2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa

Best game I’ve seen so far in this WC. Cameroon were unlucky not to get a draw. Remarkable that a team playing like that can go out, and England could yet scrape through.

I think there were more completed passes and shots in the first 10 minutes of this match than in the whole of England v Algeria!

I’ll take the first two.

By the way I had noticed the different way this is interpreted yesterday already. The live text of the BBC lamented the ref for not giving at least a yellow…while the several dutch and belgian newsoutlets I’ve seen stated it should have been red, period. I happen to agree with them, one of the shows here have weekly item where they find the ‘elbow of the week’ and Dempsey’s is more blatent than most we see on the show.

On the german world cup show - when discussing Kuhne’s red for South africa - they discussed how it was the right decision given the rules, eventhough they have amended it in Germany because they found too harsh (or something in the lines of this). In the world cup - something EPL watchers should remember - we strictly use the international standards. Every international or European tournament I see the same discussions about how thing that are fine in the EPL are punished in the international competitions; just because the English like their footie more physical with a lot of flying last ditch tackles doesn’t mean this is the standard for international play (eventough I personally might like it better, but that’s just an opinion).

And yes, I did think Heskey should have been sent off. He was just so damn late that he couldn’t be claiming to be going for the ball. Or alternatively had such bad judgement of the moving objects on the field, that a sending off woudl be prudent to protect him from hurting himself (and others).

I guess I’ll have to take your word for it that it’s more violent than most elbows.

I think that if that elbow, in which the arm wasn’t swung, thrust, aimed, or pushed into the Slovenian player, is a red, then we’d see the rate of ejections increase 10 fold. Easily.

It’s logically consistent to say that Dempsey should have been sent off and Heskey should have been sent off, but I think the sport would be drastically changed. England have had a minimum of three sent off (I think one should have been, Carrager, not Heskey), and the US would have had Findley sent off.

Did you think that was a particularly violent game? I didn’t, but if that’s the level of contact that makes a foul violent conduct… I don’t want to watch the game.

Me too!, in his best clothes with the rest of the public, perhaps with an Argentina flag to support his team…

Well there was an elbow later in the game by a Slovenian player, I believe he got a yellow. and I do also remember a studs up challenge by a Slovenian player. I am not saying they should have been red, but I bet we could go throughout the whole game and argue this call or that call. I think the point with the disallowed goal is that we hav eno idea what was even called. As far as I can tell I have found no one (aside from ome Slovenian player) saying therew as anything wrong.

If the US beats Algeria then it is a moot point anyway.

I should pit Löw for one of the worst coaching performances in the history of the World Cup. Sure, not one of our players was even close to his top game: the goal allowed was a group effort of our back four plus the keeper and could have been avoided if only one of them had done his job.

But key to our defeat was the abysmal coaching prior to the game and while it unfolded. I have already pointed out that the coach(es) had decided to not change a thing after the first game. And while this might have looked like a sound decision, it totally ignored the well-known strenghts of the next opponent and the apparent weaknesses of our team.

Badstuber isn’t quick and agile enough to control Krasic, Podolski is no defender at all, so the left wing of the Australian game was bound to get into trouble against Serbia.

This could have been avoided easily, Löw had not one but several alternatives and dismissed them all – what’s worse, he didn’t react during the first half an hour when the obvious was unfolding on the left wing: this did not just affect the wing but also our central defenders and defensive midfield who had to help out on this side which opened large spaces in the middle for the now easily advancing Serbian players.

If you allow one wing to falter you disrupt the whole formation and skew it to this side of the field; that affects the transition into offense too because now neither the passing midfielders are in the position to immediately open a counter-attack nor are the more offence oriented players spread from wing to wing to widen the field which creates the gaps for vertical passes. They need to reposition themselves first, which gives the opposing team time to arrange their defence shape.

Big blunder. But Germany would still held the advantage due to their willingness to compensate the left wing’s weakness with a team effort and their individual class.

But then the coach decided to not react to the petty and pedantic referee too.

