Curse of the Day:
• May youth triumph over your superior experience.

occer or Football.  Whichever word you call the sport, here's some comments on it.

I watched most of both World Cup matches last night/this morning; England vs. Brazil, and USA vs. Germany.  Brazil won 2-1 and Germany won 1-0.

Despite sorrow in the UK, I can't see that match ending any differently.  Brazil was clearly far superior in nearly every aspect of the game.  They could have had 4 or 5 goals easily, as many good scoring opportunities as they got, and England was very lucky to score anything.  Their lone goal came on a total screw up by the Brazilian defender.  They would have hardly gotten a shot on goal if not for that. Brazil was down 1-0 after that screw up, despite having controlled the game up to that point, but they were able to come back and score twice to win anyway. The game reminded me of the US vs. Mexico match, where Mexico had far better ball handling and controlled the attack throughout, but the US played great defense and had fast enough forwards to counter-attack at times.  England was much the same as the US, but lacking the luck and skilled goalie on defense, and the fast forwards, so they were pretty much helpless.

They got a huge break early in the second half as well, when the ref gave a ridiculous red card to a Brazilian guy for an obviously glancing, accidental elbow on a loose ball.  From the ref's angle and the England guy's dive, it looked like a real hit live, but from the replay it was a horrible call.  So England had an 11 on 10 the last 35 minutes, but Brazil still had better scoring opportunities, though no one scored from then on.

Despite their two goals, I thought Brazil's offense was very poorly-organized; with all of their forwards way too eager to laser a shot on goal from 20 or 30 yards.  They did that constantly, from crowds of defenders, and I don't recall any of them getting anywhere near the goal.  All were blocked or right at the goalie or well wide.  If they'd pressed the swarm attack and tried to get closer and used some ball movement, they could have had a couple of more goals, I think.

One thing I was surprised by was David Beckham, on England.  He's all famous and married to one of the Spice Girls, has the cool hair, is a huge world wide star, etc.  But he had no game?  He's really skinny, but didn't look fast, and did nothing to stand out in the plays I saw.  Apparently he's really good on a set shot, able to "bend it like Beckham" as the slogan goes, which is to say he can kick it with a lot of spin, making the ball curve wildly.  He never did anything impressive in this match though, and was usually out around midfield running after some Brazilian break, like most of the rest of the England squad.

The US vs. Germany game was a lot better match, much more even teams, and Germany won, as expected, but they hardly dominated play. I was rooting for the US, though not overwhelmingly.  I don't really care enough about the sport to have huge favorites, but I'm going to root for the guys from my country, like pretty much everyone else around the world does.  In the England vs. Brazil match, I was probably for Brazil, since I used to like them when I was a kid and Pele was around.  Plus the England squad looked so less-talented and hesitant that I couldn't see much point in rooting for them. Don't tell my English and wanna-be English friends. ;)

The US squad looked much better early on, with Germany very tentative and back passing a lot.  I noticed immediately that Germany was much taller.  Their average player looked to be about 6'4", while the US guys were 6 foot or shorter.  If you want centimeters that's like 190 vs 175ish.  As a consequence Germany was winning every high ball that came down to two guys leaping up to head it.  And eventually they scored on a header, when it went right over a shorter US defender, but not over a German forward.  It wasn't much of a goal, he hit it hard, but right at the US keeper, however he was so close than there was no reaction time, and it went right by the keeper's leg, and off his fingers.

I think the whole defensive scheme by the US on the penalty kicks was poor.  Germany had about 6 of them from maybe 15 or 20 yards outside of the penalty box, and every time the US would line up a wall to deter the direct kick.  That had no effect, since Germany never did any direct kicks in the entire game, that I can remember.  They were all about getting it in close and using teamwork.  Their free kicks were no exception, since they lofted them into the middle for everyone to run and try to head each time, with pretty good success.

Anyway, the US strategy was to line all of their defenders up in a row, and Germany would line up with them, not past them, since they'd be Offsides.  The problem was that when the German guy kicked the ball, he'd float it into the middle and everyone would run towards it, leaping madly trying to head it.  Since the German guys were taller, they had a big advantage on this every time.  Out of about 6 tries on very similar location kicks, Germany had one goal, and 2 or 3 others that were very dangerous, with a German guy just missing a clean head, or the ball skimming right through the middle and off to the side.  Since all of the German forwards were taller, and having no problem running in to get a good angle on the head, the US should have quit with the attempted offsides stuff, which wasn't working, and just stood around where the ball was going to come down.  They'd have had defense in front of the ball then and could have obstructed the path of the attackers, meeting them, rather than running next to them.

Germany plays a smart team game.  They had zero individual scoring tries, and didn't send any of the zipping shots from too far away that Brazil did constantly. They would always wait and wait and get a bunch of guys in there, and try to send a cross over for a header, or get a foul and a free kick.  They only scored one, but they had a lot of chances, always in a group, and they know to use their size to their advantage.

