{"id":1224,"date":"2010-06-16T14:26:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T18:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2018-12-06T15:34:21","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:34:21","slug":"whose-fault-is-this-disappointing-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/16\/whose-fault-is-this-disappointing-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Fault is This Disappointing Cup?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tournament is still young, of course, and it\u2019s certainly possible things heat up later in the group stage, when more is on the line. But I don\u2019t know of anyone who isn\u2019t complaining about the uninspiring play so far, and, in apportioning blame for that, my money is on the ball\u2014the famous Jabulani<\/em><\/a>. 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\u2014many 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 \u201cproblematic\u201d new ball, thirty one.) Brazil\u2019s 2-1 victory over North Korea featured the first goal of the tournament scored by a losing team.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more dispiriting than the shockingly low number of goals has been their shockingly low quality\u2014aside from the marvelous South African strike to open the tournament, and Maicon\u2019s 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\u2019s elegant but unspectacular toe-swipe against the United States. And this is supposed to be the sport\u2019s greatest showcase of skill!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the goals, either\u2014the 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 \u201chalf-chances.\u201d 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\u2019m getting thirsty!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tournament is still young, of course, and it\u2019s certainly possible things heat up later in the group stage, when more is on the line. But I don\u2019t know of anyone who isn\u2019t complaining about the uninspiring play so far, and, in apportioning blame for that, my money is on the ball\u2014the famous Jabulani. Before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[213,212,214,211,86,215,89],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-cup-2010","tag-david-greene","tag-football","tag-grant-wahl","tag-jabulani","tag-soccer","tag-spain","tag-world-cup"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhose Fault is This Disappointing Cup? by David Wallace-Wells<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 16, 2010 \u2013 The tournament is still young, of course, and it\u2019s certainly possible things heat up later in the group stage, when more is on the line. 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