World Cup – the semifinals

Sing Me Spanish Techno – The New Pornographers

Two wonderful, wonderful games.  Each had their own tempo and form of entertainment.  The quality of soccer on display in the second one was phenomenal, which led to a game that always looked to be in Spain’s control but remained close throughout.  The former game was a bit less precise, but in some ways this was great because it allowed for a bit more expansive play.  These games also featured some great goals.  Van Bronckhorst’s opener has to rank among the goals of the tournament.  And Puyol’s goal was a thing of simple beauty–about as pure a header as you can hit.

In both games, the team that would have been heavily favored three weeks ago prevailed.  I don’t think this means the brilliance we saw from Germany and Uruguay prior to the semifinals was a fluke or anything.  But I do think this perhaps serves as a helpful reminder that form is always a bit random and the underlying quality needs to be held in mind.  Simply: Spain’s team is a lot better than Germany’s.  That’s no criticism of the Germans who have a fantastic team and might well be considered the favorites for Euro 2012.  But right now, they’re still a bit raw and just not good enough to deal with the overwhelming skill of the Spanish.  Maybe in two years, but not today.

When they’re on (and they were yesterday) Xavi and Iniesta are simply a class above any other central midfield in the world.  Add in Alonso–who doesn’t have quite their vision but is probably among the 20 or 30 best players in the world in his own right (look what happened to Liverpool when they lost him)–and a good (though not world-class) destroyer, and you’ve got a team that is unlikely to lose except on a fluke.  For all the talk of their ‘struggles,’ it’s worth remembering that they still have only lost twice in three years, and have only drawn a couple times, too.

Germany could have won the game, no doubt.  Despite the class of Spain, it remained relatively close, thanks in part to some outstanding individual performances from the Germans.  And while the wonderful attacking talent that scored them so many goals was mostly neutralized (because they simply couldn’t get the ball, and when they did Spain was almost never out of position at the back), it still only would have taken a moment of brilliance from Ozil, for example, to change things around.  Still, all things equal, I think 1-0 was pretty fair.  And if another goal had been scored it was probably more likely to have come for Spain than the other way around.

In particular, there is the goal that never was in the final minutes, when Pedro and Torres broke in a 2-on-1.  The defender came at Pedro who then had the easiest task in the world of simply rolling the ball over to Torres who would have had ages to pick out a shot one-on-one with the keeper.  No matter how out of form Torres has been, he would have 99.9% buried it.  But instead, Pedro lost his mind and tried to dribble toward the near post to attempt an unlikely shot–and then was dispossessed before he could even try it.  It was embarrassing, and one of the single stupidest decisions I’ve ever seen.  If Germany had managed to pull back a goal, Pedro might have been crucified.  A full day later I still can’t believe how terrible a decision that was.

Still, all of this is to say that this game seems to confirm what I expected it to: that both sides were going to regress to their established mean–and that Spain remain the better team.  To be clear, I don’t mean this game proves this to be true.  My argument is against relying on small sample sizes.  The long scale of evidence we’ve got tells us that Spain should have been favorites, and that the 50/50 odds that prevailed before kick-off were inspired by over-reliance on the evidence of a couple games.

All that said, things can change relatively quickly in football, even more in international football.  And underlying quality still needs to be organized and held together.  If Spain had been playing like France, for example, I’d have been far more willing to consider them pyschologically unstable and thus seriously downgrade their chances.  But that wasn’t the problem.  A team that is still playing pretty well but is stuttering a bit in scoring goals is not the same as a team falling apart.  It only takes a couple bounces (a goal that goes in rather than hitting the crossbar, a throughball that is weighted just an ounce more and finds the foot of the onrushing striker rather than getting caught up in the legs of the defender, etc.) for the former to click into place and suddenly ‘disprove’ their earlier struggles.  That was Spain, and to a lesser extent the Netherlands.  These were quality teams, dominating their games, forcing other teams to change their styles to deal with them.  That they were winning by one rather than two or three goals is relevant, but ultimately not that big a deal.

