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| Sigh |
• The Women’s World Cup is a wonderful event, showcasing some seriously badass lady footballers, and I recommend that everyone watch. The women’s game is still developing internationally, and while seeing two teams put up 10-spots might suggest FIFA was overly ambitious in expanding the field to 24 teams when there wasn’t really the depth of talent worldwide to merit it, there has been a surprising amount of parity so far, as only two teams have taken a full 6 points from the first two games. It’s good stuff and you should tune in when you get the chance (which, regrettably, I’ve not had nearly enough opportunities to do).
The women have been clamoring for years for their event to be taken seriously, and deservedly so. A good way to start would be for their governing body to take it seriously. That FIFA signed off so willingly on the damned fool idea of having this entire tournament be played on artificial surfaces is an abomination. It’s weird enough that they’re holding this tournament in Canada and none of the games are in Toronto, but I know they have the Pan Am Games there in July so I can understand it. Like I say, it’s just weird. (Would you have a World Cup in England and no games in London?) The idea to play the whole thing on artificial turf, however, is terrible. The Lose loves me some Canada, of course, but they got this one wrong from the beginning and it never should have been allowed to happen. Artificial surfaces have certainly improved since the Astroturf heyday of the 1970s, but it’s hard on the knees and the ankles, the turf burns are still gnarly, and the rubber and the sand flying everywhere is an ungodly mess. And even though Canada has winter 9 months out of the year, June and July ain’t among those months. Playing on a plastic pitch full of rubber and sand on top of concrete in 30°C temperatures or more is sort of like trying to work out in a tandoor. Only bikram yoga disciples are dumb enough to want to do that.
And I can certainly understand that all of the stadia in use for the Women’s World Cup are multi-use venues that operate year round in municipalities where the weather makes keeping a quality grass a challenge. Canada isn’t alone in having that problem. The two MLS clubs in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle Sounders F.C. and the Portland Timbers, play on artificial surfaces as well, since heavy rain + sea level tends to = swamp. Among the unexpected problems Iceland had when they nearly qualified for the 2014 World Cup was that they had to scrounge and scurry to get a pitch together for their playoff with Croatia, since Iceland hadn’t hosted a football match in November in its history, and grass has a peculiar way of not growing there at that time of year. They managed to do so, however.
And that’s precisely the point. Iceland managed to get a nice pitch together because they had to. FIFA generally doesn’t allow international matches on artificial surfaces – for men. Now that Costa Rica has a grass surface in its new home football grounds, none of the listed national stadia around the world have plastic pitches. Were the World Cup to take place in the United States in
And, quite possibly, sexist. Some 60 players filed a lawsuit to that effect, saying that it was discriminatory to make the women play on artificial turf pitches when FIFA would never permit that in the men’s World Cup. They have a point. The lawsuit wound up being dropped, since it wouldn’t have been heard in time. Scotts Lawn Care, upon hearing of all of this plastic pitch tomfoolery, offered to lay down temporary grass fields in the six stadia used for the World Cup for free – a cost of $3,000,000 they were willing to eat, having correctly viewed that laying sod for the event and solving an international dispute would constitute a pretty good use of their advertising budget. FIFA’s response to this was basically one of indifference.
“It wasn’t a long, drawn out explanation. We didn’t get a lot of detail back … I read about it in the press like everybody else.”
– Chris Strunk, Scotts marketing director
The problem with suing FIFA is that it’s run by a bunch of stubborn old dirty bastards who respond to such a showing of dissent by digging in their heels and turning it into a pissing contest. They make bad decisions and, when called on their bad decisions, have a tendency to respond by making worse ones. In this case, they’ve dug their heels into the rubber and the cement. So we’re stuck with this nonsense. FIFA insists this is never happening again, but it never should’ve happened in the first place.
• The soccer ball bounces and skids and whizzes about on the artificial surfaces, so it takes a little getting used to, but other than the fatigue factor seeming heightened in the heat, I don’t think the quality of play has been diminished too much so far. Apparently, some of the players beg to differ:
“I think I score if we’re on grass … The ball as it comes off my head against Sweden hits a dry turf and bounces higher. If it hits grass, it's harder for a goalkeeper to react, so if the ball bounces higher the goalkeeper has more time to react off the turf.”
– Abby Wambach, after the U.S. women’s 0:0 draw against Sweden.
