World Cup day two – On a roll and built to spill

Built To Spill – Built to Spill

Day two of the World Cup brought a bit of excitement, a few really nice moves, and the goalkeeping blunder of the tournament.

South Korea 2 – 0 Greece

I did not wake up at 4 AM to watch the South Korea – Greece game, which is a shame because it sounds like what I had picked as a dire 0-0 turns out to have been maybe the most exciting match of the tournament.  I watched a few pieces of it on replay this evening and Greece (who I thought had a good chance out of this group) looked miserably bad.  South Korea, on the other hand, was lively and incisive.  I picked Nigeria to finish second in the group, but if South Korea can play like that, they’ll destroy Nigeria.

Argentina 1 – 0 Nigeria

For the other match in Group B, Argentina put in almost precisely the sort of performance you’d have expected.  Many flashes of brilliance, some sumptuous moves from Messi, and an absolute inability to competently defend.  If the lesson from day 1 is that a terrible manager can make good players look bad, the lesson from day 2 is that a spastic manager makes his team look spastic.  No, Argentina didn’t look nearly as poor as France did.  If not for Vincent Enyeama (the Nigerian keeper) having the game of his life, they’d have been up by 3 or 4 goals by halftime.  Messi, in particular, had two or three potential goals saved.

Nevertheless, Nigeria had some solid chances themselves and Argentina can count themselves lucky for not tossing away the 3 points.

To my eyes, the biggest problems with the team were 1) the insanity of making Veron their only option for a deep-lying playmaker, 2) the belief that Gutierrez is good, 3) the belief that Gutierrez, even if he was good, can play fullback, and 4) an appalling performance from Higuain.

Number 4 can’t be blamed on Maradona.  And while there’s a strong case for making Milito the first choice for that role (he might work better with Messi, and is an outstanding player), I don’t think it’s a terrible idea to play Higuain. Despite his performance today, he’s a world class striker.

Numbers 2 and 3 are Maradona’s fault up the yin-yang.  It’s particularly aggravating when Javier Zanetti–the old stalwart who just had a marvelous season for European champions Inter–got left at home.  Seriously, the idea that a team might leave Zanetti at home and start Jonas Gutierrez is just embarrassing.

Number 1 is, again, a major Maradona problem.  Veron has never really lived up to his promise.  And now, he’s a good 6 or 7 years past his prime.  He’s slow, is prone to hitting shots that pose more danger to low-flying airplanes than to the keeper, and his signature move today was to make an inch-perfect pass directly to the feet of a Nigerian defender. And not only is he lacking pace, he also just plays languidly.  He doesn’t do quick give and goes.  He doesn’t pass while running.  He might have fit into a team from the 70s, but in the modern game he just leaves the Argentina attack in first gear when players like Messi and Tevez are amped up and ready to tear teams apart with movement and pace.  Once again, you’d have to think Argentina fans are tearing their hair out at the thought that Cambiasso (who also had a brilliant season with Inter) isn’t in South Africa.

I picked Nigeria to come second in this group, which I’m feeling a bit unsure about now.  They really really missed John Obi Mikel in this game.  For them, he plays the role of distributor, who can manage the attack out of midfield, and exploit the weaknesses of the defense.  Their lack of someone who could competently play that role is the main reason why the weakness of Gutierrez and Heinze didn’t get exploited.

England 1 – 1 USA

A nervy, but well-deserved point for the US.  After feeling pretty confident that we were going to get beat soundly (I predicted a 4-1 loss), my heart sank when Gerrard buried the early goal.  It exemplified everything I was worried about.  Gooch made a bad mistake to let it build up and Clark totally missed his mark and let Gerrard get wide open to receive the pass.  In short, it was sloppy defending and a failure to close down to rescue the mistakes of others.  It was all made by a brilliant Heskey assist (more on that later).

However, instead of falling apart, the US took the goal as a challenge and responded with a fairly dominant 20 minutes.  Up until the 30th minute or so, the US was probably the better team, and had created several half-chances.  Still, though, control of the midfield wasn’t really translating into goal-scoring chances.  This is one of my biggest worries about the US going forward–the inability to link up the midfield with the strikers.  Donovan, on his day, can do this relatively well.  But it’s not his strong suit. And Bradley sometimes can as well.  But given this formation, it’s always going to be a weak point.  For games against Algeria and Slovenia, I hope that Torres gets brought in for Clark–he’s got the capacity to distribute that was lacking tonight.

