A wonderful strike from Messi, a wonderful game from Germany and Ghana, and…a third game was also played. And once again, two of the fancied teams failed to fully impress. Both Argentina and Germany remain in good position to win their groups, but neither will be particularly happy with their games today.
Argentina 1 – 0 Iran
Not a very good performance from Argentina, but a fascinating game. And for all their troubles today, I wouldn’t worry too much about Argentina. Messi bagged another brilliant goal, and they won’t play anyone again who will be so defensive.
So: there’s no denying that Argentina did not look particularly good. They had a very difficult time piercing the Iranian shield, probably ought to have conceded a (very, very stupid) penalty when Zabaleta cluttered into Ghoochannejhadfor no apparent reason, and relied on several excellent saves to keep them at 0-0. All things considered, you’d probably have to say that Iran had the better and more frequent scoring opportunities in the second half. For a tournament favorite against a very unfancied team like Iran, there’s no way to pretend that’s good.
All that said, it was just one game. And I’m just not that sure that the style of play here really tells us all that much about how they will fare in others. Iran played an incredibly defensive formation. For most of the game, all 11 of their players were in their own half, sometimes in their own final third. And they executed it extremely well. With only a few exceptions, they regularly provided one (or even two) covering defenders to stymie Argentina’s attacks. They swarmed the ball once it got close to their box, and they fouled intelligently (especially once they discovered that the ref was going to call a pretty loose game and let them get away with a fair amount). If a team can do that, and successfully execute, they’re going to make anyone in the world look lost for ideas. Because, frankly, you can’t beat a defensive bunker with ideas. You just have to keep probing, keep making the defense work, and eventually catch them in a mistake or find a moment of individual magic. Which is precisely what they did. They gave Messi a tiny pocket of space on the edge of the box, and he did what Messi does.
As someone who picked them to win the tournament, the only thing that really worries me is the 15-20 minutes in the second half when Iran opened the door to their bunker and started genuinely venturing into the attacking half. Because they seemed very vulnerable. The defense committed tons of very stupid fouls (including that one that could/should have been a penalty) and just gave too much space. Over the course of the game, the Iranian players didn’t have particularly good skill on the ball and routinely gave it away under pressure. Which I think made Argentina overly aggressive. But they needed to actually apply pressure, not foul them. And for all that Iran wasn’t great on the ball, they made some really brilliant runs off the ball. Which got them tantalizingly close to goals on a couple of occasions.
For a team who wants to play solid defense and then destroy teams on the counter-attack, that period was not encouraging. They really needed to A) defend better, because yikes and B) attack with a lot more speed and precision when they had the chance. They needed to press, win the ball, and then break with speed. They had a couple decent efforts like that (including one very nice little run from Messi where he hit the side netting), but that was their best chance to explode for a goal of the sort they want to score.
That said, I wonder how much of it is just down to surprise. Even after they had almost been hit a couple times, they never seemed to quite believe the threat was real. I’d expect them to do better in future games.
Germany 2 – 2 Ghana
What a game! I wish I had more on point comments about tactics or individual players but honestly it’s all kind of a blur of shots and tackles and perfectly weighted passes and heroic tackles. The first half was good, with Ghana doing a very nice job disrupting the German attack and creating more than a few chances for themselves. It was finely balanced, and I commented at halftime that ‘there were plenty of goals waiting to be found in this one.’ And oh my was that right. The second half was frantic, fast-paced, aggressive, incredible. Each team scored twice and was close to getting three or four more. It was truly a sight to behold.
If you didn’t get a chance to watch this game, you really should go back and check it out on WatchESPN. At least the second half.
Nigeria 1 – 0 Bosnia and Herzegovina
Probably the most hard-luck result of the tournament so far. B&H created a truly lovely goal, capped off by a fine finish from Dzeko, only to have it wrongly disallowed for being offside. And then Nigeria hit back, scoring a goal that included what could possibly have been ruled a foul on the attacking player. That one was more of a 50/50 call – you see them given sometimes, but not always. But the net result is that Nigeria took a 1-0 lead instead of the opposite. For the rest of the match, B&H tried to poke through the Nigerian defense, something that proved quite difficult. But honestly, I think they mostly did things right. They got off a lot of chances, particularly in the final 10 minutes. But nothing would quite fall for them. Dzeko hit the bar, any number of shots went just wide, etc. Sometimes it’s just not your day.
Much like England, B&H are an imperfect team (whose frailties on the left side were exposed many times tonight and certainly led to the goal) who will justifiably feel a little hard done by. They played pretty well against Argentina and almost scraped a draw. And while they probably didn’t ‘deserve’ to win tonight on the overall balance of play, the scoreline could very easily have been the opposite. As it is, though, they’re out and have only pride to play for now.
Predictions for tomorrow:
- Belgium 2 – 2 Russia
- South Korea 1 – 2 Algeria
- United States 0 – 1 Portugal
Group H befuddles me. I’m pretty sure Belgium is the class of the group, but I have a hard time telling just how good they are. The others…who knows? So I’m calling a high-scoring draw in the first game and an Algerian victory in the second. But really I have no idea. The real doozy is the third game, where I have a sneaking, unhappy suspicion that our boys aren’t going to be able to find a goal.
By the way, let’s walk through the qualifying implications of tomorrow’s game, based on the different possible worlds created by each result:
Win – we advance.
Draw – we will be in good, but not great shape. That would put us and Germany both on 4 points, with Portugal and Ghana on 1 point each. Which would THEN mean:
A) Get any result in the third game – we advance. This would also apply to Germany. And it would not be the most shocking thing in the world for a mutually advantageous draw to somehow materialize.
B) Portugal and Ghana draw – we advance. They’d have two points to our 4.
C) Portugal win – we probably advance. The first tiebreaker is goal difference, where we have a 5 goal lead. That’s certainly possible to overcome, but would take quite a bit
D) Ghana win – we almost certainly don’t advance. We’ve only got a goal difference advantage of 2 against Ghana, which would be wiped out by us losing and them winning. Our only hope would be for 1-goal margins in both games, which would then send it to the THIRD tiebreaker: goals scored. The 4th tiebreaker is head to head record, which we would of course win.
Lose – we are in trouble. We would have to get a result of some sort against Germany.
A) If Portugal wins, we also have to win
B) If Portugal-Ghana draw, we would have to draw, unless Portugal beats us by three goals. Then we’d have to win
C) If Ghana wins, we have to win, or get the same convergence of events as listed above in 2D.
tl;dr – We need at least a draw against Portugal, and it would be better if it were a high-scoring one. Losing tomorrow, even losing big, wouldn’t be a knockout blow, but it would really close off our options. Get a draw and we’re in good shape.