Now, I gotta be honest here. That just might be the lamest thing I’ve ever heard. She’s one of the best players in the history of the game, and also one of the players who was most boisterous in the fight against FIFA to get the grass pitches installed, so this might be a case where she just doesn't want to let that fight go. But implying that the U.S. team’s inept offensive performance had to do with the pitch is nonsense. The Swedes were dealing with it, too. Everyone is. Who knows, maybe the Germans would’ve scored 13 or 14 against the Côte d’Ivoire on grass instead of just 10. I have a better idea: try playing better.
The USWNT has a loyal and allegiant fan base in this country, and deservedly so, because they’re terrific, but everyone involved seems remarkably prickly and defensive when sub-par performances are called into question. It’s the one thing I don’t care much for. Hey, if you suck, you suck. Take the hits and move on. Frankly, I think they choked in the final four years ago against Japan. Well, guess what? It happens. They are back and they are among the favourites and if they get offense out of neutral, they’ll probably win the thing, even though they’ll have to possibly navigate a mine field to do so once the knockouts begin, which leads me to my next buzzard point …
• What didn’t get nearly enough press, while everyone was griping about the turf, was the pairings for the Women’s World Cup. When it came time for the draw, the organizers locked all of the top sides into specific groups from the get-go and then built the schedule matrix from there. In the men’s competition, other than designating the top seed in Group A, which is always the host, everything is done through the random draw. In the process of locking top teams into specific groups, organizers also managed to arrange it so the Top 3 teams in the world – Germany, the U.S., and France – are all in the same half of the bracket should the games go to form. The reason for this was “financial considerations.” In other words, keep the U.S. and Canada as far away from each other as possible in the field, since they’ll have most of the fans between them and the organizers want to maximize the gate receipts. Some might also suggest the organizers dumped those Top 3 powerhouses together potentially in the other half of the bracket for the purposes of giving the host nation a better chance of reaching the final. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a host country did that. (For Italia 1990, the young U.S. squad was ‘randomly’ drawn into the same group as the Italians, to the surprise of absolutely no one.)
The Lose thinks it’s lame to resort of that sort of stuff under the guise of getting more asses into seats for the games. Hey, here’s a good reason to go to the games: IT’S THE FUCKING WORLD CUP! They do the same thing for the women’s NCAA tournament, whereby teams are allowed to host games on their home floors whereas that’s strictly forbidden on the men’s side. Unsurprisingly, there tend to be very few upsets in the women’s NCAA tournament – teams don’t make it to be a Top 4 seed in the tourney by being lousy on their home court. The reason they do this is, of course, all about money – the NCAA wants to maximize their attendance, and really good teams also tend to have the largest number of fans. But the event should be big enough, at this point, that you don’t need to do that. It contributes to the same teams winning titles over and over again, which is boring. Connecticut and Tennessee winning every year is boring. We only love dynasties until we don’t.
UCLA won 10 NCAA men’s titles in 11 years, and part of why they were able to do that is because the tourney back then was, in fact, broken down geographically, so UCLA was playing whatever western fodder existed in the first couple of rounds. Not necessarily bad teams, mind you, but they weren’t going to play a Big 10 or ACC side until the Final Four at the earliest. The NCAA did away with the hard-fast regionalization, and while UCLA won 10 titles because they were really damn good, it would’ve been a lot harder, if not impossible, to match that feat using the sort of set-up you see in the NCAAs where they ship teams all over the place. The NCAA also did away with home court advantage in the tourney, and the game, as a whole, is better because of it.
The point is that if you’re seriously worried about financial considerations during a World Cup or an NCAA tourney, then you may need to question about why you’re holding it. Personally, I think the thing should stand on its own. Hey, its great athletes performing at an incredible level. What’s not to like? Were I hanging out in Moncton right now, I’d go and check it out.
And a funny thing tends to happen in football when you go about trying to play the meta game and massage the groups – the players aren’t in on it, and most of the organizers’ hopes wind up going out the window. The Spanish organizers went to great lengths in 1982 to try and set it up with the desired idea in mind of having Brazil v. Argentina and West Germany v. Spain in the semifinals if it all followed form, and that lasted all of one match in practice, because Argentina lost to Belgium in the very first game. Spain then lost to Northern Ireland, the Germans got beat by Algeria, the whole tourney went loopy and all of those organizational pipe dreams went kaput. Already in Canada this summer, the #3 rated French got beat by Colombia – a huge upset which may turn out to be a convenient one, as well, since the French now have a good chance of finishing second in their group, thus getting out of the bracket with the Germans and the Americans and being in a direct collision course with the hosts. Everyone should be careful what they wish for.
