A Worthy Final

A fitting end

HISTORY will show that the biggest names in international soccer wound up taking center stage in Brazil, but everything written about the World Cup should be followed with a one-word sentence.

Barely.

Germany won their fourth title. Barely. Argentina reached their fifth final. Barely. The Netherlands and Brazil reached the semis. Barely. The names may not have changed from the past, but the means with which they got to that point in the tournament certainly did. Part of what made the World Cup so remarkably compelling, both from a viewing standpoint and the standpoint of a commentator such as myself, was just how close the margins were.

Consider that of the 16 games in the knockout fazes in the tournament, only four of them were decided by more than one goal – and a case could be made in almost every one of those other 12 games that the losing side could’ve and maybe even should’ve won (and even in one of those four ‘routs’ – France’s 2:0 win over Nigeria – it was goalless until the 79’ mark, at which point the Super Eagles’ best player – their goalkeeper – inexplicably gifted the game to Les Bleus). Germany’s majestic 7:1 win over Brazil was remarkable, in part, because the Germans looked so awful against Algeria. They looked old beyond their years and looked completely worn out by the end of the game with the Fennec Foxes, resorting to cheap chicanery in lieu of any good ideas. This followed a two-game stretch where they were nearly run into the ground by Ghana, only to be saved by Klose, and then went into a self-preservationist shell v. the U.S. That team which tore the hosts to shreds in Belo Horizonte had seemingly risen from the dead.

But every team which advanced in this tournament suffered a near-death experience along the way. Argentina should’ve lost to Iran, for heaven’s sake, and somehow the Swiss kept looking the gift horse in the mouth against them and getting spooked. The Dutch manufactured two goals in the last five minutes against Mexico, and then van Gaal essentially trolled the whole tourney with the goalie switch v. Costa Rica. Brazil was not the better team v. Chile, nor v. Mexico for that matter. The Belgians would’ve gone home if Wondo hadn’t choked. Costa Rica would’ve gone home if Greeks had a clue – and the only reason the Greeks were there at all was the Greek tragedy sort of ending which befell Côte d’Ivoire. On and on it went. Almost every team that advanced needed a miracle at some point or another in order to do so. About the only team who didn’t give their fans a heart attack on their way to the latter stages was the Colombians, which definitely speaks to their quality.

And yet for all of the nervy finishes and tension, if you were betting on the favourites according to the lines, you were making a fair amount of money. All eight of the group winners advanced out of the 16s, all four favoured sides advanced to the semis. The recurring theme of this World Cup was that, time and again, the upstarts had the favourites on the ropes and failed to take advantage. It’s easy to play “woulda coulda shoulda” with this tournament, the point being not that those teams who advanced somehow didn’t deserve it so much as the margin between victory and defeat was always so small. The skeptic could say that it is proof there really were no ‘great’ teams in the tourney, but I would argue that the field was deeper and more balanced than ever before. But you have to finish them off. We saw countless stoppage time goals, substitutes saving the day, and more comebacks than had been seen in the tourney in years. Bottom line is that when you have the chance to pull the upset, you have to seize the moment, because it could very easily come back to haunt you.

And I really felt like the Argentines left this game on the table today. They had the bulk of the better chances in regulation, they dictated the terms and had the pace of play the way they wanted. The longer that game went on, the more likely it seemed to me that they were going to lose. Messi seemed somewhat laboured in his play as the game went on, but I think the only thing he truly did wrong was not be able to get on the end of his own passes. With all the goals he scores, it’s forgotten sometimes what a great passer Messi is. Several times he made beautiful, almost perfect passes into empty spaces which should have been occupied by teammates making runs, if only those teammates had bothered to make them – the lot of them too pre-occupied by watching Messi to actually finish the play. You can understand why Argentina went into such a defensive shell, given what a hash of things they were making up front. They may have gone 7½ hours without conceding a goal, but they also went about 5½ hours without scoring one. When you shank chances like this, you had better trust your defense:

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Whenever the Germans verged on unlocking that defense, either Kroos or Müller would step up and do something useless. Once Klose came off – he having actually played a very good match as a target forward – it seemed like maybe Argentina were going to get a reprieve, as the Germans struggled again to break it down. But unlike the worthless Argentine subs, the Germans still had some firepower on the bench. It was somewhat appropriate for the tournament that Götze got the goal – not only because so many goals have been scored by subs in this tourney, but also because Götze was benched after being, well, awful in the group stages. This tourney seemed to always reward those who made the most of being given second chances.

And it was a beautiful goal, as well, a fitting end to a great tournament. I am not sure I would call it a great game, but World Cup finals rarely are. It certainly was a very good one, and a very intense one as that, and it made for a worthy final. In terms of quality of play, I would say it was probably the best final since Mexico 1986. In terms of the overall quality of play among all 32 teams, I would say this is probably the best World Cup that has ever been played – and given how close the margins seem to be, I can imagine the competition is only going to get tougher and more intense from here. I honestly was not planning to do a daily blog on the World Cup, but the storylines were impossibly compelling. And I do think, in the end, that the Germans were the best overall side, and the best team won out.

Barely.

Inept

Oh for heaven's sake

NORMALLY, I wouldn’t give a shit about the consolation game of the World Cup from a win/loss perspective. With the pressure off, guys play loose and so it’s usually pretty entertaining, but given the catastrophic loss to Germany on Tuesday, I was curious to see how Brazil would respond in their final performance before their home fans.

Not very well, as it turned out. Brazil were inept.

Had the Dutch not dialed it back a bit after scoring two early goals – understandable, given they’d played four hours of nervy football in the past week and were considerably fatigued – the final scoreline may not have been that far off from the 7:1 debacle the other night. As it was, a 3:0 win by the Oranje was a pretty emphatic rebuke of the hosts, who offered up a lot of the same nonsense as they did v. the Germans four days ago.

The Brazilians came out in the same 5-0-5 alignment as the other day – and I say that only partly in jest. The Dutch ran through the Brazilian midfield in the first 20’ like they were frolicking in a meadow. Much of the scorn on the 2nd goal goes to David Luiz for his aimless, blootering attempt at a clearing header which landed at the feet of Blind in the center of the box, and deservedly so, but it should be pointed out that Blind plays left back for the Oranje, which means he went on about an 85-yard run to find himself unmarked right in front of the Brazilian goal. It’s not like Blind is particularly fleet of foot, either, and when you go on an 85-yard run, you don’t exactly have the element of surprise on your side. How does that happen?

