's US appearance at the Confederations Cup in South Africa was a big improvement and I found myself falling for our scrappy Yanks in a way that I've never felt before.  Not only did the US look like they could beat Brazil in the final, the guys seemed to feel it as well.  This wasn't a fluke, this was the fulfillment of years of promise.  The US lost the final 3-2, but it was a line in the sand for me.  We weren't going back, we weren't going to return to the dark days of the 2006 World Cup embarrassment. 

We've done well in the big tournament before.  The 2002 World Cup for instance.  But our brutal assault at the feet of the Czechs in 2006 left some long-lasting bruises on many fans and will hopefully remain merely an aberration in the overall history of the national team.  Probably not, I know, but I'm trying to be optimistic these days.  Hopeful.

I know we can beat England.  They don't have any fear... but that's just a sad reminder of their arrogance, naivete, and penchant for self-delusion.  Crazy island dwellers, you know.  I don't for a second think we can win the whole thing, but I do know we can take down Ingerland.  And that's all that matters at this point.  One game at a time....

a few thoughts on the confederations cup, part two: Spain, South Africa

Spain. Spain started out cool, calm, and collected, tiki-taka-ing right on over poor New Zealand with a 5-0 blowout. Here I confess that it really never occurred to me that they wouldn't be in the final. They entered the tournament with a winning streak of more than 30 games; who was going to defeat them en route? Certainly not the US! Mea culpa. In retrospect, it's quite clear to me I was guilty of that very arrogance I despise in other fans and players: the assumption that my team possessed some sort of entitlement to victory. That'll teach me.

You might say that the Spain we saw in South Africa this month was the Spain we're more accustomed to seeing on the world stage, the Spain everyone predicted in Euro 2008: starting out strong and gorgeous, hardly seeming to break a sweat, followed by utter disintegration. Some pundits have said in the past that Spain can't win because the Spanish team, like Spain itself, is hopelessly divided by regionalisms: they are Basques, perhaps, or Catalans, before they are Spaniards. I don't know if that's true, or ever has been, but I don't think it was the case in South Africa on June 24.

I've been puzzling over what went wrong there. The short version is that the US defeated Spain because the US played superior football that day, and it's true--Xavi was slightly off throughout the game; David Villa and Fernando Torres were terrible, incapable of finishing (and the pressure Torres was placing upon himself in the third-place match as a result was unmistakeable). But beyond that--and here I'm looking for reasons, not making excuses--Iniesta, who plays so well with Xavi, was missing, still recovering from late-season injuries. And a number of the key players were Barca boys--and thus at the end of an exhausting season in which they claimed the triple.

At any rate, the pressure's off Spain now to maintain that winning streak. Here's hoping they've been reminded of their vulnerability and they'll learn from their mistakes in time to claim their first-ever World Cup victory in 2010.

South Africa. These guys were probably my happiest surprise of the tournament. Well, okay, besides the US's excellent run into the finals. I don't get to see African teams play nearly as much as I'd like, and I enjoyed watching Egypt play a lot, but I knew they were good: South Africa was spirited and much better than I expected, and along with Spain certainly provided the most thrilling five minutes of the entire tournament in the third-place playoff on Sunday. It was looking like a sure 1-0 defeat for Spain right up to the 88th minute when Daniel Guiza sank the ball home to ensure overtime. But wait! One absurd minute later, Guiza did it again! Oh, the stricken faces of the South Africa fans! Shock, despair, tears, departures in the stands. But wait--here's stoppage time and in the 93rd minute Katlego Mphela (who'd also scored the previous goal) leveled the scoreline again. I was rooting for Spain but I screamed "Oh yeah!" Apparently as the roar went up within the stadium, the fair-weather fans who were on their way out went running back in. South Africa fell anyway in the end, to Xabi Alonso's overtime goal, but this time you felt they'd had a decent chance versus the cruelty of those last-minute shockers, and while the fans looked sad again, there was less of the punched-in-the-gut air about them. I loved this team and I can't wait to watch them again next year, and I like their capable coach Joel Santana, a Brazilian ex-defender with a history of saving clubs from relegation in Brasileirão, Brazil's top league.

to be continued...

Euro 2008 Celebrations in Madrid

Here in our little village in rural Ireland... no one seemed to care about the Euro final but Lynda and me. And certainly no one cared about Spain. Looks like we planned our exit from Spain all wrong. Oh, how I wish I'd been in Madrid yesterday. Well... there's always 2010.

Xavi

Those of us who regularly watch and follow Barcelona are well aware of the craft and alchemical transcendence that Xavi and Iniesta can conjure up on a weekly basis. They work as a team within a team--quick thinking, fleet of foot, unselfish, and daring enough to slip passes through a clomp of defenders when it seems most unstable, almost ruinous to do so.

