B- Work

Gorgeous

I’M GIVING myself a B- for my World Cup viewing performance this weekend, as I managed to watch about 5½ of the 7 games. I watched the first 35 minutes of Croatia-Nigeria before I fell asleep, and it was all I needed to see. Having dragged my ass in front of the TV at 3:00 a.m. for France v. Australia, and spent the entire first half wondering why I had bothered, I couldn’t find the enthusiasm required to get up at 5:00 a.m. today for Costa Rica-Serbia. From what I understand, I didn’t miss much. I was hoping to watch all seven, so I came up short on that front. A solid effort on my part, but I could have done better.

The five games that I did watch in full proved quite fascinating. Four of them featured teams who are considered to be among the favorites, and all four of them played badly, to varying degrees. It was also the first time that the VAR system came into play and, so far, it’s going okay. The two VAR-awarded penalties may have been somewhat soft, but by the letter of the law, both were ultimately ruled correctly. Given the gravity of an awarded penalty – a play which results in a goal about 75% of the time in a sport where scoring otherwise seems to be damned impossible – the more objectivity involved in that decision-making process, the better. I’m also liking the way the offsides are being called – or not being called, in fact, as FIFA’s directive to linesmen is to keep the flag down on close calls and let it play out. If there is a goal in the ensuing sequence of moves, they’ll go back and review it. This means fewer whistles and fewer stoppages in play, which is a good thing. And you don’t have to worry about those ensuing sequence of moves resulting in a goal, anyway, because soccer is a game that’s all about failure and disappointment:

A new fan learns the game’s harsh reality

And it’s impossible to ignore all of the penalties in Saturday’s games – five of them in four games. The penalty kick in soccer probably has more impact and effect on a game than any other play in any other sport – and, as we saw on Saturday, missing one can be disastrous. With so much tied to a single play, it’s very easy to focus and fixate all of your energies upon it, often attaching far more meaning to it than you probably should. Peru didn’t lose a game on Saturday because they missed a penalty. They lost because they missed 20-odd chances in the game – the penalty being the most golden of opportunities, of course, but not the only one they had. They lost because and defense fell asleep and conceded a Danish goal on a counterattack. They lost because, for some bizarre reason, their head coach left Paolo Guerrero – their captain, top scorer, and best player – out of the starting XI, a decision which was made to look even worse when Peru missed a penalty, since it would have been Guerrero taking the penalty if he’d been on the pitch. But missing that penalty will be all that anyone will want to talk about, it will be all that people will remember. Ask Peruvians about that loss in a few years and the first thing they’ll think of is a missed penalty. This is the nature of the game. Moments change matches, and moments become metaphors.

We have lift-off ...

• Christian Cueva single-handedly founding the Peruvian space agency by launching this spot kick into orbit summed up the joy turned to frustration of a nation that’s intent upon celebrating this World Cup like none other. Peruvians have waited 36 years for this, 36 long years. They bought enormous numbers of tickets and have turned out en masse in Russia for the event, only to be reminded, once again, that soccer is a cruel and stupid game. 
The Peruvians played so well. Atop their usual stout defense, they played an attacking game with athleticism and speed. They dominated the game whereas Denmark did very little of anything, but the ball just wouldn’t go in the goal. And then Cueva misses the penalty in a scoreless game and everyone starts to feel uneasy. And then they get caught upfield and Denmark springs a counter, and Denmark happens to have the best player on the pitch in Christian Eriksen – who was having a lousy game by his standards – and Eriksen slots a perfect pass on an odd rush and now Peru’s down a goal when they should probably be up two or three. This game sucks. And Peru’s throwing everything at them, chance after chance after chance but the goddamn ball won’t go in the goddamn goal!
Peru were the better team and they lost. That’s football. Sometimes, the better team doesn’t win. If you want life to be fair, don’t play this stupid game. Peru desperately needed to win this game in order to advance, as Denmark was their prime competition for the second spot. Then again, they do have a game against the French so there might be hope, since the French decided to make this stupid game even stupider by playing stupidly.

