June 23, 2010 World Cup 2010 An Injury-Time Strike Upon a Hill By David Wallace-Wells Among the new heroes of this World Cup one must now count Bob Bradley, the grim, predestinarian U.S. coach—on the silent sideline his presence seems more foreboding than forbearing—much maligned by American fans in the qualifying campaign for his tactical inflexibility and cautious squad selections. Like those other steadfast skippers pilloried for poor performance in early games, Bradley has remained loyal, through the group stage, to a cautious 4-4-2, deploying creative flair in the central midfield, when forced to, only behind his quantum destroyer son, Michael Bradley—his head shaved bald like his father in a show of grim emulation. But Bradley père’s central defense suffocated Wayne Rooney in game one, and his bold halftime substitutions saved the Americans in game two, stockpiling on the field all the technical skill the middling U.S. team could muster, heedless of the tactical consequences. Today his foresight and patient tinkering paid off again—adjustments made at halftime and throughout the final forty-five minutes—producing a steady stream of American chances which our virtuosity in bungling them proved we hardly deserved. And in the panicked ninety-first minute, Bradley’s alignment produced, at the very end of a half thoroughly dominated by U.S. possession, an improbable opportunity to counterattack—the open field being the only soccer habitat, it seems, in which American strikers can actually thrive. Now, pending results this afternoon, it seems the U.S. path forward will take them first through Serbia and then, given a result there, into a quarterfinal against either overperforming Uruguay, or the pinball side from South Korea. Winning those winnable contests means a place in a World Cup semifinal. And these two miraculous end-game assaults—an unrelenting second half against Slovenia, comical incompetence in front of goal against Algeria preceding a single surgical strike—look now a lot less like the anarchic energy of tactical desperation. They look like providence.
June 23, 2010 World Cup 2010 With Power Comes Responsibility By Will Frears The stars of this World Cup have all been letdowns. Messi, despite some flashes outside the box, hasn’t scored, Rooney and Kaka look exhausted, Robben and Drogba are injured, and Cristiano Ronaldo is so vile that his very existence is a disappointment. Instead all the talk has been of coaches. It seems as if every team with the exception of England are playing the same tactical formation—a 4-2-3-1. The crucial number here is the 2; it refers to the holding midfielders who operate as a double defensive shield in front of the actual defense. They sit deep, keep the play narrow, and stop the opposing attackers from finding any space in which to operate. When both teams play with it, it can lead to the rather dour defensive battles that we have witnessed so far. It has traditionally been the weapon of choice for weaker teams, a way to absorb pressure—to “park the bus,” as the English commentators put it, in front of the goal. Needless to say, it’s a system beloved by coaches, less popular with fans. Both Carlos Dunga of Brazil and Vincent del Bosque of Spain are being castigated for playing without the necessary flair. Read More
June 19, 2010 World Cup 2010 On the Awfulness of England By Will Frears I had thought earlier that I might write in praise of indolence—of the joys of spending six hours lying on the sofa watching football. It had crossed my mind to say to those who complain that this World Cup isn’t living up to their expectations: “It’s still the World Cup, it’s still fucking awesome. Would you rather we had no World Cup at all? Would you rather have to account for what you did all day?” That was before I watched England against Algeria. All credit is due to the Algerians, who are responsible for any stylish and entertaining soccer found anywhere in the vicinity of Cape Town yesterday. They were not to know when they set up in the now de rigueur defend-and-counter attack style of this World Cup that England would be so abject, so utterly dire. At least the French team made it very clear that they didn’t care. England strode onto the pitch, all chests blown out and with something to prove. What they proved was that it wasn’t the ball or the trumpets or the defending-is-the-new-attacking thesis that could spoil this World Cup. It was England. The country that claims to have invented the game put in a performance so dull that all the excitement of the previous two days—of Mexico and Serbia and the U.S. comeback and all the refereeing travesties—could evaporate under the entitled nihilism of England’s football team. At the end, Wayne Rooney stared down the barrel of the camera and snarled, “”Nice to see your own fans booing you, you football ‘supporters.'” The disdain of the England supporters for their team and talisman’s woeful display is, I think, the most encouraging sign yet.
