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| Pure brilliance |
1. Mythbusters
Ochoa’s heroic performance v. Brazil quickly took on a mythical sort of proportion in Mexican football annals. It was so mythical, in fact, that I think it fooled his own team into thinking their defense was better than it actually was. They had erected quite a fortress in Fortaleza v. Seleção, but more than a little of their success in that 0:0 ‘victory’ came as a result of dreadful Brazilian forward play (more on that in a minute). The game with Croatia was won through having found the courage and conviction to attack, sensing the opportunity to exploit a frustrated opponent. It was easy to praise Mexico’s defensive organization through the first three games, but it wasn’t as simple as having their goalkeeper simply throwing up a wall in front of the goal.
The Mexico-Netherlands game was fascinating, in that the Dutch wanted to counterattack and the Mexicans came up with a good way to handle this in the first half, which was to make Oranje posses the ball for long stretches while El Tri played high, kept the back two lines tight, and also conserved some energy in the 97° heat. Both teams tried to keep something in the tank, so the attacks in the 1st half weren’t too successful, but the Mexicans went forward with more competence and conviction, and when they scored at 48’ it certainly seemed like the right team had the lead.
But then, for some inexplicable reason, the Mexicans completely stopped attacking. I felt as if, had El Tri continued to attack what looked to be a slow Oranje backline, a second goal would’ve likely come. But instead, off comes Dos Santos and El Tri sinks into a defensive shell – and a shell that was way too deep, at that. The last thing they needed to be doing was letting the Dutch bomb away at them, particularly from the wings where all El Tri could do was clear and concede corners. Ochoa saved them once on a set piece, but you cannot concede 11 corners to a team as organized as the Dutch. They will figure it out eventually. By 88’ when Sneijder scored off a beautifully worked set play on a corner, the goal felt somewhat inevitable. Not equalizing would’ve felt unjust.
There was nothing unjust about the penalty at the end. Sure, it was soft – softer than the one in the 1st half which the referee missed – but it was a bad play by all three guys involved in a green shirt who Robben schooled, and like I say, don’t make a bad play and expect the officials to bail you out. The Mexicans argued somewhat, but their hearts weren’t in it. And Mexico were so out of sorts by that point, and their lineup so ragged and unshapely, that playing another 30 minutes of OT could’ve been really unsightly. Holding out for a half hour and going to penalties seemed almost impossible, since the Dutch were all over them, but it also seemed the only way Mexico could possibly win. Honestly, a 3:1 or even 4:1 Oranje final wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d gone another half hour.
In the end, I feel like Mexico outsmarted themselves. They needed to stay on the gas and take the game to the Dutch, which maybe seemed counterintuitive but that’s what was working in this particular game. What happened a week ago doesn’t matter. You have to play the opponent there before you on the pitch. Herrera has done yeoman’s work reviving a team that looked dead as a doornail last fall, and you have to commend the resourcefulness of Oranje, but I really feel like El Tri gave them the chance to be resourceful. It sucked to see them give this game away.
2. Coffee is life
Uruguay did everything right in the first 25’ of their game with Colombia. They controlled tempo, they packed it in tight and gave Colombia nowhere to go. They then made the mistake of happening to be on the field when James decided to show everyone why he will soon be the most expensive player in the world. The first goal, in the .gif at the top of the entry, is absolutely sick.
James gets the 2nd goal as well, and it’s this goal which really speaks to why Los Cafeteros are the most dangerous team in the tournament right now:
Here is the New York Times diagram of the 10-pass sequence which led to that goal. The touches and the movement in this buildup were exquisite, as they moved Uruguay's defense all over the place and eventually got an easy goal:
Not only do the Colombians have the hottest hand in the tourney right now in James, but they attack with dynamism and imagination and, most importantly, selflessness. They share the ball. Now, I’m still not convinced by that defense – once they got the 2:0 lead, they tried to sit back, at which they look about as comfortable as a 17-year-old kid in a misfitting prom tuxedo. But Colombia have so many options going forward that trying to stop them seems like a terrible prospect.