Still, after the burst of sustained pressure, England started to re-assert itself.  And the US was reduced to taking pot-shots from distance.  Shots that were never really going to trouble the keeper.

Except, they did.  Clint Dempsey, a bit outside the penalty area, made a lovely series of twists and turns to free himself from his marker and then unleashed…a bit of a squibbling shot, no real pace, directly at the keeper.  And then Green suffered a breakdown in his blowout preventer, and simply let the ball squeak over the line.  It was horrific–easily the worst goalkeeping blunder I can think of for a recent World Cup.  And if you’ll permit me just a minute to sing my own praises: I totally called this one.  I’ve been saying for weeks that Hart was England’s best keeper, and it was only Capello’s desire to ‘play it safe’ preventing him from playing.  Well, here is Exhibit A.

Speaking of Capello’s selection, what about his other decisions?  There’s Heskey–who is an eternal debate all to himself.  This match showed the best and the worst of Heskey.  He was more responsible than anyone for the goal (good), but he missed an absolutely splendid chance when he hit the ball straight–and I do mean straight–at Tim Howard.  He also missed a couple great open header chances (bad).  But, he did a great job of winning headers and holding the ball (good) and also linking up play with the attacking midfielders (good).  However, those players did a miserable job of getting Rooney involved.  And Heskey himself (apart from the goal, of course) was not setting up chances but rather setting up other people so that they might create chances, which they mostly failed at.  So, should England play with Heskey?  I think probably not, but I don’t know that this game offered any new evidence.  Heskey–in spite of his misses–was one of England’s better players.

How about Gerrard and Lampard?  Can they play together?  I say no.  Every time they try, one tends to have a good game while the other is useless.  This time around, Gerrard was pretty good but Lampard was absolutely innocuous.  But more importantly, while Gerrard was good, the way he was good had a lot less utility than it should have.  I can’t think of a single time he made a pass to Lampard, or vice versa.  Which meant that despite England’s dominance of possession, they never really had any dangerous moves coming out of the midfield.

On the US side, my man of the match is Tim Howard, who made a couple great saves–and who played most of the game after suffering what looked like it might be a broken rib coming out to protect against a cross.  The other guy who I thought was superb was Cherundolo, who absolutely shut things down on that side of the pitch.  Milner and Wright-Phillips got dispossessed countless times by him, and he made a number of crucial tackles around the goal to frustrate attacks.

Gooch was somewhat at fault for the goal, and got beaten a couple times.  But he also made countless excellent challenges.  Without him, we would have been dead in the water.  Compared to his other games since coming back from injury he looked worlds better.

Dempsey and Donovan put in solid shifts.  I wish they could have gotten more involved in the attack, but they were probably more important for their defensive work–and for pinning the English fullbacks in their own half and really undermining England’s attempt to use width to stretch out the slow and creaky US defense.

Starting Findley with Altidore was a bit of a surprise, but in the absence of Charlie Davies I guess he’s the best we’ve got.  It worked okay, though I can’t say that we looked tremendously threatening.  The few good chances they put together were due almost entirely to pace.  The one exception was Altidore’s chance in the second half that almost put the US in the lead.  That one was about pace (Altidore blowing past Carragher), but was more impressive than that.  After beating Carragher, Altidore showed some nice skill on the ball to keep it under control, and showed serious strength to hold off the defender and give himself time to create the shot.

I know Altidore had a rough year at Hull, so people are a bit down on him.  But the guy is still very young, and plays like that show just how much potential he has.  And let’s face facts, it’s tough to score goals playing striker for a terrible team like Hull who aren’t going to give you many chances.  Altidore isn’t the second coming, but he is the best striker we’ve got right now and our chances for the tournament rest a lot on him.

Final thoughts: I know a lot of English pundits are very down on their team right now.  And that’s understandable.  But this wasn’t a shocking performance.  They were the better team, and this was the toughest opponent in their group.  Sure, this display doesn’t suggest ‘World Cup winner’–but did people really think that England was a favorite to win the tournament?  It wasn’t a great game, but there were some flashes of a very good team.  And once Barry comes back some of the tactical problems will resolve themselves.  I still think England is probably among the 6 or 7 teams with realistic chances of winning it.  Not favorites, but not impossibilities.

My predictions for tomorrow:

• Algeria 1 – 2 Slovenia
• Serbia 2 – 1 Ghana
• Germany 3 – 1 Australia

This will be the first big test for finding out if Serbia is as good as I think they are, or if they’re just flattering to deceive.