Players need to understand the system that they’re playing AND be able to play in their role in that system. The Spanish can switch fluidly, many other teams can’t, probably more because of the abilities of the players than anything else. This is even more true at the international level where the teams often need to stay relatively simple, tactically, since they don’t have that much time to work together.
What is it with the handballs today? You see this with American kids in the younger ages who are used to grabbing at a ball in the air, but today’s were from European teams, and both were obvious. Not to mention that one was in the box for a penalty in a 0-0 game, and the other was for a player with one yellow card already on record.
Both of them were bizarre.
World Cup pressure? It’s not like playing just another club game. The stakes are so high that I can understand why they’d become undisciplined in ways they never would in normal circumstances.
More ramblings on the usage of singular locations for teams vs. plural and my thoughts. Spoiler-ed to not hijack the FIFA talk.
That’s a bit though why we Americans do tend to take our sports rivalries a bit far. As the practice of metonymyis quite common. So when we refer to the (singular) location (of a sports team), it is being used as a metaphor for the team of players (a singular group composed of multiple individuals). So if we say “Jeez, Boston is playing excellent tonight”- the listener has to make the connections with the context of the conversation of what team the speaker was talking about. So to me, if we were having a world cup conversation and you said “Germany looks dominant” I’d make the connection right away to the team of Germany- easy stuff- it only gets tricky if you say something odd like “Boston looked great last night” without any context, leaving the listener then to struggle to figure out- are you referring to the Boston Celtics (Basketball team) or the Boston Red Sox (Baseball) team. That’s probably when we can cause some confusion with our language.
But it is a common habit over here to tend to just refer to famous teams by their location, and it’s also used in Rivalries as well to add heat to it. For example to use your example “Liverpool is awful”- If I were to state that, it’d be not only making a statement of trashing the team that resides in Liverpool, but I’m having an extra jab by referring to the town/all those associated with Liverpool as well. So I get to insult the team, and the supporters of the team as well as a way to annoy/rile up others. Not always the smartest thing to do, but it’s something that goes on here and there.
Another good example of it, is during our NBA Basketball finals here, the game was being played in Boston between LA Lakers and Boston Celtics, and the home crowd would simply chant “Beat LA”. It’s a simple and effective chant, easier than “Beat the Lakers” and it’s also got a nice bit of history behind it. (random article on Orgins of “Beat LA”
That was a bit lengthier and more in depth and rambling than probably warranted, so I’ll just end with “Yeah… Americans are weird, but it makes sense to us!”
How dare you bring your grammatical hijinks into a thread discussing The Beautiful Game[SUP]tm[/SUP]!
< Blows whistle - pulls out red card >
This New York Post headline has attracted some comment here in the UK, much of which rather gives the lie to the idea that Brits get irony and Americans don’t 
I took it to be a play on “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29”, but perhaps an American could confirm?
Ha, Russia was exactly the example that came to my mind first. The first half with a Spanish 4-4-2 formation was ineffectual. Villa’s injury proved to be the turning point: Fabregas was added to the centre of the offensive midfield to create a flat triangle. The already tiring Russians had to run even more to counter the Spanish gameflow and failed to do so.
If they had adopted an even deeper, more defensive line up … but it’s not surprising that such a young team neither had the experience nor the mentality to block Spain’s forward motion with the positional discipline that worked so well for Inter Mailand this year (to name the most prominent example of a formation that can counter brutal offensive power astonishingly well).
Sergio Busquets is going to improve the Spanish offensive even further but it will be interesting to see if he has Senna’s stopping power against more … robust players.
Spain hasn’t changed the game plan much since 2008 (and why should they?) but the other teams had ample time to think about some counter measures against the added holding mid … still, it’s the team to beat.
The German midfield should be in better shape to counter the Spanish offensive this time (if we meet again) but our defence was struck hard with injuries prior to the Mundial. And though Del Bosque is right in mentioning that “Ha cambiado muchísimo en los últimos años”, Germany is not on a par with Spain, Holland, Argentina or Brazil. Not yet.
A 4-4-2 is a relatively simple formation that gives a team a lot of versatility: you have width per se and can shift the two lines of 4 players back and forth without losing formation easily. The back four are the most efficient strategy to milk the offside rule but since its latest changes it’s also a more dangerous formation.
Basically, the 4-4-2 doesn’t demand too much from your players; it can be played well even by teams with mediocre talent and (comparatively) little ball handling capability. But it can also be played with genius.
The two forwards or one of them can play more of an offensive midfielder, e.g., to strenghten your team when the other side has the ball. If the other forward is positioned more in front you have also a good formation to set up a counter-attack: a tactic that hit Bayern München/Munich hard during the finale of this year’s champions league.
If your two 4 men line ups play deep and disciplined, they’ll deny a more offensive oriented 4-3-3 the diagonal pass into the depth behind your back four which forces the other side to either play around your formation again and again or penetrate with the ball into the line ups – both decisions lead to an increased chance of losing the ball in a bad position.
Australia’s 4-4-2, however, wasn’t positioned deep against the German 4-2-3-1 but high, very high. The forwards attacked the back four deep in the German half, the 4 midfielders positioned themselves high to capture the ball if one of the defenders played a weak pass under pressure. Consequently, the back four had to position themselves high too to not lose contact with the midfield and deny the German side too much space inbetween.