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| The Landsliðið are friends of The Lose. These guys are awesome. |
So that was a pretty remarkable win for the Landsliðið, who then decided to have even more fun at Greece’s expense in Tórshavn over this past weekend, beating the Greeks again, this time by a 2:1 scoreline. And neither match was a fluke. The better team won on both occasions.
And yes, I just wrote two paragraphs about the Faroe Islands. Go me.
UEFA 2016 in France will have an expanded field – 24 teams instead of 16 – and while it may water down the competition somewhat, it also generates more interest among the abundant number of European minnow nations, some of whom have taken to biting the big fish. After beating the Belgians over the weekend, Wales are on the verge of qualifying for a major tourney for the first time since 1958. The aforementioned Iceland XI have already beaten the Dutch and the Czechs and may qualify for the first time ever. I think you may see even more surprises in the future on the international level, simply because the club demands on top players, from top nations, are so great now that the international game has to take a back seat for them. Sides from the lesser nations, often built around players who sat on the benches for their clubs for a lot of the year, tend to have a bit more cohesion and freshness to their play which can somewhat neutralize the talent gap. You’re still going to get some Gibraltar 0:7 Germany scorelines though. There are still a lot of bad teams in Europe. And with the expanded field, all of the big dogs will still qualify unless they are completely incompetent. Who knows? Maybe England might actually make it.
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| Umm, where exactly are you going? |
• Watching LeBron James attempt to singlehandedly beat the Golden State Warriors is pretty remarkable. In Game 5 last night, LeBron went for a triple-double and had a direct hand in 70 of the Cavs’ 91 points. 50.3% of Cleveland’s possessions in the NBA Finals result in LeBron doing something – a shot, a turnover, an assist – which is a figure you’re more likely at some small high school which has one good player, let alone in the best basketball league in the world. To their credit, the Cavs have stuck to their game plan of essentially playing defense with their offense – running the shot clock all the way down and then crashing the offensive glass for extra possessions – at least until last night, anyway, when David Blatt inexplicably decided to bench Timofy Mozgov, who is pretty much their 2nd-best player right now, as Blatt was mistakenly lured by the opiate that was J.R. Smith’s hot early shooting into thinking he could go small and match the Dubs’ small lineup for 48 minutes. Trying to play small against the Warriors made ZERO sense to me. Sure they were in the game for a while, but so what? Losing is losing. Mozgov had 28 in Game 4 and has been really effective crashing the basket from the high post and giving LeBron an option when he drives the ball. When he isn’t in the game, the other four guys basically stand around and wait for LeBron to do something for them, which tends not to work very well. Andre Igouadala has shown he can at least slow down LeBron in a one-on-one matchup, which is all the Dubs need because no one else for Cleveland is doing anything.
Thank you for not coaching, David Blatt.
Steve Kerr’s switch to a small lineup for Game 4 was mostly beneficial for the Dubs on the offensive end of the floor, as it created better tempo, better spacing, and some awful defensive matchups for the Cavs. Golden State’s defense has been fine in this series, but they lost two games mainly because their offense was a mess. Going with such a small lineup – 6’7” Draymond Green is playing center – came with the risk of getting hammered on the boards by the much bigger Cavs, but that potentially huge advantage that David Blatt basically neutralized last night by having his 7’1” center sitting next to him, and by the 4th Quarter, the Dubs were constantly first to the ball off the glass. Sure, Mozgov can’t guard anyone out on the floor, but like I say, the Cavs are better off playing defense with their offense. You gotta play to your strengths and take your chances.
Now, in practice, the Warriors have so many options that, in a 7-game series, eventually they are going to find something that works. I’ve felt all along that Golden State would only lose in the playoffs if they actually played badly. (A sentiment Nate Silver echoed. Always good to put some numbers behind my assertions.) Playing adequately is usually good enough, because they can just throw wave after wave after wave at you. LeBron has bordered on non-human in this series, and he still might be able to get them to a Game 7 through sheer force of will, but I can’t imagine he’s got two more games like last night in him. Or does he?
• And from the “something’s gotta give” department, the Official Wife of In Play Lose and I are going to the game tonight at Phone Company Park between the Giants, who are doing their usual odd-year-bullshit June swoon and have lost eight in a row at home, and the Seattle Mariners, who have lost 12 of 17, got beat 10:0 and 13:0 by the Astros over the weekend, and have pretty much shat on every prognosticator’s suggestion of their impending success this year (including mine). The Mariners are such a disaster that they merit further discussion later. As for the game tonight, which promises to be about as gloomy as the foggy skies over head, at least it also promises to be over quickly, since neither team can score right now.