Both players had an outstanding Euro 2008, and obviously UEFA thought so as well, as Xavi was named best Player of the Tournament. Brilliant. Nine Spanish players in all were named to the 2008 team of the tournament as well: Casillas, Marchena, Puyol, Senna, Iniesta, Xavi, Fabregas, Torres, and Villa.

What a great, great tournament. I need some space and time to think, to soak it all in before writing about it more....

In the meantime, you can read more about the player of the games here.

Euro 2008 Final: Spain Victorious At Long Last!

Spain 1, Germany 0

Football romantics of the world rejoice!

Euro 2008 Half Time: Spain v Germany 1-0

Euro 2008 Final: Spain v Germany

And so... here we are. It's all come to this. It's sundown and good luck to you both. Keep it clean and keep it pretty. Or else....

See you at half time.

Villa Out of Euro Final

For fans of Spain, the horrible news has been confirmed... forward David Villa is out of the final against Germany (to be played on Sunday) after suffering a thigh injury early on in last night's semi-final match against Russia.

So Villa is out... and lone striker Torres will probably remain damp and uninspired. He really has had an awful tournament. But better he than the whole team. Regardless, there is still plenty of fire power and crafty goal scoring options from the midfield (Iniesta, Xavi, Fabregas, Silva), as well as from reserve striker Dani Guiza. He still looks nervous on the ball at times, but his goal last night is perhaps what he needed to loosen up.

You can read more here.

Spain v Italy: Negativity Will Always Get You Killed

Italy played for penalties (anti-football) and... well, you saw how it ended.

Bravo!

Halftime: Spain v Italy 0-0

So... how much has the ref been paid off by the Italians?

Now, back to the match....

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Spain v Italy

Not even thinking of football, both Spain and Italy have long held dominion over my imagination to varying degrees. It has something to do with cinema. Has there ever been a more potent combination than the seductive synthesis, the cross pollination of aesthetics, than the so-called Spaghetti Westerns? I don't think so. It's a subjective argument, of course. But for me... I know what films would be bursting out of my desert island suitcase. The great Sergio Leone, the Italian master of the European Western and one of the great pop stylists of all time, was probably never better than with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, his 1966 classic with Eastwood, Van Cleef, and Wallach filmed in Almeria, Spain, and set in some weird mythical America that never existed. Brilliant. Leone's fellow countryman and artistic collaborator, composer Ennio Morricone, I don't think ever composed a piece of music as beautiful as the "Ecstasy of Gold" sequence.

This is cinema. This is the Spain and Italy of my dreams....

Let's hope the match, which should beginning in just a few minutes, is something wonderful to behold as well.

waiting for Spain

It's a truly blustery day here in Ireland (summer*? what's that you say?) and from the moment I woke up this morning all I've been able to think about is Spain's quarterfinal match against Italy tonight. Earlier this week Sid Lowe examined Spain's angst around the match and today Paul Wilson takes a look at just what each squad is up against. Let's hope Aragones' boys don't leave it as late as they did in the match against Sweden, which we suffered through at the pub up the street in the company of two English tourists and an Irish family who turned up for a meal and randomly ended up sitting by the TV but were drawn in and cheered for Spain along with us. No one around here appears to be much interested in the tournament (save for some betting losses), perhaps because neither the Republic of Ireland nor any UK squads made it in this year, perhaps because they'd rather be watching Gaelic football.

Russia's lads, meanwhile, don't play pretty but their passion on the pitch is a beautiful thing indeed. They'd be my second team now if not for the fact that my Spanish boys will have to knock them out of the semifinals.

A little more than nine hours till match time and yes, I am counting. As Paul Wilson predicts, I'll be watching most of it peeking through my fingers.

*Summer. That's a thing they have down in Spain, you know. Ah, Spain.

Brilliant Orange Peels

Unbelievable.

I was so anxiously awaiting tonight's Euro 2008 match because I hadn't watched the Dutch team yet the entire tournament. Why? Don't ask. So tonight, Lynda and I went over to the neighbor's cottage to watch some television while she's out of town for a couple of days. We don't have a television at the moment, and yes, our neighbor knows we're in her place. It's not like we break into other people's homes just to watch television while they're away! Anyway...

Unbelievable.

But the "brilliant orange" Dutch squad, the neo-Total Football team of lucid dreams... flopped. They've done it before, of course. History is littered with them peels.

But Russia? Yes, Russia! They were anything but pretty and half-way through the game I was completely won over by Hiddink's tenacious lads.

The Dutch Sorceror takes out the Apprentice Van Basten.

Unbelievable.

And now Spain (my pick to win it all and break that stupid curse once and for all) and Italy. I'll be there... right in front of that television and happy that my wonderful, lovely neighbor is still gone for another night.