What’s particularly depressing from a Brazilian point of view is that, even though he was awful the past two games, David Luiz is still one of their better players. Such is the dearth in the front 2/3 of the field that the Brazilian backs – David Luiz, Marcelo, Thiago Silva – had to try to do everything in the absence of Neymar. (And if you’re Paris St. Germain, and you’ve now spent €100,000,000 to pair David Luiz and Thiago Silva in the back, are you not going rummaging through the desk in research of the receipts right about now?) Oscar was the only guy up front who played worth a damn. I think the enormous pressure of trying to win in Brazil may have gotten to them, in the end – everyone was trying to do much, the back four kept freelancing but no one gave them any cover. And that’s not a novel concept. It’s basic football. At times, Seleção looked as if they’d never played together before.

We’ve probably all downplayed the amount of pressure this team was under. The ramifications of this sort of failure are going to be felt well into the fall, I suspect – not just on the footballing front, where wholesale changes seem inevitable, but there is also a presidential election in October in Brazil, and Dilma Rousseff’s reëlection campaign probably isn’t feeling so comfortable at the moment. It wouldn’t be the first, nor last time where failure on the football pitch translated into failure at the ballot box in Latin America, where the game and politics are seemingly inherently intertwined. The cost figure I’ve heard thrown about for the World Cup is around $11,000,000,000 altogether – that’s a lot of zeroes – far too much of it public money and far too much of it over budget. The general consensus going into this event was that, for all of the corruption and cronyism and resulting discontent, the general public in Brazil would ultimately put up with it if Seleção won the World Cup. Well, they didn’t. Now what? And don’t forget that other endeavour in political pulled pork on the Brazilian BBQ at the moment, the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, preparations for which haven’t been going very well. Such calamitous boondoggles no longer have place in a developing nation attempting to become a major international player in arenas far, far greater than the Maracanã.

As I said the other day, there has been an overwhelming sense of entitlement about everything Seleção did in this tournament – and the 1st goal in today’s game was in keeping with that notion, since Thiago Silva should’ve been red carded and probably would’ve been were he wearing any other jersey. (Awarding the penalty was something of a compromise, since it was debatable that it should have been, but on the other hand, watching the Brazilian play a man down for 88’ would’ve made us all squeamish.) If you were a Brazilian, anything short of committing a felony was going to let you stay in the game, which Scolari knew and which he used in the way he crafted his strategy. In chopping down Colombians much like Washington chopped down cherry trees, the Brazilians were almost boasting that there were no repercussions – and they were then shocked and aghast when, in what became an overheated game, their only hope and saviour Neymar was seriously injured. (Not to say it was justified in any way, of course. In no way do I think there was intent to injure on the part of Zúñiga. But if you are going to actively fan the flames, you do not get to bitch if and when the fire rages out of control.) The Brazilians seemed to think there would be no consequences for their actions. This tourney has ultimately been an exercise in arrogance and just desserts, a dessert baked with the rottenest of apples.

Perder

Cone will be starting at striker for Seleção on Saturday.

I DON’T need to give any ink to that wretched Argentina-Netherlands game. Congrats to them for essentially tying for 2nd place in this tourney, since it will go down as a 0:0 draw in the books, and since neither of them will stand much of a chance come Sunday, in my opinion, and it was a shame that one team had to win. There was really only one game that mattered this week in the World Cup, the result of which was rather seismic in nature.

Valhalla is Burning
The record will show that the game took place in Belo Horizonte, but it may as well have been Bayreuth. Such was the catastrophic nature of Brazil’s defeat that it seemed more like something out of opera. It didn’t seem real. In the length of a Wagnerian aria, more than six decades of Brazilian mythology was razed to rubble. With each additional goal, another wall collapsed, and by the time the Germans scored the fifth, some 29’ into the match, even they were stunned at what they had done.

Brazil’s first half on Tuesday was the single-worst 45 minutes of soccer I have ever seen at this level. Even the Tahitians were better than that a year ago, and would have done better against the Germans than Brazil did. Tahiti lost all three games at the Confed Cup last summer and gave up 24 goals in the process, but a good number of those goals were attributable to fatigue late in the matches. (Having a goalkeeper with lettuce hands didn’t help.) The Brazilians couldn’t even use fatigue as an excuse. Their pre-made excuses for defeat – no Neymar, no Thiago Silva – went out the window as well. There were no excuses left by the half-hour mark. Brazil weren’t, and aren’t, any good. For Brazil – mighty Brazil! – to be behind by five goals after 29 minutes was the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen on the pitch. Take another good look at it, because I reckon you will never see anything quite like that again in your lifetime.

Full marks to the Germans for being ruthless and methodical and clinical, of course – but Brazil were so bad that the Germans would have been disappointed in themselves if it wasn’t 5-0 at half. The Germans couldn’t even muster up much of a celebration after scoring the 5th goal. They seemed almost as shocked as the spectators at just how awful their opponents were.

The narrative of this game is, and always will be, about just how terrible Brazil were. The first German goal was a set piece on a corner so basic that it probably isn’t even listed in the German repertoire because it can’t possibly work. Müller moved about 10 yards to his left (and not particularly swiftly), was unmarked and the ball fell at his feet. That play doesn’t work in U-13 soccer, much less in the semifinal of the World Cup. Marcelo should probably change his nickname to Toast after getting burned so badly on the second goal, a fairly simply worked give and go. What was shocking was just how easy it was for the Germans to score again and again. Fernardinho’s giveaway which led to the 4th goal, where he was leisurely strolling towards his own goal and had Kroos pick his pocket, was noteworthy in that it was the only proof offered all day that Fernardinho was actually on the pitch, for as bad as the Brazilian defense was, the midfield may have actually been worse. (Here is a good tactical analysis of what a shambles the Brazilians were, although I think the commentator is a bit harsh on Julio Cesar, who easily could have conceded 10 goals with the way his defense hung him out to dry.)

And as I say, Brazil had several ready-made excuses were they to suffer a 1:0 or 2:1 defeat – blame it on Neymar’s injury, blame it on Thiago Silva’s suspension, blame it on reckless Colombians and clueless Spanish referees – but this defeat was so thorough and so comprehensive that even those excuses rang hollow after half an hour. And along with those excuses, out went the Brazilian mystique, as well. Brazil hadn’t lost a meaningful match in 39 years at home, and hadn’t lost any sort of a match at home in more than a decade. As I said the other day, the danger comes when you start to believe in your own mythology. Not only have the Brazilians believed in it all this time, they’ve actively flaunted it, and used the mystique of all-mighty Brazil as a weapon on the pitch.