June 18, 2010 World Cup 2010 The Zombie Cup—It Lives! By David Wallace-Wells It seemed for about a week that this would be a tactical tournament—a dullish Cup, shadowed by Inter’s Champions League triumph, marked by negative play and cautious counterattacking lineups, and ultimately crowning, perhaps more decisively than a champion, the incisive geeksite ZonalMarking.net. German efficiency seemed the closest we’d get to actual electricity. How quickly things change—and how high a German defeat lifts the hearts of fans the world over. For my money, Joachim Löw can still boast the tournament’s top performing side, as well as its top performing cashmere: Germany looked as dangerous a man down against Serbia as any team this side of Argentina, and, having gone down to that inferior squad, may no longer be plagued by the panic of preeminence that seemed to trip them up in a lackluster first half. Ghana, beware. The true maestros of today’s early-game tournament resurrection were, of course, the referees. There will surely be howls of outrage in the coming hours and days over the nine yellow cards (six in the first thirty-six minutes) in Serbia’s defeat of Germany, and over the preposterously disallowed U.S. goal against Slovenia, which would have delivered three points to the Americans and made them the first team in the tournament’s history to recover from a 2-0 halftime deficit and actually win. But as fans of the game, we shouldn’t be howling—or howling too long, anyway. However erratic, those decisions are not injustices, they are refereeing, and a happy reminder that soccer is not a game of numbers, like poker, mastered by biding one’s time, but a game, beneath the tactics, of chance. You buy your ticket and you take the ride.
June 18, 2010 World Cup 2010 The Most Unpredictable World Cup Ever? By Will Frears Spain lost. France was (I feel quietly confident in using the past tense) awful. Brazil struggled to break down the obdurate North Koreans. As I write this, Germany just lost to Serbia who already lost to Ghana making Group D impossible to predict. Japan beat Cameroon. England is running a you-be-the-goalkeeper campaign for the World Cup lottery. Chile and Uruguay both look pretty tasty. Italy isn’t looking unshaky. Only Argentina is fulfilling their historical imperative and they haven’t had to defend yet. Obviously, it’s been low scoring and the ball is a disaster but this is delightful chaos. FIFA had arranged it so that if Brazil and Spain won their groups, they would not meet until the final. Now, if Spain finishes second, which is quite likely, the two will meet in the next round. And if Switzerland can hold on for two draws, they will have the easiest route to the finals. This could be the most unpredictable World Cup ever.
June 16, 2010 World Cup 2010 Whose Fault is This Disappointing Cup? By David Wallace-Wells The tournament is still young, of course, and it’s certainly possible things heat up later in the group stage, when more is on the line. But I don’t know of anyone who isn’t complaining about the uninspiring play so far, and, in apportioning blame for that, my money is on the ball—the famous Jabulani. Before the tournament kicked off, we heard a lot about the lively new design, and particularly how it would pose problems for goalkeepers, who would prefer one that handled a bit more cleanly. But, Robert Greene notwithstanding, it seems the Jabulani has been much trickier for the field players than the men between the posts. As Grant Wahl pointed out yesterday, only twenty-three goals had been scored through the first fourteen games—many fewer than in any of the previous thirty-two team tournaments. (Through fourteen games in 1998, thirty-four goals were scored; in 2002, it was thirty nine; and in 2006, a tournament that also featured a “problematic” new ball, thirty one.) Brazil’s 2-1 victory over North Korea featured the first goal of the tournament scored by a losing team. Perhaps more dispiriting than the shockingly low number of goals has been their shockingly low quality—aside from the marvelous South African strike to open the tournament, and Maicon’s powerful shot from the endline yesterday for Brazil, the only clean goal scored from the run of play I can think of in the entire tournament is Steven Gerard’s elegant but unspectacular toe-swipe against the United States. And this is supposed to be the sport’s greatest showcase of skill! It’s not just the goals, either—the passing has been terrible across the board, particularly the ambitious passing, and though the better teams have, on balance, managed to accumulate and retain possession of the ball, even the most skilled sides have failed to engineer much more than what the dull American announcers keep calling “half-chances.” Sometimes fifteen half-chances add up to one or two real ones, but other times, as with Spain today, even after twenty five shots the glass remains stubbornly half-full. I’m getting thirsty!