What on earth are you doing?

• Samuel Umtiti’s nitwitted attempt at volleyball gifted the Australians a penalty at 61’ of a 1:0 game, coming seven minutes after France were awarded, through VAR, a penalty which was so soft and fluffy that not even the French seemed to think it should have been given. The 22 players on the pitch were just sort of standing there after the VAR review, looking to one-another with confused shrugs. Sure, it was the right call by the letter of the law, but it just didn’t feel like it should have been called, and had the call not been changed and the penalty awarded, I’m not sure the French would have been bothered. Umtiti’s brazen act of lunacy, coming fresh off France gaining a lead they wholly didn’t deserve, felt karmically just, as it permitted the Aussies to even the score.
Paul Pogba eventually bundled one over the line to give France a 2:1 victory, and it’s hard for me to say they didn’t deserve the win. This is because Australia didn’t deserve anything, because they didn’t do anything. In fact, their whole goal was to do nothing. I certainly understand the tactic inferior teams take of parking the bus and then trying to hit the opposition on the break, but I don’t think they reached the French penalty area more than a half-dozen times throughout the entire game, and they also kept needlessly giving the ball away in dumb areas of the pitch – needless in the sense that it wasn’t like they were under duress, seeing as how the French couldn’t be bothered to actually press. Soccer is a game where you can actually succeed by trying to do nothing, of course, but that the Socceroos were unified, hell-bent and committed to doing nothing doesn’t earn them any plaudits from me. Frankly, they were garbage.
But so were the French, who are presently an incoherent mess. They have tonnes of offensive talent,  they speed and size and athleticism in spades, but no one wants to do anything when they don’t have the ball at their feet, and other than Pobga, they don’t have any good passers. For a team with so many good attackers, they create surprisingly few goals and scoring chances. Even so, they’d have probably scored four or five in this game simply by putting some pressure on the Aussies and making them cough up the ball even easier than they already were, but the French just couldn’t find it in them to do that. I’m not sure how much of the wayward act of wandering through the desert that poses for the French team comes down to head coach Didier Deschamps not having a coherent plan, and how much comes down to the players not wanting to listen to him.
Now, to be fair here, playing a team intent on doing nothing can be surprisingly difficult, because it’s not any fun at all. I suspect the French are likely to improve when they face some opponents who actually want to play. But if you’re the Danes or the Peruvians, why would you give them that chance?

Birdseye view of bad defense

• Steven Zuber’s equalizer gave the Swiss a point against Brazil, canceling out Coutinho’s brilliant first half goal. Zuber did give the defender in front of him a good shove on this play, and the Brazilians sort of half-heartedly complained once they saw the replay on the big screen in the stadium, but this was just bad defense. HE’S UNMARKED INSIDE THE SIX! Hey you, you two guys on the right side, how about you try marking someone? In most Brazil sides, the central defense is the soft underbelly, but this wasn’t some bruising center forward imposing his will. This was just a pathetic effort by Brazil to mark a basic set piece play.
Seleção played 20 good minutes to start, capped off with Coutinho’s beautiful curling shot from the left elbow to give them the lead, but then they stopped playing. For the majority of the next hour, the Swiss were the better team. And props to the Swiss for that, but Brazil should never not be the better team against a side as limited as the Swiss.
Now, this team is obviously better than the dross Brazil put out there in their last three major tournaments, but this “new look” Brazilian team, for all of it’s flair, is still overly dependent upon Neymar, who is coming back from a broken foot and still doesn’t look fully fit. It was hard to tell at times, of course, since he spent so much of the game on the floor, what with him being fouled 10 times. This was a really disappointing performance for Seleção. A good Brazil makes this tournament special. We want more from them than this.