I’ve been watching the World Cup since 1982, and something which was struck me in nearly every single tournament is the fear the Brazilians instill in their opponents. Teams play extraordinarily cautiously against them, terrified of Seleção unleashing some astounding display of skill against them which will lead to a rout. That fear has always been as big a weapon as the skills itself – skills which the likes of Romario and Bebeto and Ronaldo and Ronaldinho actually possessed, but very rarely needed to show. Brazil basically won a World Cup in 1994 simply through showing up and seeing their opponents cower in the corner for 90 minutes (or, in the case of Italy in the final, 120 minutes). Teams weren’t just playing the 11 Brazilians on the pitch, but also playing Pelé and Garrincha and Jairzinho at the same time. I remember very nearly screaming at the TV in 1998, wondering why no one would dare press against a Brazilian side that was so clearly weak in defense. (It was the Norwegians, of all teams, who finally figured this out, as they finally said the hell with it when down a goal and threw caution to the wind, promptly scoring two within about 5 minutes and pulling a historic upset.) Unsurprisingly, the two sides during all those years who’ve shown Brazil the least amount of respect – the French and the Dutch – have produced some of the best results against them. The French have knocked Brazil out of the World Cup three times; the Dutch, meanwhile, knocked them out four years ago, and their games with Brazil in 1994 and 1998 were the best matches of those tourneys, games where they brought out the best in the Brazilians. There is some value to football idealism after all, I suppose – both France and the Netherlands are going to do whatever they feel like, opposition be damned. Neither has ever been afraid to go out there and punch the bully in the mouth.

And neither have the Germans, for that matter. The Germans really have no history against Brazil at the World Cup, the two teams somewhat amazingly having met only once before. Since the Germans had no history v. Brazil, the also had no reason to fear. And among the many narratives the World Cup has put forth in its history, a narrative played out in Belo Horizonte which has been around even longer than Brazil’s magic touch. Be it the Hungarians in 1954, the Dutch in 1974 or the French in 1982 and 1986, the Germans have always been the destroyers of others’ dreams. The Germans are the ultimate buzzkill. As my Dutch brother-in-law joked after the game, this is why you never invite the Germans to the party.

And FIFA viewed the 2014 World Cup in Brazil as the greatest of parties, the greatest of celebrations of the sport in the country that loves it the most. Suffice to say, the party hasn’t really gone to plan. The locals didn’t want to play along, as it turned out – we’ve seen an endless stream of protests surrounding the World Cup in Brazil over the past year, often turning violent. One of the best descriptions I’ve heard of Brazil came from Franklin Foer, author of the book How Soccer Explains the World, in which he calls Brazil ‘the bizarro version of the United States,’ a massive, diverse and resource-rich country which failed to become a global hegemon. In that book, Foer delves into the idea of the ‘Top Hats’ as they are known, cronies and shysters who run Brazilian soccer and who have exploited the native Brazilian love of football over the years for their own selfish political and economic gain. And once the World Cup was awarded to Brazil, every Top Hat and would-be Top Hat had their hand out. Stadium and infrastructure construction for the World Cup was rampant with corruption, cost overruns and political strongarming. It was business as usual in Brazil, and the people who took to the streets in protest had finally had enough. (This excellent New Yorker piece from January delves into the mess surrounding stadium construction in São Paulo, which was never quite finished.) They weren’t protesting Brazilian football. They were protesting the business of Brazilian football, one which had just come to assume that Brazilian people would go along with anything put forth, their love of the beautiful game treated as if it were some sort of drug by political and business officials who acted like a cartel.

Much like they just stuck a bunch of guys in yellow jerseys, ran them out on the pitch, and assumed that just because the jerseys said Brazil across the front, the team would win another World Cup in and of itself. Not be good enough to win one, mind you. Just show up and win.

Brazil has always been able to find a convenient excuse or two when Seleção have failed. If only they had “played the Brazilian way,” they would’ve succeeded. If only they’d returned to the glory of Samba football and the 4-2-4, instead of trying to beat European sides with European tactics. Truth is, there are lots of European tactics instilled in Brazilian footballers these days, seeing how so many Brazilian footballers are playing in Europe. With 1,200 Brazilian expats on the payrolls of international clubs worldwide, it could be argued that footballers are one of Brazil’s most lucrative exports. And if you think it is harsh of me to think of players as being little more than commodities, it certainly hasn’t stopped them from thinking that way. But it is probably just as well that players leave Brazil, since the domestic game is such a mess. Players would rather play in places like the Faeroe Islands than put up with a never-ending Brazilian domestic season and a constant string of promissary notes come payday. Even the fans are tired of it – Série A in Brazil, the top division in the cradle of the world’s footballing talent, draws 5,000 fans per game fewer than an MLS game on average. The basic infrastructure of the Brazilian game has been rotting for decades now, and it finally all caught up to them on Tuesday night in Belo Horizonte.

Brazil needs a restart. Scolari will certainly be gone when this is over, and he should be. His 2002 World Cup title was far more attributable to talent (three world players of the year on the roster) and a weak tourney field than anything he did, and he had Cristiano Ronaldo and Figo and the remains of a so-called ‘golden generation’ on his Portugal team in 2006. He is like Phil Jackson in that regard – a guy who has created a track record of coaching success through not screwing up marvelous talent he was given. Expecting Scolari to coach this group of players to a title in 2014 was sort of like expecting Jackson to coach the Atlanta Hawks. Phil has always been choosy with his jobs for a reason. Scolari will be gone and, honestly, everyone in the Brazilian F.A. should be gone with it. The whole program needs a redo. The sooner some of these idiots are gone, the sooner Brazil can start moving back towards a place at the top of the sport again.

And the fans will ultimately be forgiving of the players, I suspect, some of whom should be able to rehabilitate their Seleção careers. In the meantime, I would be inclined to clear the bench for the consolation game with the Dutch, let the young players and the backups play, given that the ones who took the field in Belo Horizonte are likely to be mercilessly booed. Which they should be, quite honestly. And maybe that Cone kid mentioned above will prove to be a good striker. He certainly could be no worse up front than what they have been getting. That Brazil cannot score the ball and is so obviously bereft of offensive ideas is absolutely depressing.

