If Ghana Only Had a Forward...
I was one of three people in a pool of over one hundred to pick Australia over Japan. I was the only one to pick the score 2-1 (the other two had 1-0), and it looked to give me a nice boost until Japan really broke down at the end and gave up a third goal. Nonetheless, it was a nice way to start the day. Australia will surprise a lot of people.
I went to a restaurant to represent the US in public, but the game went poorly. Maybe it's my fault for wearing the most "American" shirt I have -- a LaVar Arrington Redskins jersey. It's tough to give up a goal so early, but I still felt alright until the second one. At that point the focus shifted to avoiding embarrassment. Which the US did, I guess. But it still felt bad. I didn't expect anything more than a tie, but when the game ended, I felt the way I did when I was a little kid and the Cowboys beat the Skins. Like the day couldn't end fast enough. Like the only thing to do was wait for tomorrow, when it would hurt less.
Ghana is something else. They don't have a decent forward. Or, if they do, they have hidden him well. They mark well, they close down the midfield -- and that is surely more difficult against Italy than against most teams, and when they attack they make the field look twice as big as it is. I'm ready to forget about the money I bet on the Netherlands and become a full-time Ghana fan. Except that if Ghana finishes second in Group E, they will play Brazil in the second round. I guess I'll just enjoy the four games they are likely to play, and wish them well next time.
I think it's interesting that the two best games so far have been between Italian teams (Italy, Argentina) and African teams (Ivory Coast, Ghana). Italy-Ghana has washed away the bad taste of the US debacle. This is the way the game is supposed to be played. Now, even though the US lost, even though Ghana lost, I am in a good mood again. Now I'm ready for the World Cup to really start tomorrow.
I went to a restaurant to represent the US in public, but the game went poorly. Maybe it's my fault for wearing the most "American" shirt I have -- a LaVar Arrington Redskins jersey. It's tough to give up a goal so early, but I still felt alright until the second one. At that point the focus shifted to avoiding embarrassment. Which the US did, I guess. But it still felt bad. I didn't expect anything more than a tie, but when the game ended, I felt the way I did when I was a little kid and the Cowboys beat the Skins. Like the day couldn't end fast enough. Like the only thing to do was wait for tomorrow, when it would hurt less.
Ghana is something else. They don't have a decent forward. Or, if they do, they have hidden him well. They mark well, they close down the midfield -- and that is surely more difficult against Italy than against most teams, and when they attack they make the field look twice as big as it is. I'm ready to forget about the money I bet on the Netherlands and become a full-time Ghana fan. Except that if Ghana finishes second in Group E, they will play Brazil in the second round. I guess I'll just enjoy the four games they are likely to play, and wish them well next time.
I think it's interesting that the two best games so far have been between Italian teams (Italy, Argentina) and African teams (Ivory Coast, Ghana). Italy-Ghana has washed away the bad taste of the US debacle. This is the way the game is supposed to be played. Now, even though the US lost, even though Ghana lost, I am in a good mood again. Now I'm ready for the World Cup to really start tomorrow.
posted by Venha Futuro at 5:34 PM
6 Comments:
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Fortunate for me that I happened to have dinner with Pete and Hybar (sp?) this week and he gave me this blog address.
The summer cup season (and much more so the World Cup, it turns out) always makes me think about you. You got me into football, and for that reason to this day I follow mainly the teams you were into at the time (Speaking of which, why are you rooting against England? You were high on them years ago, I seem to remember, and they certainly don't run that horrible "kick it forward to the big dude" style anymore - under Sven their game is almost pretty). Tottenham, of course, takes up the majority of my attention during the Premier League season; I've never gotten into La Liga or the Bundesliga, which are the other two leagues that I have ready access to on the local cable systems. I myself don't get cable but since basically everyone else in the world does, I get to watch quite a bit of the Spurs.
The games are on a delay, sometimes several days old. Often when I notice a Spurs game on I can't help wondering why they chose that particular game to show, among all the PL games that happened that week, and predicting what might happen in the game that would justify it being televised.
That happened to me when I saw that ESPN2 was showing Spurs@Blues this spring; of course my mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that perhaps the first defeat of Chelsea since long before I ever heard of the Spurs was in the cards. So I blocked out the two hours to watch the match (not always a small feat with a toddler in the house), went out and bought a couple beers and plopped my ass down on my mother-in-law's couch to see it happen.
The opening wasn't encouraging. Tottenham seemed disjointed and out of synch, and Chelsea had most of the ball. It wasn't long before a bad giveaway led to an easy chance for Essien and the Spurs were down 1-0.
It was at that moment that I started considering that it was possible that the programming people were just showing a match between two teams at the top of the Premier League, one a top power and the other an aspirant to that status, and hadn't selected the contest because of any unusual outcome. My hopes that Tottenham might actually get a win on Chelsea's pitch (a virtual impossibility in recent seasons) were starting to wane.