When Klose was booked and still continued to hassle opposing players needlessly in the midfield (no surprise there), he should have been substituted by another attacker asap (Cacau or Kiesling). There was no doubt that Klose was the prime candidate for a second yellow card and a coach needs to take care of such a situation if the player on the field isn’t willing to do so.

The Serbian goal was a result of the brief confusion that came after Klose’s dismissal. And still, the German team didn’t look too bad, they had more chances with one man gone than before and could have made a goal or two with a tiny bit of luck.

I won’t blame Löw for not changing the team immediately after the dismissal because of their fine reaction to the new situation but the advantages of some adaptations were so obvious that I was dismayed when the team hadn’t been reorganized during halftime.

The defence of Serbia was already in card-trouble and this should have been milked by adding players who love to go man-to-man and penetrate into the box with skill and speed. In other words, get Jansen on the field and Marin and Cacau and help Özil by adding Toni Kroos to the offence who is quite able to create plays and pass the ball like his team mate but is also a dangerous shooter and a better but not an unfair tackler.

But Löw decided to keep a willing but not quite working team on the field; and even this decision might have not been fatal if Podolski hadn’t missed the penalty, something he very, very rarely does wrong.

When Löw finally reacted, it was not just too late but also oh so wrong: Marin should have been the substitute for the luckless Podolski, both don’t work well together (damn it, we know that) and it showed. Özil had a weak day but he was still able to create dangerous situations and his absence had an immediate impact on the structure of our offence: it fizzled out. Like I said: Don’t get rid of him, help him!

And Gomez not just continues his inexplicable weak non-performances in international tournaments (as was already apparent against otherwise overwhelmed Australians), he wouldn’t have been the correct substitute player anyway because even in the league games he needs quite some time to get going – time that wasn’t there anymore.

So, Löw’s non-reactions helped Serbia as much as he could have possibly done and his late reaction secured the Serbian victory more than they could have ever hoped for.

I don’t want to see such lousy coaching again. Not ever.

This is all my perception after one viewing and no replay, so it may be wrong, but: I mostly agree, my only disagreement being with the initial decision to use the same formation as the Australia game. The initial failure wasn’t the formation; it was failing to quickly recognize (and frankly this is both Löw and the players) that the extra Serbian midfielder meant they weren’t going to get in any of those crisp long passes that they did against Australia. It was hugely annoying to see them turning the ball over like that midfield.

They did adapt somewhat after a while, but the runs down the side they were creating felt too slow to me, and allowed the defenders to collapse on them.

Also the rhythm of the match was just plain weird. You hit the nail on the head of one of the biggest frustrations of the match - once the referee’s inclination became clear, Löw should have put in players that would draw further fouls. Instead he put in Gomez, who’s more of a great campaigner than someone who’ll light anything up. So irritating.

Podolski looked like a golfer with the yips, even penalty kick aside. It brings up the question of form again (like Klose), even though the commentators are all assuming this was an unusual bad day for him.

Neuer looks fine, I don’t think Adler would have done any better.

In better news, Ghana looked hapless today. It would be wonderful if Germany came back to form and beat them, and funny if in addition Australia beat Serbia by a couple of goals.

Only if they win the group.

Valid point. Still, a switch to a midfield of five was such an obvious move that Löw had no excuse to not see it coming, adapt the gameplan accordingly and prepare his team in advance to execute it from the get-go.

It was also well-known how dangerous Krasic is and that Badstuber wasn’t suited to deal with him: not agile enough to fight it out man-to-man, not experienced enough to hamper him with positional play and not at all offensive enough to bind or, at the very least, tire Krasic with defensive obligations. And Podolski is generally unaware of dangerous developments in his back.

We had at other places quite some discussion prior to the game about alternatives on the wing; the most obvious one was a duo from Hamburg: Dennis Aogo in defence, Marcel Jansen in offence. They know each other, are defensively a better team and though Jansen isn’t as dangerous as Podolski, Aogo would have supported him more in the forward movement which would have made it far more challenging for the Serbian wing to act offensively (more to the point, Aogo would have burdened Krasic with defence).

The down-side: Although this formation is very interesting, we haven’t played this way before (which is another point against Löw, btw.).