The Germans, in the end, may have done the Brazilians a favor. This loss was a long time coming, and the magnitude of it was such that major changes will have to come. And it was good that it happened fast and happened big – better that way than to lose close and continue to live in denial. I think losing like that may come to be viewed, several decades from now, as the best thing that could’ve happened to Brazil. Maybe now they’ll clean up their act, get over 1950 and 1982, stop pretending they are untouchable, and root out some of the rot and the corruption related to the game which has turned off players, fans and everyone else in the country. Everyone else in the world, for that matter – a great Brazil is great for the game. Brazil are always the people’s choice, the neutral’s choice. Brazilian success is always viewed by sporting public outside of countries whose names rhyme with Bargentina as a sign that the game is in great shape. That ideal of Brazilian greatness and superiority was, in fact, earned long ago. It was earned with three World Cup titles from 1958-1970 and a steady stream of players possessing vision and imagination and joy on the pitch which had never been seen nor expressed before. Even in one of their most dubious defeats, this quixotic endeavour from 1982, the Brazilians made many friends with their Rebel Without a Cause sort of spirit. Right or wrong, our notion of the beautiful game is firmly rooted on the beaches of Brazil. It is now up to the Brazilians to rebuild from the rubble and make the game beautiful once again.

Everyone Sucks

THE LOSE has been doing studious research in the run-up to the World Cup semifinals, some of which may or may not involve the use of some fine products from The Official Distillery of In Play Lose, but after going through a number of foreign press services scouring for bits of information, I’ve come to the conclusion that you shouldn’t watch tomorrow’s semifinal between Brazil and Germany, nor should you watch Argentina and the Netherlands on Wednesday, and don’t even bother with the final on Sunday because everyone involved sucks. The Brazilians have abandoned the beautiful game, the Dutch are unattractive, the Argentines consist of Messi and 10 stiffs lacking any sort of expression, and the Germans are back to being nothing more than ruthless, unimaginative automatons. And this is the ‘best’ the game has to offer, which speaks to a sorry state of affairs. Clearly, it’s the worst of all possible worlds, seeing the sport reduced to this sort of rubbish.

It’s amusing to read this sort of stuff, especially when you consider the pedigree on display over the next few days. The four teams remaining in the World Cup have 10 championships and 19 finals appearances between them. They are among the greatest footballing nations on earth. Yet when it comes to the mythology of the game, no one taking the pitch in the next couple of days can ever quite match up.

Even if that mythology is, quite frankly, a crock of shit.

Let’s get it out of the way here and kill some idols right off the bat. Argentina has never won a World Cup where it didn’t cheat – either on the pitch or off of it. The Dutch ideal of Total Football apparently involved three minutes of brilliance followed by 87 minutes of patting yourselves on the back about how great you are, and not bothering to, oh, you know, win the World Cup final. (Today is the 40th anniversary of the single-most written about soccer match in history. This Guardian article from 2008 is probably a bit more deconstructivist than need be, but you get the point.) The great Brazilian teams of yore occasionally did stuff like this on their way to greatness (hint: everyone does). The supposedly great German side had become so cynical and downright loathsome by the 1980s that it was a sure sign of the need to reform the game when, in 1990, the Germans found themselves to be the most likable team in the tournament. (Albeit one lead by a certain striker who tended to act like he was shot whenever someone breathed upon him.)

A bit hyperbolical of me? Well, sure, but so are all the myths of grandeur which came before. It should always be remembered that the French word histoire can mean both ‘history’ and ‘story,’ not differentiating between that which is real and that which is fabricated. The truth is that winning is an ugly business a lot of the time. Winners write history – and also periodically go back and rewrite it, overlooking a few blemishes and inconvenient truths here and there.

(And it should be pointed out that losers write and rewrite history as well. In sport, no one rewrites history quite like the English, of course. A particularly grumpy curmudgeon of an Englishman said on ESPN FC the other day, soon after the 3 Lions exit from Brazil, that back in his day, England could have fielded two sides among the 10 best in the world. Given that England have failed to qualify more often than they’ve reached the semifinals in the last 48 years, I’m not sure exactly which era he’s talking about.)

The three great sporting pastimes on earth – soccer, baseball, and cricket – are all sports whose continuing to thrive, in some ways, is dependent upon the mythology of the past. All three also happen to be sports in which, in fact, not a whole lot actually happens in way of action. Because let’s be honest here, not much really does happen. A soccer game ends 0:0 or 1:0, while baseball and cricket feature bursts of action a few seconds in length followed by quite a few moments of everyone standing around. And yet there has probably been more literature written about those three sports than the rest of the pastimes on earth put together. When such small moments and small details prove to make a difference, those moments are magnified often beyond the point of comprehension. Just imagine the ramifications in Argentina in 1978, a tournament a military junta was attempting to use as a stamp of legitimacy, had the Dutch shot in the dying minutes not hit the post but tucked inside of it and given the Netherlands a shocking 2:1 victory in the final? It was a random moment in a game – and yet one which explodes metaphorically. When the whistle blows and the match is over, games invariably become the domain of commentators, writers, artisans and philosophers. (Indeed, the full quote from Sartre serving as this blog’s epigram reads, “In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team.”)

Listen to a baseball game sometime, actually listen to the game and tell me what it is that you hear. Is it the sport, or is it a narrative of the sport as revealed by a storyteller? I have no problems whatsoever stating that it is the latter, and that I grew up believing in the fiction of baseball. I grew up listening to Dave Niehaus, who was a phenomenal broadcaster and who could make any sort of game situation sound compelling. He could make even 100-loss Mariner teams worth following. It didn’t matter what the situation – once you tuned in, you didn’t want to turn the radio off. He had a mix of populism and eloquence about the game which was spellbinding. You could only imagine how someone which such command of the language and the ability to captivate an audience could’ve scared the hell out of you had he been telling ghost stories around a campfire. In the abstract, of course, the idea of listening to the Mariners was a completely hopeless and futile endeavour, and yet the story of every game, laid out for you like that, made you want to come back for more – and also made you foolishly think that somehow, some way, the team was going to actually improve. The Mariners were god awful most of the time, and going to the games in this empty concrete mushroom of a stadium was shocking in just how silent it was. At least listening to the broadcast gave you the same sort of enjoyment of having a good book to read, even if you didn’t like the ending.