Boom

• Congratulations to El Tri for doing what every team who has played the Germans should have been doing for the past four years – run at them! What annoyed me four years ago about so many of Germany’s games was the fact that so few teams were willing to take that risk, allowing the Germans to conceal the fact that they were somewhat slow and square in the back. But one of the characteristics of these group openers that often shows up is that, given that you have six months’ time to plan for your first opponent, a good coach can figure out the best way to attack them.
As presently constructed, the Germans like to possess the ball and tend to use their overly-aggressive fullbacks to make deep runs, so Osorio came up with a great game plan – when the defense stands up the Germans, the immediate outlet is to a center forward just in front of the Germans’ two in the midfield, who then turns and faces and feeds whichever channel the German fullback has vacated, at which point the break is on and EVERYONE RUN LIKE HELL!
The Mexicans just killed Germany in transition. The deeper the Germans got into Mexican territory, the larger the open space the Mexicans had to run into on the break. The 1:0 final scoreline somewhat flattered the Germans, because the Mexicans messed up so many odd-man rushes over the course of 90 minutes. It got somewhat tense towards the end, as the Mexicans closed ranks and played to protect the lead, but any kind of result the Germans may have gotten would have been undeserved.
I’m hard-pressed to ever remember a German team that was such a mess. They looked slow, old, and unathletic. Their entire midfield collective was a net negative – Khedira was terrible, Muller was terrible, Özil was nonexistent but at least he knew to track back 70 yards and try to defend Lozano on the Mexican goal as opposed to Kimmich, the right back, who was … where exactly?
And while the outcome was still a surprise, it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. As mysterious and muddled and maddening as El Tri can sometimes be – they’d used 48 different line-ups in 48 previous games – they still have the sort of dynamic, intelligent forwards and athletic wings who could theoretically make life miserable for the Germans, if only you allow them to do so. I like to give El Tri some shit here on the blog from time to time, given that we’re rivals and all, but I’ve had far more faith in this version of El Tri than most. This is a good team who just put themselves in a great position to go far in this tourney. (Now watch them go out and go 0:0 with South Korea and mess it all up.)

The smiting shall continue until morale improves

• You know who else is good? Iceland. Can we stop it already with all of the plucky underdog narratives? If I hear one more time about how they are the smallest nation ever to participate in a World Cup, I’m going to reach through the TV and smack the announcer. If you honestly thought that Iceland getting a 1:1 draw against Argentina was a surprise, then you haven’t been paying attention for the past six years.
That’s because Iceland have been good for the past six years. They sowed the seeds for this when their U-21 team reached the UEFA final in 2011. Had they not been reduced to 10 men against Croatia for 80 minutes, and managed to scrounge an away goal in Zagreb in the return leg of the 2013 playoff, they’d have been in the World Cup four years ago and we’d have been hearing all of these plucky Iceland stories while they were playing in Brazil. Reaching the quarters at the 2016 Euros wasn’t a fluke, beating England wasn’t a fluke, winning their UEFA qualifying group for this World Cup wasn’t a fluke. THIS TEAM IS GOOD!
Like I was saying before about well-coached teams having ample time to prepare for an opponent, Iceland new exactly what they were going to do in this game. They were going to zone up, run at Messi in numbers, stay on their feet while defending to avoid needless fouls, and then play through Gylfi Sigurðsson on the counter. They got a bit narrow in the second half, with Argentina’s wingers pinching up, and that prevented them breaking, but other than when Messi had the ball and threatened with his left foot, Iceland weren’t actually all that uncomfortable while defending. They didn’t care if they conceded a corner, because they’re huge and dominant in the air. They knew what they were doing.
Not only should it not have been a surprise that Iceland were level with Argentina, but they probably should have been disappointed with the fact that they hadn’t put two or even three past Argentina in the first half. If anything, I think Iceland were how surprised at how easy it was to go forward.
But if you listen to the nimrods and dipshits at Fox Sports tell it, the idea they would possibly beat Argentina would the greatest upset in the history of sliced bread. This is what happens when you don’t pay attention. God, I hate those telecasts. Thank goodness for Telemundo.