3. Forward Your Résumé to Rio
There are 199,000,000 people in Brazil. Surely one of them can play forward. Scolari may need to hang a HELP WANTED sign in the window. People were wondering why Fred was playing up front for Seleção, given that he has been awful – then we all saw Jô yesterday v. Chile, and Fred suddenly looked extremely appealing. Brazil is built from the back and they have Neymar running the show, of course, but the final third is a swirling, sucking eddy of despair. The Brazilian attack was woful v. a shorter Chilean side with few good defensive options that played out of their minds. Seleção survived the penalty shootout on Saturday, but they certainly didn’t play well, and a similar effort against a more balanced side like Colombia is going to leave them sitting on the beach a few weeks earlier than they were expecting.
4. Enjoyably Awful
Costa Rica and Greece were so boring in the first half that it put the Greek goalkeeper to sleep, which is about the only way to explain how the slow motion, barely struck, roly-poly ball from Brian Ruiz hit the Greek net without anyone even bothering to make a move. Not wanting to stand prosperity, the Ticos promptly got a guy sent off, reducing them to 10 men and suddenly making this game interesting. The three Ticos subs, meanwhile, were hell-bent on using their fresh legs to undo all of the work the weary seven starters were doing. Up a man, the Greeks then threw everything including the kitchen sink at the Ticos for an hour – everything, that is, except a serviceable cross. The Greeks managed an equalizer in the dying minutes of regulation, but their inability to grasp hold of a game where they had fresh legs up front v. a 10-man side which could barely move by the end of the OT was really, really poor. Navas is a fabulous keeper, of course, and he kept the Ticos alive, but the Greeks had about four forwards on the pitch who just seemed to get in each other’s way. They are (in)famous for eking out 1-0 wins where they defend like hell and sneak a goal on a set piece or a counter, and now that I’ve watched them squander about 30 chances over the course of an hour of play, I think I can understand why they play that way. It wasn’t great football in the slightest, but it was wildly entertaining. If there was ever a game that deserved to end on penalties, it was this one.
Penalties
We saw two games decided by penalties this weekend. The Lose hates penalty shootouts on principle, but understands the need for them – Joel Campbell must have run 9½ miles in that game v. the Greeks, and Bryan Ruiz looked somewhat zombified. Asking players to continue under such circumstances does, in fact, become a player safety issue. It’s a shitty way to end a game, but no one can think of anything better.
And as a goalkeeper, trying to stop a penalty is one of the most fun things in the game. The penalty has often been thought of in terms of Game Theory in action – the keeper is trying to decide what to do based upon what (s)he thinks the shooter is going to do, and vice versa – but what makes it fun as a goalkeeper is that there is virtually no pressure upon you. The success rate on penalties runs in the 70-80% range, which means a goalkeeper isn’t expected to make a save at all, so any kind of a result is gravy and it doesn’t matter if you don’t make the save, since you weren’t expected to do so in the first place. And it doesn’t matter if you cheat and the referee orders a retake. You’ll be just as unlikely to save it the next time. All of the pressure is on the shooter.
And this was a situation in the game when I was in my element, in so much as I could mess with people. I would wander out to the penalty spot, stall for time and carry on some sort of suddenly necessary discussion with the referee, talk some shit to the shooter, and just then I would need to tie my shoes, of course, and then I would talk some more shit. Shooters don’t have much to say in response, given that them scoring is no big deal – it’s what they are supposed to do, for goodness sake. I would do almost anything to get the shooter to lose their concentration. Heck, it’s not going to work most of the time, anyway. May as well try it.
I actually stopped 2 of 3 penalties I faced my last year of soccer. I came up with the idea of trying to coax guys to shoot to a particular side. If they were right footed, I wanted them to kick it to my right, so instead of lining up dead center of the goal, I would line up 1’ or so to my left – just enough to make them notice but not so much as to be obvious – then I would dive to the right. That actually worked twice before someone finally figured out what I was doing and kicked it back to my left. 2 out of 3 constituted an outstanding rate of success.
There really isn’t much logic as to which team wins or loses on penalties. The team with the better goalie wins, except when they don’t, which is often. Brazil, Argentina, and Germany usually do really well in the penalty phase; the English and the Dutch always do really badly. Some teams have data on which guys shoot which direction – but other teams have data on how goalkeepers tend to dive. It certainly makes for drama at the end of a game, like it did this weekend, but I’ve always hated the fact that teams reach a point where they are no longer trying to win on the pitch but are simply hoping to win what’s essentially a lottery. Chile played the OT with hopes of going to penalties and lost; for Costa Rica, it worked out just fine. But let’s hope we don’t see any more of those, as they collectively cheapen the tournament.