And when you broadcast baseball, of course, you just fill in the gaps with stories of games gone by. In true absurdist Mariner fashion, those stories were usually hysterical – Niehaus had also been the broadcaster for some truly horrid California Angels teams, so all of his stories tended to lean towards the absurd. Listening to a Giants game here in San Francisco, meanwhile, is rife with stories of players who actually knew what they were doing, guys like Mays and McCovey and Marichal. Listening to cricket is baseball to the extreme, in that it would seem the entirety of the game is the stories of the past. I tried really hard to get into cricket when I lived in England, and I was just amazed listening to a broadcast of a 5-day test match in the West Indies where England were getting mercilessly thrashed in that the entirety of the broadcast basically consisted of telling old stories. There wasn’t anything new to report on the pitch – the West Indian opening partnership batted for about two days and scored something like 398 runs – so it was just one story after another about some heroic England bowler getting the Aussies all-out in 19(fill in the blank), or batting for a century vs. India in 19(fill in the blank), with the occasional “there’s a shot for four,” thrown in to keep you on your toes. I wondered sometimes if the script had been penned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the whole endeavour simply a serialized radio show on the BBC. At times, it didn’t even seem like there was a game going on.

Soccer isn’t quite to that extreme, although if you ever read the commentary in a newspaper after a match, it sure makes it seem like even the dullest match was worth watching. To borrow my favourite XPFC from a previous post on this blog:

It’s hard to say which was greyer, the skies over the pitch in Aberystwyth or the action upon it, as XPFC were held goalless by 10-man Liverpool, the Merseysiders reduced by one when Suárez was giving his marching orders after 10 minutes, responding to being denied by the keeper Morgan’s ample reach by lashing out and biting him on the boot. Bassett-Bouchard produced some joy down the right flank for the home side early on, but his questions went unanswered, as XPFC’s lumbering forward Day was unable to make the most of early chances. Gerrard wrong footed Frentz in XPFC’s central defense but shot wide at the quarter hour mark. The stout defending which ensued permitted both goalkeepers ample time to learn Spanish and eat cheese sandwiches in lieu of any steady work. MacNeil’s clattering tackle in central defense just before the stroke of halftime perhaps should’ve earned the visitors a spot kick, but appeals went unheeded and play continued. The two sides lacked both ideas and the initiative to go forward after the interval, apart from the Venezuelan substitute del Solar attempting to rally the home side, providing some brightness with some dashing darts through the center of the pitch, only to see his final ball continue to go awry. The introduction of Pianowski up front provided a strong target for the Welsh XI, but the service in the final third was little more than crosses drooping like wilted lettuce, and Day’s final touch let him down a stroke from the death, missing a sitter as he shot wide from 5 yards. Disappointment for the home side, but truth be told any result other than a point taken for either side would have been an unjust one.

All that for a 0:0 draw. Imagine if anything good had actually happened. Open up a weekend edition of a British newspaper and you’ll get 10 stories just like that – all very evocative, rather clever, and probably more than a little bit embellished.

The stupidity ultimately comes when people start to believe in their own myths. For some reason, the Dutch seem far more interested in being critically acclaimed than actually winning. History seems to have stopped at 1970 in Brazil (or perhaps 1982) and around 1986 in Argentina (minus a few pesky details along the way). A lot of the greatest critics of the modern game are former players, of course, which I find completely amusing. Yes, there is no doubt they were great in their time, but the game has evolved. Players are bigger, stronger, faster, and tactics have changed. No sport stays the same over time. You have to enjoy it for what it is, in the here and the now, not for what it was in the past. If anything, I think the game of soccer has gotten better in recent years, with the advent of all sorts of new formations and new strategies. 

But never mind me. Everyone sucks. The game sucks and the semifinals will all be about tactics and nothing about imagination – which, in truth, it probably always was, but there is no longer much of an element of surprise. A large part of the mystique of the South American side of yore came from the fact that players tended to stay in South America, and thus were somewhat unknown quantities. That just doesn’t happen in a globalized world where everyone plays on the same club teams, coaching ideas cross borders and training routines become standardized across the globe. If anything, winning a World Cup is now harder than ever, given that everyone starts on much more equal footing.

And 50 years from now, whomever wins this coming Sunday will be hailed as great champions, of course, because they always are, and whomever will be wearing the shirt of that country will likely be considered to be terrible and unimaginative and not up to the standard of the nation set a half-century earlier. They will all suck, just as much as the guys playing tomorrow will suck, when the Brazilians will score more goals than the Germans because they will suck slightly less, and the Dutch will suck slightly less on Wednesday than Argentina. But that’s not a prediction, and I’m not really interested in watching such drek, anyway. And neither should you, because these guys are all terrible.

Well, That Was Different

Lunacy

NOT sure what to make of those two games, other than to say that the better team won each of them, and neither was particularly inspiring.
 
1. Game Management
Game management doesn’t make for the most exciting viewing. For the third time in as many games, the favoured side pushed forward at the start, got an early goal and then hunkered down as the upstarts tried to figure out what to do. For the third time in as many games, the upstarts failed miserably.

Argentina had a clear plan for how to thwart the Belgians after Higuain’s well-taken goal at the 8’ mark – square four in the back, with a square three holding midfielders right in front of it. In essence, seven defenders. The Belgians want to run at you from every position on the pitch, but they aren’t a side that goes about crafting a goal very well. From whatever angle they attacked, they promptly ran into two guys, and most of their crosses were of the awful variety. Argentina could get away with this, in part, because of Messi, who more or less roamed about well up the pitch. The threat of a Messi counter was so great that the Belgians could never quite commit the numbers forward they may have needed. In a sense, Messi was playing defense simply by being on the pitch, exuding influence over the game while rarely touching the ball.

It made for a fairly dull game, as the Argentines spent 82’ taking the air out of it while frustrating the Belgians. The Belgians wanted to make everything complicated, often trying to dribble through three blue shirts and not creating any sort of useful movement. It wasn’t until the end, when they started lobbing crosses in the box for their big men Fellaini and Lukaku that they started to make headway. It seems like a low percentage play, but the low percentage play is better than the no percentage play. In a game so stiff and lifeless, sometimes your best chance is to try to create some chaos in front of the goal and see what happens.

The Belgian inexperience really showed in this game, and I think everyone on their side would agree that it will prove a worthwhile learning experience, albeit a rather painful one. Both they and the French learned valuable lessons this weekend which will serve them well in the future – and given both the youth and the raw talent on both sides, I suspect we're going to be seeing a lot of those two teams over the next decade.

2. Yes, That Game Actually Happened
For the first 70’ of the fourth quarterfinal, it was the worst game of the tournament, as Costa Rica did nothing and the Dutch took a leisurely stroll along the canals of Amsterdam on a Saturday afternoon. Then it got weird.