The game plan was obviously very aggressive … and totally wrong. The German players of the younger generation are technically superb players who know how to handle the ball under pressure and are capable of precise passing through occupied spaces. The wingers are far too explosive to allow them so much open space leading to the Australian goal and the free midfielder on the German side was, of all things, Mesut Özil, who is one of the most creative young players in todays football – you don’t want him to have time and space to come up with an idea how to penetrate into the opponent’s half most efficiently.
The game plan was wrong with regard to the opponent’s strenghts. But it was also ill-suited for the team’s abilities, the weather and the latest changes in the offside rule.
The Australian team is too old to keep up the running game that is needed to pressure the German defence and its midfield over 90 minutes and the weather was too close even for a younger team to do so. Even if they had managed to secure a 0:0 for sixty or seventy minutes, they would have been comatose for the remaining time and the German team would have started to run forward.
The Australian coach realised this, of course, and seemed to switch to a 4-3-3/4-5-1 formation in the second half. The stupid red card denied us the opportunity to see whether a different shape would have worked better.
It just means that since the expectation was for a bad USA loss, a tie is, in effect, a great victory.
And Rob Green is now doubt deeply thanking Denmark’s Poulsen for giving us a new comedy own goal to take our minds off the last one. So will Holland, who didn’t much look like scoring themselves.
This game will finally settle the ole Dane-Dutch rivalry (fast-forward to 20:20-21:00).
Very typical of Germany to hit their stride in the finals. They don’t have the strongest squad, and their 2 strikers only scored 3 goals each in their domestic leagues this season, but a team is more than a collection of players. They were very positive and good to watch in 2006 as well.
Players often swap shirts after a match, it’s both a sign of respect and gives the player a momento. Not to snub the USA, but it’s more likely that a US player asked for Gerrard’s shirt than the other way around.
Dominating performance by the Oranje, which IMO, was more impressive than the German win - in the sense that I consider the Danes a much stronger opponent. Van Persie looked quite rusty, making good runs but slow decisions. The two young Dutch (Elia and Iflaey(?)) both were impressive.
I had the tv on during the game in my office but missed parts of the game due to … what is it called? … ah, yes work.
I wouldn’t call Oranje dominating, the Danes exposed their weaknesses pretty well during the first half and in contrast to their usual style, the Dutch played too much through the middle. But they were lucky with the own goal. After that we witnessed, once again, the importance of a game plan that doesn’t exhaust the own team too much: the Danes didn’t have the strenght for an attack late in the game, while the Dutch added players that are able to penetrate deeply into the other half with a lot of speed forcing the already tired defenders into runs and tackles they couldn’t afford any longer.
The win was well-deserved, of course, but they didn’t play as well as I expected. Maybe they decided to start more controlled this time and built momentum slowly for the more important games later on.
Definitely. At the party where I watched US-England, two things came up spontaneously. First was a group cry of “Bill Buckner!” when Green let the ball through (and does this mean that England are becoming the Red Sox or Cubs of international soccer?), and the second was that we expected some headlines the next day would have to be “US wins 1-1” and the Harvard-Yale parallel was thoroughly discussed.
Who in the English/American speaking world isn’t itching to watch Victory right now? One of the finest directors, John Huston, uses three of the finest actors in the English speaking world, Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Pele, to kick some German ass (or arsh, what, what). He even sets the game in Paris, with a hot French babe thrown in for good measure.
We should enjoy the fantasy while we can, because whoever comes in second in Group C, I suspect, is going to be in for a tough two hours against the ruthless, domineering, expansive, blitzing scoring machine that is German football. At least that’s the way it appeared to me, stereotypes or no stereotypes, yesterday.
In Group C – I give Slovenia their due – but I think the last two games are going to be an exercise in which team can score more goals between the US and England. Neither Slovenia nor Algeria looked particularly sharp and both will be vulnerable to attack. I think USA (my team) must score at least 4 in the two games to avoid having to face the Bundesrepublik. That might not even be enough.
Before I curl into my fetal position, though, I’ll put on a movie, and dream of bicycle kicks.
Gotta say, and this is something I have noticed in recent years and not just at this World Cup, the standard of linesmanship is impressive. Time and again I am seeing offside decisions that initially look questionable, but you look at the replay and they were exactly right. When you consider that the offside law these days requires a certain amount of on-the-spot interpretation e.g. vis-a-vis whether the player is in a position to take advantage of the pass, they really are doing a good job.
Yeah, the Buckner thing came up almost immediately in this thread, which probably left our English friends scratching their heads. Here’s the infamous error from Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
I understand the Buckner reference now, having studied the incident on YouTube, but I’m still unsure about the “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” thing. It means it was a moral victory for the underdogs, right?
Nobody else watched the Japan match? They seemed to do quite well for themselves, though I’m not a soccer fan and have a hard time judging such things.
Harvard scored 16 points in the last 42 seconds to tie the game. While both teams entered the game undefeated, Yale was favored - their QB was Brian Dowling, the inspiration for the Doonesbury character BD, and they had future Dallas Cowboy Calvin Hill playing half back. Harvard’s nose tackle was Tommy Lee Jones.
Wiki page.