Another option was a transfer from Lahm to the left with the addition of Boateng to the right. Badstuber could have either paused or preferably taken the position of Arne Friedrich as centre-back.

In light of the trigger-happy referee, Boateng might not have been such a great idea: he is an extremely talented defender but also the only German player who managed to see a red card in his debut.

Otoh, he has shown far more discipline in most of his matches than his first appearance in the national team suggested and he wouldn’t have been involved in many tackles anyway. Plus, he could have teamed up with Müller pretty well to provide a constant threat over the right wing. Maybe not as much as Lahm/Müller are capable of but enough to do far more than just neutralize this Serbian wing.

But I fully agree with you that it was annoying to see them stick to the prior tactics even when it became apparent that this was a different match-up. The lack of experience was plain to see.

This had a lot to do with the lopsided shape created by the one dangerous Serbian wing: the positions weren’t perfect anymore for an immediate switch to attack. But the referee might have hampered us even more (though I am not inclined in any way to use him as a scape goat for our lacklustre performance!).

Our play needs rhythm to work well; I am pretty sure the Serbian players were prepared to prevent its emergence with numerous tackles against our passing midfield.

As it turned out, the referee made sure it could not happen, which should have been a plus but his constant whistles (almost every tackle was disrupted) had the same effect: both teams were in constant start-stop-mode for the first thirty minutes but it hurt us more and would have hurt any team that relies on passing rhythm and fast switching positional play, while a more defensive oriented team gets a lot more time due to the intermissions to (re-)arrange its positions.

Still, you’re right, the players weren’t at their best: they should have been able to adapt to the situation more readily and attack far more swiftly – they did neither. At least not when they were still a full team. Once Klose was gone, they sped up and looked far more dangerous than before. Fools.

We fully agree on the idiocy of Löw’s substitutions. He did not just wait too long but chose wrong twofold: he added and more so removed the wrong players.

That the team was still competitive, despite a less than adequate preparation, wrong formation, medocre performance and an unusually poor conversion of chances, gives me hope however. I doubt that so many things will go wrong again.

They desperately missed their two centre-backs. When they come back, they will deploy a much better formation. All in all, Germany has a better team but we will see how the youngsters manage to deal with the pressure of elimination.

This might be one of the matches when we miss the battle-tested, efficient, humourless, old-school German players, the ones who didn’t mind how they played as long as they were winning.

If we don’t make it to the final, I won’t mind if your wish comes true. Otherwise, nah.

It pains me to say it, the South American teams show all around much better football than the European side. Even our traditional advantages in athletics and tactics are gone. We really need to get going.

The South Americans really are having a wonderful cup so far. They’ve all won a game already and Brazil and Chile have yet to play their second game. I don’t know if all five will get out of their groups (I’m worried about Chile), but that still is really impressive. 5 out of the 16 could be South American.

Lol. Good start NZ.

So the French team have refused to train after a bust-up. It’s always amusing when a team melts down at the World Cup.

Can’t believe the ref called that penalty on an Italian dive. NZ shouldn’t have pulled the shirt, but that ball was way over and De Rossi had no chance to get it regardless. Ref gifts an undeserved goal to Italy.

And their managing director just resigned. Full on China Syndrome.

To be fair it looked like the NZ goal was off-side. Still, I hope to see the kiwis upset the Italians anyway they can :smiley:

Agreed, so I think it’s a fair scoreline, but I hate to see Italian theatrics deciding World Cup matches yet again.

I’ll admit to an irrational hatred of gli Azzurri, but they are painful to watch. Diving, complaining, and when they finally score a goal, they celebrate by sucking their thumbs (Totti in 2006) or this new move, which I call “fellating Pinocchio.” Beyond lame.

The Italians make it easy to loathe them.

And the French seem to be imploding.

Pizza eating dive monkeys?

Also, I didn’t much rate New Zealand coming into this; I thought that they’d be blown up by better teams. I’ve got to retract that sentiment and give them full credit. They’ve really showed that they not only belong but can compete here. I don’t think that they can dominate, but they’ve played the way that they need to in order to get a result.