It’s pretty clear what day 2 of the 2010 World Cup will be forever remembered for. I do not wish to add to Robert Green’s misery by piling on any more words than are absolutely necessary. Curious thing. Many pundits in the run up have said that England was better than the United States at every position. Not in goal. Turned out that mattered. (Also, If you’re going to run Shaun Wright-Phillips out there in Landon Donovan’s position you’d better not say that you’re better everywhere.) There is also a perception that it is somehow okay to equate good goalkeeping and bad goalkeeping with luck in ways that are not consistent with other positions. Very few people would say that a player who scores and sets up two goals “baled his team out.” Why is the keeper treated this way for having an excellent match? Tim Howard had a monster game. Vincent Enyeama kept Nigeria in it despite the best efforts of his teammates. Robert Green made an error for the ages, and the only match that did not produce a winner stole the World Cup headlines for the day.
South Korea 2, Greece 0
I started watching South Korea-Greece at 6:30am, convinced that I would be in a coma by 7 am due to the defensive reputations of both sides. We were reminded at the beginning of the broadcast in the USA that Greece qualified in a playoff with Ukraine. That must have been the Aliens vs. Predators of attacking football. Speaking of boring football, I actually got to use this at the bar I saw the USA game at:
Bar Patron: What happened in the France-Uruguay match yesterday?
Me: You mean you didn’t see it?
Patron: No, who won?
Me: You did.
(Rim shot) .. well, in my head there was a rim shot…
Alright, back to South Korea and Greece. For their defensive reputations, Greece came out with a 4-3-3 lineup and South Korea looked like they thought they could use their quick, technical passing to wear down the Greeks. So much for reputation.
After the first two days of the tournament, there have been 7 goals in 5 games. 3 of those goals have been scored by center backs on set pieces, and 4 have been scored by midfielders. Meaning that every forward who has taken the field has posted a whopping 0 goals. Something to keep an eye on in the weird stats department….
I mention this here because South Korea got one of each variety today. Loukas Vyntra of Greece appeared to be positioning himself for FIFA’s coveted “Golden Claudio Reyna Impersonator” award when he was dispossessed by Park Ji Sung who converted the goal to put South Korea 2-0 up.
For Greece, Kyrgiakos did not play and Karagounis came off at half time. While qualification looks highly unlikely at this point, there is still a chance they might show stiffer resistance in their final two matches. It has to be said that the Greek midfield was completely overrun from minute 6 to minute 70.
South Korea put real pressure on Nigeria with the win, who, as it turns out, don’t look that inspiring anyway. There were some concerns about South Korea’s back line at the end of the match. Given how little pressure Greece put them under throughout the match, I doubt the South Korean defense was defending at peak urgency in those final minutes.
Argentina 1, Nigeria 0
The low scoring average for the first two games can be attributed to two different factors: outstanding goalkeeping and a lack of composure in the final third by key players. Nigeria had both of these factors in spades. Enyeama single-handedly kept Lionel Messi from “Arsenal-ing” Nigeria. The myriad of different forwards Nigeria threw at Argentina all had chances, and most of them, it has to be said, were not well taken.
Gabriel Heinze’s goal for Argentina came off a free kick that left the commentators wondering how he could be left so open at the top of the box… I suppose that if one wanted to quibble, the bear hug Walter Samuel appeared to have on Heinze’s marker may have had something to do with it… if one wanted to quibble.
While he didn’t score, Messi was electric from his first touch on the ball, and if we see this all tournament, what a treasure it is going to be. Also, it has to be said that Maradonna’s center back at left back and winger at right back lineup worked well enough this time. Heinze grabs the goal and Jonas had a particularly good match.
Though Chinedu Obasi’s final ball was consistently awful, Obasi, Martins and Odemwingie showed enterprise on the counter, and Yakubu showed his strength. They are not without advantages going into the last two matches in the group, but they trail South Korea by 3 points and 3 goals with two matches to go. If this was a league title chase, we’d call those long odds to overcome.
USA 1, England 1
Having surrendered a goal 4 minutes into the match, there was a collective sense of “here we go again” with echoes of the Czech Republic match from Germany. Whether they scored again or not, the real question I had was how this team would respond this time around. Rather than getting rocked by two more goals, this United States team played their way back into the match. Yes, the goal was soft, by Donovan, Dempsey, Altidore, and even Michael Bradley got the ball and ran at people, made space for themselves with their feet, and generally brought a composure to a National team that usually only has one speed (frenetic) in the World Cup.
I continue to lodge my complaint that the two holding midfielders is unnecessary and Clark’s marking on Gerrard did not exactly convince me to change my mind. Nevertheless, this is a steady ship with Bob Bradley at the helm, and one needs only to look over the shoulder at France, England, and Greece right now to know how valuable that steadiness can be in such a short tournament. I also got the sense that Bradley learned a lot about how to get his team to respond from the Confederations Cup. The US was undone by two substitutions against Italy and warn down holding the fort against Brazil. Today, Bradley made some earlier moves to his bench, and his team played back on the counter with better organization and real intent than there last match in South Africa.
While Robbie Findley did not look threatening in the final third today, he once again did a competent job as an outlet when England attacks. As many eyebrows were raised when Brian Ching was left off the squad, Bradley has clearly worked his tactics to make sure that he has better ways to relieve the pressure than he did just one year ago.
While the USA shares the points today with England, our curiosity naturally turns to tomorrow mornings Algeria/Slovenia match. Will Novakovic or Dedic be the first forward to score in the 2010 World Cup? Can Algeria keep their temper and get the first African victory in South Africa?
We still have Germany, Holland, Spain, Brazil, Portugal and Chile to come! The party rolls on!
Written By Steven
Maloney
(80 Posts) |
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