There are days when the ball just won’t go in the damn goal no matter what you do, and the Dutch were clearly having one of those days. They hit the woodwork three times, Navas got a touch to everything else, the Dutch were all over Costa Rica and it got more and more absurd with each attack that somehow didn’t produce a goal. I swear, on the van Persie shot cleared off the line/off the face/off the crossbar, it seemed like there were about 18 17 people in the box scrambling after the ball. It was pure, glorious mayhem.

And then van Gaal substituted a goalkeeper for the penalties, having saved his third substitution until the end. My comment at the time was, “van Gaal obviously thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. what a waste.” My comment 15 minutes later was, “like i was saying, van Gaal is god.”

In hindsight, the move made a lot of sense. Krul was a taller keeper, and one who also had fresh legs. Krul had plenty of time on the bench to study the Costa Rican shooters and know their tendencies – he dove the right direction on all of the Ticos kicks, saving two of them. The Dutch hadn’t expressly needed another attacker on the pitch, since they were creating boatloads of chances. And let’s be honest here – it weirded out the Ticos. It weirded out everyone, to be honest. Given the likelihood of being skewered, flambéed and served with a Hollandaise sauce on the side by the press if it didn’t work, it was probably the ballsiest managerial move I have ever seen in a World Cup. (But, apparently, being ballsy is nothing new to van Gaal.)

Everything van Gaal does turns up trumps in this tournament – he brings on Huntelaar late v. Mexico and Huntelaar sets up a goal and scores another; he brings on Fer v. Chile and Fer’s first touch is a header on a set piece for a winning goal. Clearly he has a great feel and a hot hand on the bench, and the players have bought in. The Lose has been quite amused reading a variety of critiques from former Oranje players speaking of how the Dutch aren’t playing attractive football in this tourney. Jeez, guys, I don’t know, they’re undefeated and scoring more goals per game than any Dutch team in World Cup history, what’s not to like about that? Frankly, to hell with style. Win the damn game, and do whatever you have to in order to do so. Costa Rica certainly did.

Which wasn’t much. To be perfectly blunt, that was about the most fundamentally negative performance I’ve seen in a World Cup in 24 years. Costa Rica didn’t have either a corner or a shot on goal until the 115’ mark of the game. They had no intention of doing anything more than playing for penalties from the beginning (and given that Campbell had no legs at all up front, I can’t say I’m surprised). Take away the backstory of the plucky, feel-good Cinderella, and put something like Italy or Germany on the front of the shirt, and that team would’ve been villified for a performance like that. While I’m pleased the Ticos achieved so much in this tourney, I’m glad we don’t have to watch any more of that, because don’t think for a minute that, had they won on penalties, they wouldn’t have tried the exact same thing in the semifinals, given what they had left in the tank. The better team wound up winning this game, albeit in the most confounding manner imaginable.

I didn’t even watch the penalties, having resigned myself to the outcome of this game. The Dutch failures in penalties, often comically awful, are as much a part of their history as their beautiful style of play. But van Gaal somehow found another ace up is sleeve, one which could trump even history. Or maybe the solution all these years was for me to go do the dishes during the shootout. Who knew I had the magic touch? I’ve just become even more of a legend in my own mind. I didn’t think it was possible.

Check and Mate

WELL, that was unsatisfying.

1. Sacré Bleus!
Whatever that game plan by the French was supposed to be, it needs to be ripped out of the book and thrown into the bay. In watching Germany’s 1:0 win over France, I kept wondering if the French staff had done even the slightest bit of research.

The Germans basically got blown up by Ghana in the second half. Ever since, they’ve played extraordinarily cautiously. They came out looking bright against the U.S., setting up a line across the face of the American box and looking to pick out a pass, but all it took was one counterattack by the Americans 20’ into the game – resulting in a near jail break and a yellow card on the German left back – to send the Germans into a defensive trench. They’ve been swarming to the ball, trying to trap opponents in their own half up against the touchlines, and the German offensive buildup has been extremely ponderous.

OK, so, if you’re the French, what do you do? First off, it should’ve taken about 3’ for the French to realize that playing four in the back v. the Germans was pointless – Özil is out of place up front on the left, the Germans have no real interest in running down the wings, and if your centre back can’t win a 1 v. 1 matchup with 67-year-old Klose, you’ve got even bigger problems. A 4th midfielder looking to win in midfield and spring the attack would’ve been far more useful for the French. The way to attack the Germans is through the middle with quick passing and linkup play. Theoretically, this should’ve played to France’s strengths, but instead, every touch from the French was too slow and they played their way into negative areas on the pitch. After getting the lead on the set piece goal, the Germans basically had to do nothing the rest of the way, since the French were too busy going about defeating themselves. Even as the French thought they found space down the Germans’ right side in the 2nd half, it was really where the Germans wanted them to go, in that the flow of play was constantly away from Pogba and Benzema, France’s two best players, neither of whom ever had the ball.

Perhaps it was simply a case of nerves and inexperience – the French had far too many jumpy touches in the final third, every ball seeming uncertain – but the French seemed to forget what got them to the quarterfinals in the first place. And this supposedly ‘new’ German style of play is looking more and more like the German style of old – methodical, disciplined, rigorous, a bit ugly, and damningly successful.

2. Head Games
Do all of you doubters of the home side understand now why it is they are still such a huge favourite in this tournament? To quote Johan Cruijff once again, football is a game that is played with the head. The Brazilians got into the Colombians’ heads from the get-go, scoring at 6’ on a sloppily played corner. In a lot of ways, the game felt somewhat over barely after it had begun.

Keep in mind that Colombia had beaten Brazil once in their history in a relevant game. With five World Cup titles comes a substantial amount of cred, and the Brazilians know how to play the mental game as well anybody. A good number of Seleção came into this game sitting on yellows, which meant another yellow would mean suspension – but they also knew it was as hostile an environment for the officials as for the opponents. And it became pretty clear early on that the Spanish referee wasn’t going to open his book, not when facing 74,000 hostile fans inside the stadium and another 199,000,000 hostile fans outside of it.

Knowing this, the Brazilians had carte blanche to do their best Paul Bunyan impersonations and chop down anything around them. They hit James pretty much every time he had the ball, and they were more than happy to slow down the Colombian attack and concede a free kick whenever possible. They were basically flaunting their superiority to the Colombians, knowing they could do just about anything and get away with it. It was only when Thiago Silva did something completely, mindnumbingly stupid as hit a goalkeeper that the ref showed a yellow, but the tone of the game had long since been sent.