But inevitably, the story of this game was the fact that, in the 63rd minute, Messi missed a penalty. He also couldn’t convert a free kick in the dying seconds. These things happen. In his career in his Argentina shirt, Messi converts 77% of his penalties, which is about an average number. But he’s missed a couple of big ones, of course, most recently the decider in the 2016 Copa América Centenario final against the Chileans. Both for club and country, he’s gone into slumps from time to time where he’s missed some. That happens.
Problem #1 with this, of course, is that no one on that team – be they a coach, a player, or whomever – would ever say, “so, hey, Leo, how about we let Kun Agüero take the penalties? He’s pretty good at them.” This is sort of like how, on frequent occasions in the NBA playoffs, LeBron was stepping up to shoot free throws on technical fouls, even though there were three 85-90% foul shooters on the floor. Good luck prying the ball away from him. This is what happens when your team is so dependent upon one guy. You’ll defer to him even when you know that you shouldn’t.
And Argentina completely defers to Messi in everything they do. The others just basically stand around and wait for him to do something. Messi’d get the ball on the right elbow, with three or even four Iceland defenders running at him, and he’d always have to circle back to shoot from a worse angle, or pass it back to a midfielder and reset the play, because everyone in a black shirt had become a statue. Move, damn it! Messi is one of the best passers in the world, for christsake. Give him a goddamn target!
The problem with Messi missing a penalty and generally having a subpar game (by his standards) is that it came one day after Christiano Ronaldo scored a hat trick against Spain and converted a penalty and a free kick and what have you. This revives the dumbest of all arguments in sports about which of the two is better. I couldn’t care less about this and find it tiresome. I think they’re both amazing and I enjoy them both as players.
But CR7 has one built in advantage in that argument, which is where he was born. CR7 was born in a small country with a good, but not great, footballing tradition. Every single thing he does for his country, therefore, is a feather in his cap. Messi happens to come from a nation that not only is rich in footballing tradition and used to win a lot of stuff, but it’s one where the people have grown impatient, if not intolerant, of the fact that they no longer win a lot of stuff. Argentina hasn’t won a major tournament in 25 years. They’ve not won a World Cup since 1986. They were losing stuff long before Messi, and given the dysfunctional state of the Argentine FA, they’ll likely be losing stuff after Messi.
Argentina doesn’t win anything and it’s always Messi’s fault. Somehow it’s Messi’s fault that they haven’t produced a decent playmaker in a decade, which means he has to drop back and spend the game setting up teammates who squander chances. It was Messi’s fault that they drew 1:1 with Iceland, and not the fault of his teammates, none of whom, with the exception of Kun Agüero, played worth a goddamn. It’s somehow Messi’s fault that the defense got spooked literally every time Iceland had the ball. It’s Messi’s fault that the goalkeeper is flapping and flailing like he’s swatting at bees.
It’s a team game, folks, and Argentina’s likely going to be going home earlier than they’d hope because the team surrounding Messi isn’t very good. And the LeBron comparison from before is apt, because even this year, when the Cleveland Cavaliers were crap, there were still people out there thinking he’d magically be able to beat the Warriors all by himself, some of whom are now killing him for the fact that he couldn’t. Argentina are in the Group of Death in this tournament. Messi can’t singlehandedly beat seven good teams in a row by himself. But somehow, when he doesn’t do that, it’ll be his fault. It’s completely, utterly dumb. It’s no surprise he frequently wants to quit playing for the national team, and has done so in the past. Who wants to put up with that crap?

Whew, that was a lot of soccer to watch. Three more games tomorrow, including my nutty Belgians. I didn’t quite make it through the footballing marathon this weekend, but I did well enough to earn a passing grade. And at some point, I should probably sleep.