The crime of the game was the US had a sure goal late in the second half, where it was kicked into the middle and then past the goalie.  The ball hit the Germany defender on the left arm, by the elbow, and then the goalie was able to save it.  The arm hit was not intentional, it went off the guy's side first, and he didn't reach out and knock it down, but on replay it was inarguably a hand ball, which is illegal, and if a defender's hand stops a goal it's a goal, as far as I know.  So it should have been a goal, or at the least a penalty kick for the US, and those turn into goals most of the time.  There's just one ref, and he didn't see it, that's that.  The US had several other very good scoring chances with a forward past all the German defense, but the German goalie was good, the US attackers not great, and they got saved, several times on one handed dives.

The US needs a couple of good, tall forwards.  The whole tournament I'm like most Americans, watching our best players and thinking if soccer were popular here, like it is in the rest of the world, what it would be like.  Hard to not think the World Cup would be much like basketball is in the Olympics, where the US just has the 10 best players, and every game is either a rout, or should be. Imagine if some of the best athletes from Football, Basketball, Baseball, Track, and other US sports played soccer every day from the time they were 3 years old.  Black guys who were 6'6", faster than anyone on the squad now, long legs, 3 foot vertical leaps, etc.  It wouldn't guarantee victory, but the US would certainly have the fastest, strongest athletes in the game.  Germany won by being taller, to a great degree.

Of course the beauty of soccer is that small people can play it very well too, and aside from some high headers, height isn't really an advantage.  Also the best team doesn't always win; you can get 5x more shots than the other team, control the ball the whole time, but it's so hard to score that you can still lose 1-0 after dominating play.  Ask Mexico.  Soccer is a cruel mistress, where the team that plays best doesn't always win.  Far from it.

Since a number of the US' best players were their youngest players, and the sport is finally doing something in this country on the professional level, it appears that the US national team is improving, and will probably be competitive in the future.

I enjoy watching it in the World Cup, but not enough to sit through any normal games.  There aren't a lot of scores, but when someone does manage to put the ball into the net, it's usually a thing of beauty, and quite exciting. The scarcity of scores makes the ones that do occur more fun, assuming the rest of the game doesn't have a slow pace and endless flopping and so much stalling for time that it's ruined.

Probably the biggest problem with soccer, is the officiating, which is generally woeful. An Italian TV company is considering suing the World Cup, after Italy was robbed by some bad calls, lost out of the cup, and of course cost the TV company tons of money, since they'd get massive ratings for Italy games, and much lower for other teams.  That's probably a frivolous lawsuit, but the complaint has merit.

The US lost to Germany on a blown call, and there are constant iffy decisions throughout the game where two guys are fighting for position, fighting for the ball, and when the ref blows his whistle, who he gives the penalty on is really a coin toss.  When you watch the replay you usually can't tell who was guilty, or it's both guys grabbing and dragging equally.

The most annoying thing about soccer to me is the amount of flopping and faking that goes on.  I find it cheesy and boring and maddening to watch, and yet the refs always fall for the biggest theatrical dives.  Don't the officials ever watch a soccer game on TV, and see that almost all of the flops are fake?  I'd think they would apply that to what they see on the field their next game.

The Latin teams seem to be the worst about flopping, and nearly every time someone loses the ball they go sprawling and crying for a penalty.  And often get it. It's hard to watch a lot of the games, since almost every tackle ends in someone writing in apparent agony.  And then on the replay, you see him get tapped on the shin, or ankle, or not touched at all. The strategy of lots of guys seems to be that if you get beat to the ball, crash melodramatically to the ground and flop around, and hope the refs bail you out.  And they usually do.

I enjoyed both games yesterday since there was very little flopping, with the US, Germany, Brazil, and England all having pride and skilled players, rather than whining babies, like a lot of the other teams seem to.  There was one ridiculous flop by a German defender after he pulled down a US guy before a penalty kick, and while they were tangled up the German guy suddenly starts flopping like a carp, when as the reply showed he wasn't even touched.  The ref only saw the end of it, and gave them both yellow cards.  The red card to the Brazilian guy was a terrible call also, but at full speed live action it's hard to blame the ref for it, since it looked bad.

More than just the gullible refs, the whole system of officiating in soccer is insufficient. There is an official, and two linesmen in World Cup play.  That's it.  No video replay, no goal judges, no back judges, etc.  The linesmen are out of bounds, always to the side of the field, while the ref has to run around and try to keep the action in sight, on a field that's much larger than a US football field.  The linesmen are often 40 or 50 yards from the action; they can't hope to see a trip or pull down clearly, and the ref only has two eyes, so he can't see everything.

They really need another ref out there, and probably TV replay, I think.  Not of everything, but plays by the goal, major penalties, red cards, that sort of thing. The sport is so unforgiving, where one or two goals is all you see most games, that any mistake is hugely-magnified, and it's sort of dumb to have just one ref on the field, when he clearly can't possibly see everything, and so often penalties are shown to be in error on the TV replay.

Soccer is meant to have very minimal officiating.  They are fast and loose with side throw ins, the spot of the ball on penalty kicks, lots of penalties are not called if they didn't result in a change of possession, etc.  That's all fine on friendlies and other such games, but for the World Cup, with a billion people watching on TV, they should really do something to increase the scientific nature of the officiating.  It's 2002, not 1960.  We have the technology.

Given my soccer watching habits, the next time I give this thought will be in about 2006, I suspect.  See you then.