It was pretty cynical stuff, really, and the Colombians’ response of simply fouling them back didn’t help matters. (The play on which Neymar was injured was atrocious. How that amounted to nothing more than a stoppage in play was a bit of a mystery. Perhaps the officials were less spooked and more incompetent, in retrospect.) The positivity which has been a hallmark of the Colombians disappeared for much of the game. They were still playing with pace, but it was wasted energy. It was only after Luiz made it 2-0 on the free kick that the Colombians found their focus. The Brazilians had won the psychological battle, and not even the ample talent and fight of the Colombians could overcome that.

The Colombians did pull one back on a penalty, a two-footed tackle by Brazilian goalkeeper Julio Cesar that many argued merited a red card. By the letter of the law, maybe it should’ve been. But red cards are rarely given without deliberate intent detected – and it could be argued that the challenge was simply a bad play by the keeper in an attempt to defend. That call is rarely given against a goalkeeper to begin with, Luiz’s presence nearby took away some of the “last man standing” argument (deliberately blunting a likely score by breaking the rules), and the truth is that in this situation, that call was never going to be given. And everyone knew it, which is why the Colombians didn’t argue as strenuously as they could have.

Both of the games on Friday were triumphs over tactics over talent. Neither made for great viewing. Quite honestly, those were the sorts of games which make people dislike the sport. Too often in soccer, it seems as if the ‘better’ team doesn’t win because the ‘worse’ team is simply intent upon thwarting them throughout. I wouldn’t argue in either case that the better team lost, but in both cases, I think the more talented side didn’t figure out how to maximize their talent. At this point, you often have to think your way through the tournament, and the Germans and Brazilians have long been masters of playing chess on grass. Check and mate.

Crazy 8's

QUICK summary of the Round of 16 games: Brazil wins on penalties after a Chilean hits the crossbar at 120,' Dutch get an equalizer at 88' and winning goal in stoppage time on a penalty, Costa Rica wins on penalties after Greeks get equalizer in stoppage time, France score goals in final 20' to break scoreless deadlock, Germans and Algeria score 3 goals in OT, including two after 120' were up, Argentina's 118' goal followed by inexplicable Swiss miss at the death, Belgians and U.S. score 3 goals in OT after inexplicable miss in stoppage time in the wildest World Cup game in 32 years.

In short, everyone in this World Cup is mad as hatters.

And now Why the Lose (WTL) presents the reasons why The Lose should write about the quarterfinal matchups. We're going with 3 reasons today. I know we've done 4 thoughts in the daily post and I gave 4 WTL reasons for the round of 16 matchups, but we'll stick to 3 reasons today because, well, because I feel like it.

Brazil v. Colombia
WTL: because the Colombians have been absolutely brilliant in this tournament and have brought back fun, joy, and imagination back to the international game; because the Brazilians had the shit scared out of them Chile, and are likely to elevate their collective game in this one; because if this game was being played anywhere other than Brazil, I think Los Cafeteros would win, but it isn't.

France v. Germany
WTL: because my god, some of the Germans looked about 100 years old at the end of that Algeria game, and now there is apparently some sort of a flu bug which has been going through the team as well which isn't going to help; because I was quite amused to read several stories online wondering how young France star Pogba would do be able to cope with the star-studded German midfield, and I wonder if the reverse is true; because the Germans have gotten away with playing slow, overly cautious football against teams who couldn't take advantage of their weaknesses the past two games, but now they're playing a team that won't give a damn that they're Germany and won't afford them much respect and the Germans can't hide any more.

Netherlands v. Costa Rica
WTL: because Duarte being out hurts the Ticos far more than De Jong being out hurts the Dutch; because the well-organized Ticos backline got away with its high line against Greece because Greece, but isn't going to get away with that against the Dutch because Robben; because the Ticos will deserve all sorts of love and plaudits for bringing some class and more respect to CONCACAF after they bow out in this game.

Argentina v. Belgium
WTL: because you would think that the rest of the Albicelestes would show up at some point, and the fact that they haven't makes me wonder about Sabella as a coach, because how can you have 122 European League goals' worth of talent up front and still be clinging to dear life at 0:0 v. Iran and Switzerland unless you didn't have a clue how to use them; because every time the Belgians play, they seem to spend about an hour going through the motions and then they make an adjustment and score late to win, which is something you can do when you have the deepest bench in the tourney; because Argentina has the best player on earth, but he's only two guys – yes, Messi counts as two – and the Belgians just have too many players they can throw at them in this war of attrition they continue to successfully wage.

And if I'm wrong, well, remember that gambling is a sin.

4 Belated Thoughts

Whatever you were attempting to accomplish here, you have failed miserably

I DIDN’T want to say anything until I had a chance to watch Tuesday’s matches in full, which I’d not had the opportunity to do given that I was one of the 10 people here in the Republic of California who actually had to work on Tuesday afternoon.

1. Where Do We Even Begin?
The reporter for The Guardian who was writing the minute-by-minute said at the end of the game that so much was going on, not even the world’s greatest court stenographer would have been able to keep up. I’ve never seen a game at this level quite like the U.S.-Belgium match. I can’t ever remember watching a game where a team took 19 corners and 39 shots. (Howard’s save total was a World Cup record.) The Belgians probably should’ve been ahead by about 8-0 by the time Wondo bumbled away the chance at 90’+ that would’ve given the U.S. the incredible upset. The last 45 minutes of this game were played in a state of exhaustion-laden frenzy and constant flow. To both teams credit, there was no diving going on, the tackling was crisp when needed and the official wisely let the game go. The Americans were left for dead at the 104’ mark, down 2-0 and completely spent, and then on comes the 18-year-old Green to do his best Pelé impersonation, and all of the sudden it’s the Belgians that are clinging to life. The ESPN commentators referenced France v. West Germany in 1982 when speaking of the Americans uphill climb in OT – West Germany being the only team to score twice in extra time after an opponent had first done so – and it was a worthwhile point of reference. That 1982 game is the greatest World Cup match I have ever watched. If the U.S. v. Belgium didn’t top it, it was a close second.

So the U.S. goes out in the 16s, but they made many friends in the process. This game, along with the Portugal game, have been the two best games of the tourney – not necessarily for their prowess on the pitch, but for their competitiveness and tenacity. And I’ve read more than one English reporter lamenting the fact that his national side lacks the chemistry and mental toughness the U.S. brings to a World Cup. (Of course, they did the same thing four years ago, and haven’t learned their lessons.) The U.S. has further cemented the fact that it’s never going to be an easy out again in this tournament.