It’s become popular to complain about Spain’s style of play.  Frankly, I think this is just a case of football fans being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate.  Obviously it would be fun to see a team so good they could score 3 or 4 goals every game by playing incisive, inch-perfect passes every 15 seconds.  But that is just fanciful.  No such team exists.  To complain about Spain in the real world where actual human beings live means you have to pick a different way.  And the alternatives are pretty much limited to defensive shell, kick-and-rush, or the counter.  No one likes the first, presumably.  The second is rightly mocked as the classic, tactically inept classically English style.  The third creates opportunities for breakaways that make your heart race.  But it also entails long stretches of absolutely nothing happening.  People want a mythical style that involves both teams racing up and down the pitch every second of the game.  It’s just not going to happen.

Which is to say: enjoy what Spain does have to offer.  There is a lot more excitement in the game than watching people run.  The skill Spain puts on display when they’re simply passing the ball around is far more interesting to me than almost anything else in the game. And the brilliance that comes from the moments when they do pick out a hole in the defensive makes for brilliant and exciting goals.  On top of that, I really do appreciate trying to sort out the tactical elements of the game.  I can recognize that this isn’t interesting to some people, but I think they’re missing out.  4-2-3-1 may limit breakaway goals, but it’s fascinating to follow the players and see how their position and connections actually accomplish this.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the cottage industry of criticizing Spain and the Dutch for failing to destroy teams is aggravating.  They’re in the finals of the World Cup, and it’s not like they got there entirely through luck or by trying to prevent their opposition from playing football.  They got there by being better at the game than the opposition, and taking advantage of the opportunities that were provided to them.  If you want to make a purely aesthetic argument, well, different strokes and all.  I can’t really say that one style is definitively better than another.

But all the complaints about their lack of a plan B, or their inability to play in different ways, probably needs to account for the success they’ve had.  In particular, the reason why Spain has been so good at preventing the opposition from scoring is due to their commitment to hold back a lot of players.  It’s worked tremendously well.  And the reason they don’t get killed on the counter is that they count on their skill to unlock defenses without relying on throwing bodies forward.  It’s a coherent and successful system.

My predictions for the tournament suffered an unrecoverable body-blow with the quaterfinals.  My two finalists both lost there, for example.  But apart from that, I haven’t been doing too bad.  And while Kaka has zero chance at the Golden Ball, Villa is still a good bet for Golden Boot.

The Golden Ball, actually, is a pretty interesting discussion right now.  Villa is the clear front-runner, on the assumption that they’ll give it to a player from the finalists.  And if the Dutch win, it’s probably Sneijder.  But while they each have been very good, they haven’t been magical or overwhelming.  For all the reasons stated above, these two teams haven’t really been about offensive flair–they’ve been about shutting down the games.  Still, unless something crazy happens in the final, you’d have to think it’s between those two.

If they wanted to give it to a non-finalist, though, things would get a lot more interesting.  Forlan has been the best player in the Cup–and I don’t even think it’s that close.   Not only has he scored great goals, he’s also set the tone for the entire game, has torn apart defenses and created space for others, has held up the ball better than anyone (a crucial task for Uruguay when they’ve employed their more defensive approach).  Ozil has also been great, and Schweinsteiger.

Anyways, there’s only two games left.  And only one game that matters.  It’ll be sad when it’s all done and we have to wait four more years…

Final predictions:

• Spain 2 – 0 Netherlands
• Germany 2 – 1 Uruguay

I think Spain is the real deal–one of the best teams ever.  I think the Dutch are a solid outfit with the potential to work some magic, but also a bit fragile.  While I wouldn’t be shocked by a Dutch win, I think Spain has to be the clear favorite.  I see a game fairly similar to the one they just played against Germany, where they control the ball and stifle the opposition.  I just think they’ll get the second goal that they ought to have scored in the semis.

I don’t think Germany will care about the third place game, while Uruguay might put a bit more into it.  But I still think Germany’s class takes them through.