As the last moments of the first half wound down, I finally decided that I would watch the whole match regardless of what happened. There were two reasons for that decision - most important, probably, is that whenever I think of abondoning a sporting event, I think of my father's face, and the scowl he would put on whenever anyone suggested such a thing. (If you protested that the game was 13-2 in the eighth inning, he would say "did we come to the ballpark to find out who won, or to watch the game?") The other was that Davids was starting to be on the ball a lot more, and I could watch Davids dribble on an empty pitch for 90 minutes.
As soon as I recommitted myself to the game, Tottenham scored a cheap goal off a free kick just before the halftime whistle.
The second half was beautiful. Chelsea suddenly seemed flat, and it looked to be only a matter of time before Tottenham broke through. A couple of chances went by the boards, though, and by around the 75th minute the Spurs were running out of gas. The removal of the unfrightening Robbie Keane in favor of Defoe (whom I prefer) carried some hope for an infusion of energy, but no such boost was ever evident. As the clock ticked upward to 86, 87, 88 I allowed myself to accept that a draw at Chelsea was a perfectly respectable, even impressive, result.
Then, of course, in injury time Chelsea's Gallas took the ball well off the left corner of the box, cut around a few defenders, and drove a staggeringly beautiful shot into the back of the Spurs' net, turning the Spurs' gutsy (or was it gutty?) performance into a complete blank.
I had to smile. That's football. And if I had never known you, I'd never have had that experience, or many others that have enlightened an entertained me over the years.
So thanks. Glad to see you're doing well.
APS
Wow! A comment that isn't spam! Probably two!
How's it going? Congratulations on the toddler. What's his/her name?
La Liga is nice -- they show two or three games a week here in Brazil. The Italian Serie A is by far the best, but they only show one game each Sunday. It's too bad you can't get those games in the US. I haven't seen a single Premier League game since I moved to Brazil, but I don't know that I miss it. I still read Tottenham news every day, but I haven't seen them play in a long, long time. Are they really any good?
Speaking of England, it doesn't look like any of the Spurs players, other than Robinson, will get to play in the Cup. Defoe is at home because Sven loves Owen, who is crap. England just isn't that good, but the English people have convinced themselves that they are the absolute best. They post things like "After Brazil, we are the obvious favorites" on forums. (They also say, quite frequently, that "after Spain and England, Italy probably has the third best league in the world." Which is always good for a laugh.) Unless things have changed drastically in England, their league isn't as good as Spain or Italy, and their players aren't as good as those who play in better championships. Basically, I dislike their unfounded arrogance. "Neville is the best right-back in the world." "Woodgate, when healthy, is the best center-back in Spain." "Owen and Rooney are the best forward pair in the world who don't play for Brazil." If they were at all realistic, they would be satisfied with an appearance in the quarterfinals. They know, on some level, that this is true. That's why they are already preparing their excuses -- Rooney's foot, Owen's foot, Sven's an idiot, and so on. The only English players I really want to see are Carrick and Lennon, but Sven will never take Beckham, Lampard, or Gerrard off, so I'll never see them. Oh, well.
I'm gonna go play soccer now, rather than watch it or write about it. Send me an email some time.
OK, two questions. Here we go.
1) Ruby is her name; she's 16 months old. She's definitely the best player on her u2 team. OK, there's no u2 team, but she understands kicking, and she likes to bounce the ball off her head and say "head" which I think puts her squarely in the 99th percentile of American soccer players under two.
2) Are the Spurs any good? I don't know; I probably watched five games that didn't involve them this season, and most of those were cup matches, so I don't really have anything to compare them to. My feeling this year was that they really needed to get a striker for the stretch run; apparently they had been bidding on the big Bulgarian all winter but couldn't work out a deal until the season was over. I'm optimistic about next season but Davids is getting old; it seemed like this was the year until Arsenal poisoned our lunch. We'll see how next season goes; they could make a run.
I've been honing my skills all spring (OK, I've been attempting to develop some semblance of skills) and I am making my first trip to the largely Brazillian pickup game on the Northside this weekend. I'll have to miss the end of the US/Italy match, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy having the excuse to leave early.
Northside of what? Where do you live these days?
I watched a video of the Bulgarian and he looks okay. Good, I guess, but not a world beater. It didn't look like he was playing against any very good defenses. I, too, blame Arsenal.
Tell me how the pelada goes.
Oh, we moved back to Richmond after Ruby was born, so it's the Northside of Broad Street Road (that's the actual name of the street, for reasons I can't explain) in Richmond.
Here's how it went - I embarrassed myself, my team, my country, and probably the entire sport with my useless and bumbling play. The good news is I feel I have the inside track on Most Improved Player.
I spent a little time in goal and while I was a huge liability there as elsewhere, I made a fully-extended fingertip save that one of my teammates described as "world class." So that felt good. I also let in a terrible goal which, after I dusted myself off, a player on my team who is a priest at the nearby seminary came over and said "We all lose our way sometimes." It was a very accurate and concise description of my effort on the play.
Fortunately I didn't wind up skipping any of the Italy/US match, which of course wound up being very interesting. I'm glad the final games in Group E will at least be meaningful.
Good call on Ghana. Those guys can play.
APS
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