And with the Americans’ relative success in the World Cup (our expectations are so modest that going 1-2-1 and being outed in the 16s is considered a success) will inevitably come discussions about the development of the game, and the game’s place in the sporting landscape of America. I have always maintained that soccer culture existed in this country, but it didn’t take the same form as the other major sports, all of which Americans invented. It does me proud seeing USA FC stepping so far into the forefront of America’s sporting conscience that a lot of stodgy old goats of sportswriters and political pundits are decrying its relevance, given that the game, in this country, is hip and urban and intellectual. There was already heightened interest in the World Cup going into it, when most of us assumed that the U.S. wasn’t going to do so well. That the U.S. put forth a side which could compete near to the highest level of the game bodes well for the future, since there is so much more room to grow.

And speaking of growth, Klinsmann’s youth movement seems to be going nicely already – Brooks, Yedlin and Green all proved to be worthy contributors. At the beginning, I was wondering if there were too many untested players on this team, when maybe we actually needed more of them.

2. The Devils are in the Details
I disagreed with Klinsmann’s idea to start Cameron, essentially as a 5th defender while disguised as a midfielder. Altidore’s injury left them out of sorts in that, without any other viable options up front to partner effectively with Dempsey, Jones had to play higher up to offer some physicality and challenge bigger defenders. Now, he did that really well, and was probably the best field player the U.S. had in the tourney, but taking one of your dogged defenders out of the middle, combined with a 5th defender naturally dropping back, meant more space for the Belgians to operate, which is a bad idea. Belgium’s opponents have made a point to try and clog up the midfield and pinch in from the sides, trying to keep the Red Devils playing narrow. Belgium plays with basically 7 midfielders on the pitch at any given time, all of whom are different types of players, and if you give them too much room to operate, someone ultimately creates and then exploits a mismatch. Against the U.S., primary Belgian playmaker Hazard got basically blown up as soon as Yedlin came into the game, and Mertens was useless – but there went De Bruyne charging ahead and being at the middle of every attack, after having done nothing in this first two games of the tourney. Once the Belgians got control of the tempo and direction of the game, they never took their foot off the gas.

And being able to bring on guys like Mirallas and Lukaku is absolutely unfair. In an open, transition-type game like this, Lukaku is one of the more devastating strikers on the planet with his mix of speed, strength and skill – and, having been benched after the Russia game, he wasn’t going to be in a good mood. Bringing him in at the 90’ mark to face tired American defenders was a horrid mismatch from the get-go.

The U.S. showed incredible heart and courage and strength out there, but the Belgians just had too many good players. And even so, the U.S. still nearly won this game. Remarkable.

3. Can’t Anybody Play This Game?
If, at the end of tournament, Argentina are hoisting the World Cup, it will confirm to me a) Lionel Messi really is God; b) this World Cup has gone horribly wrong; or c) both. The first 118 minutes of that Argentina v. Switzerland game are 118 minutes of my life that I would like to have back. (Although the last two were a cracker, what with the Argentine goal and a final Swiss attack that included a goalkeeper attempting a bicycle kick and a forward inexplicably gaffing a wide open header.) Both Messi and Shaqiri seemed utterly exasperated by the end of this game after doing whatever they could to set up teammates, only to have them repeatedly bungle the chances. Argentina have ambled and bumbled their way through four games yet, somehow, are still playing. Oh, that’s right, they have Messi. But at this point, they’ve run out of incompetent opponents.The Belgians possess a pretty high football IQ, and the likely semifinal opponent – the Dutch – are the smartest team left in the tournament. Smarts generally trump luck, and Argentina has been lucky and little more so far.

The Germans aren’t playing worth a damn, either, their normally ruthlessly efficient office moving at the speed of a sun dial in an effort to protect their dreadfully slow backline. The Germans are doing a nice job swarming to the ball on defense, but anytime they got stretched v. Algeria, the Fennec Foxes ran right past them. Hell, Neuer is their best centre back at the moment. You wonder with both Argentina and Germany at what point their obvious flaws are going to fully be exposed. I suspect the French will be happy to oblige in that act of exposure, they themselves having slipped out of trouble v. Nigeria thanks, in part, to the awful goalkeeping gaffe in today’s gif. This tourney usually permits you to rise to the level of your own incompetence, but Germany and Argentina seem to keep wriggling themselves out of trouble. For now.

4. Tightening Up
There were no ‘upsets’ in the Round of 16 – the eight group winners all advanced – and yet there very easily could’ve been six or seven. As is to be expected, the games turned more tactical and less open (with the exception of the U.S.-Belgium game, which defied any sort of logic or sense). The biggest difference I see is that, while there is still disparities in talent, the disparities in fitness have lessened to the point that a well-organized side can keep themselves in the game for longer. Even a lesser level professional footballer playing in Europe or MLS or a top South American side now has a heightened level of conditioning. And I’ve been very impressed with the tactics employed by sides like Costa Rica and Algeria in this tournament. Tactics which are based upon a conviction that, through playing this way, they will be able to win rather than simply avoid losing. It’s made for some pretty dramatic stuff, what with five OT games in the first eight knockout matches. Those who came up on the short end weren’t that far away from victory. The gap between the élite and the also rans gets smaller and smaller each year.

My New Novel

My new novel

Juste un peu d’amour 
Everyone calls him Z. Z is a mess. His girlfriend breaks up with him, but then she won’t leave him alone. He works for a failing San Francisco startup, he hates his job, but finds it physically impossible to quit. Unable to resist the charms of his beautiful co-worker Mallory, Z takes up her task of writing a proposal for a joint venture with a French conglomerate which could save the company from bankruptcy – assuming he sobers up long enough to write it, navigates the sea of office politics and remembers how to speak French. All that he really wants, however, is a getaway: maybe a couple of weeks of vacation near Santa Barbara, or maybe a longer, more distant journey deep into the South Pacific. Juste un peu d’amour tells the story of the son of first-generation immigrants who comes to discover that hard work and perseverance get you nowhere in America, but with good timing, a little luck, good looks and a bit of talent, you just might find you have it all – but when it happens, be sure you know what to do with it.

THIS novel is now available for $6.99 from the publisher. It is available in all sorts of ebook formats – epub, mobi, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, and txt. Soon, it should also be available on amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers. I am also planning some other editions of this novel which I will make available soon. Please email me at inplaylose@gmail.com for more information.

This has been an amazing experience, and it is probably the most rewarding thing that I have ever done. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.