South America – Shout Out Louds
Oh my. Can we finally put to rest the meme that the 2010 World Cup is dull and lifeless? That was based almost entirely on a few drab low-scoring games in the first week, but on the whole has never really applied. But the knockout phase has been as full of excitement and entertainment as any World Cup you can think of. We’ll see whether the final three games are any good, but if things hold this could be remembered as a real classic.
As much as I hate to say it, it’s looking more and more like this offensively-minded, flamboyant, attacking version of Germany is for real. They’ve scored 4 goals in three separate games, two of them against supposed ‘top 10’ teams. They were rampant against Argentina, who I (and many others) had tipped for a place in the finals. They scored within 3 minutes and while it took another hour for the second to go in, it’s not like they were under tremendous pressure.
For Argentina, this can only be a massive disappointment. For all their attacking talent they couldn’t manage to put together much. People have said that Messi was a failure in the tournament, which I think is crazy. Despite not scoring on some 30 (!) shots, he was extremely good. Even in this game, where he was somewhat shut out, he still managed a few brilliant moves. There were a lot of genuine failures in this cup (Rooney, the entire French team, Cannavaro, etc.)—I don’t see the point in accusing genuinely great players who were merely good (Messi and Ronaldo) of being frauds.
Going forward, I still remain a little skeptical about Germany. No doubt they’ve taken every opportunity provided by the defensive frailties of their opponents. And they’ve done a fantastic job of capitalizing on the early leads that they’ve taken. When a team has this kind of counter-attacking power, it’s devastating to go behind to them early. It forces you to chase the game and expose yourself at the back.
Still, for all the claims that Germany has been awesome while Spain has stuttered, I think you have to attribute a lot of that to the teams that they’ve played. I think you’d have to say that Portugal and Paraguay are not as GOOD as England and Argentina, but they are certainly far more resolute at the back. Both of those teams played to shut down Spain. Their whole goal was to keep the game tight and muffled.
We’ll have to see how the semis actually goes, but I still tend to think that Spain’s ability to hold the ball is going to pose more trouble for the German tactics. And I also think that their passing prowess will be far more likely to expose the weakness of the German back four. A lot depends on whether Torres plays, and if he plays, whether he can be even moderately useful.
Which leads to a discussion of the other quarterfinal. According to a lot of people, this was another example of Spain being toothless and relatively ineffective. I guess, though they were pretty solid for the most part. And while it took a long time for the goal to come in, they had a number of very good chances in the last 20 minutes as Paraguay began to tire.
The real excitement for the game, though, has everything to do with the controversy of the disallowed goal, and the craziness of the dueling penalties. For the goal, I can see both sides. This is a classic place where the technical offside law and its practical enforcement in actual games generates some problems. I don’t really see how you could argue that the offside player WASN’T interfering with play (by drawing the defense away from the onside player)—except that oftentimes that is precisely how a referee would rule. It’s the sort of circumstance where I don’t know that either team would have been tremendously justified in complaining.
For the penalties, on first viewing I thought the one on Pique was pretty soft, but after seeing it again, it definitely was. The reason I initially thought it was not a penalty was because I couldn’t believe he would do something as absurd as he did—effectively trying to dislocate a shoulder by pulling on it across the penalty box. But Paraguay missed, and within a minute had conceded a penalty on the other side. Again, some people complained that it was soft but it seemed pretty nailed on to me. The real fun started when Alonso buried his penalty only to have it called back for encroaching. Another example of the conflict between the letter of the law and the actual enforcement. Encroaching happens on literally every penalty (including the Paraguay one a few minutes before, AND the second Alonso penalty), but is almost never called. The craziness only expanded when Spain probably should have gotten another penalty off the rebound when Fabregas was knocked over right in front of goal.
After that flurry, it never really looked like Paraguay would win. When the Spain goal finally went in (after ricocheting off the crossbar three times) it seemed like a foregone conclusion.
I’d also like to point out that one of the big themes from the opening rounds was the dominance of South America and the weakness of Europe. Well, we’ve now got 3 European teams and one South American one (the 5th place qualifier from the region, in fact), which casts some doubt on the validity of the earlier premise.
Prediction for tomorrow:
- Netherlands 2 – 1 Uruguay (after extra time)
Uruguay has been impressive so far, but I think they’re going to get found out here. I don’t think they’ll get torn apart by any means, but I predict some reversion to the mean for Uruguay and for the Dutch to raise their performance a bit (as they’ve done in basically every game so far). Uruguay will be missing Suarez, and have concerns about their central defenders as well. For a team with a pretty big reliance on the core talent this could be a big problem. I see Uruguay managing to thump in an ugly goal fairly late to force extra time, but posing no serious threat after that and going out with a bit of a whimper.
UPDATE: Predictions for the second semis game:
Spain 2 – 1 Germany
I don’t feel confident about this one. I could see it being a tight and claustrophobic game that ends up 1-0 to either side. I could see it being a free-flowing and crazy game that ends up 3-3. I could see virtually anything in between. Germany has obviously looked much better so far, but I’m still not really convinced about them. Spain is the opposite: they haven’t really impressed, but remain the best team in the world on pure talent. I’m going to go with durability of quality over small sample sizes. But these teams are close enough in quality that it’s hard to really call one a serious favorite.