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| Oh look, a photo of two guys playing soccer which may or may not reflect my World Cup prediction |
1982 was the first time that I followed the World Cup. And 1982 was nuts. It was nuts right from the get-go, as defending champion Argentina, and their 19-year-old
wünderkind Diego Maradona, got beat 1-0 by the Belgians at the Camp Nou in Barcelona in the opening game of the tournament. This tourney came on the heels of the Falklands War, so Argentina was having a bad go of things at the time. Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri was requested to resign five days later, and a prevailing joke at the time was that whereas losing a war to the Brits merely staggered Argentina’s military government, it was losing to the Belgians that finally finished the junta off.
And the tournament just got weirder from there. It was an expanded event, having grown from 16 teams in 1978 to 24 in 1982, with the lion’s share of those eight new teams coming from the lesser confederations, meaning that nobody knew who they were, where they came from, or if they were any good or not. I suspect West Germany didn’t give Algeria a single thought before the Fennec Foxes beat them 2-1 in one of the tourney’s greatest upsets of all time – a result ultimately rendered moot when the West Germans beat the Austrians 1-0 in Gijón in a result that was, shall we say,
convenient for both sides, since both of them knew, ahead of time, the result they needed to achieve in order to advance. The Algerian fans used a different word than convenient, to be sure, having watched their team be eliminated in a game where the Germans and Austrians basically walked about the field and practiced square passing and rolling long balls back to the keeper. It’s this rather dubious match which led to the final group games being simultaneously started, seeing as how the tournament format had come to be gamed and irretrievably damaged.
But the entire format of the tourney was a mess, including these weird 3-team second round groups, a dumb idea for a format which contributed to England ultimately being eliminated despite never losing any of their five games in the tournament. The goofy format was cooked up to try and funnel teams into an eventual Argentina v. Brazil/West Germany v. Spain set of semifinals – an idea which pretty much went out the window immediately when Argentina lost to the Belgians and the hosts contrived to lose to Northern Ireland, meaning you wound up with these boffo 2nd round groups – Argentina/Brazil/Italy, West Germany/England/Spain – and two other 2nd round groups which were an absolute snooze full of lesser sides who ambled their way into a chance to succeed. Nothing at all about this tournament seemed to actually go right.
España 1992 saw Hungary score 10 goals in a game, saw a Kuwaiti sheik run onto the field and threaten to pull his team off the pitch if a French goal wasn’t disallowed, saw the best Brazilian team of the last 48 years steadfastly refuse to play it safe when all it needed to advance to the semifinal was a draw and go out in a James Deansian blaze of glory with a 3-2 loss to the Italians. It featured what was probably the wildest game in the entire history of the tournament, the semifinal between France and West Germany which finished 1-1 in regulation, finished 3-3 after extra time as the French blew a 3-1 lead, and featured the first penalty shootout in World Cup history – a concept which was novel and exciting at the time, whereas now it’s become this dreadful sort of ending to a game that we all want to avoid. That game also featured
the single-nastiest play I’ve ever seen on a pitch – and, also, the single worst piece of officiating I’ve ever seen, since Harold Schumacher wasn’t even called for a foul, much less sent off, much less booked for assault. Between that and essentially fixing their game with the Austrians, the West Germans proved to the be the most villainous of World Cup villains, a cynical and loathsome lot that I’m not sure even many Germans liked. When Italy put three past them in the second half of the final at the Bernabeu in Madrid, it felt as if a certain cosmic justice had been served.
The 1982 World Cup had all of that and I was hooked. It was completely cuckoo bananas and absolutely amazing. It had almost everything. One thing that it didn’t have, however, was the U.S. And 1986 was pretty awesome too: you had the Soviets running rampant, the Danes going nuts, neither the Soviets nor the Danes then bothering to defend anyone in the second round and conceding nine goals between them in their exits, Scotland doing Scotland things and failing to advance by failing to score a goal against Uruguay despite having a man advantage for 89 minutes, Morocco becoming the first African team to win a group, the Belgians annoying everyone on their way to the semis, Maradona cheating, Maradona being brilliant, Maradona being even more brilliant, and a cracking good 3-2 final between Argentina and a West German side that almost came off as likable. It was great stuff. Great competition, great theatre, incredible drama. But again, one thing that the 1986 World Cup in Mexico lacked was the U.S.
I’m mentioning this because a good number of soccer followers that I know here in America are young enough that they can’t even conceive of a World Cup without the U.S. – a prospect we are facing here in the summer of 2018. Yes, this actually used to happen. It used to happen a lot, in fact. And just because my home nation wasn’t involved, it didn’t mean it couldn’t be compelling. It is definitely worth tuning in for on your televisions.
Which, by the way, was something that you couldn’t do in 1982. ESPN carried that opener between Argentina and Belgium, ABC showed the Italy-West Germany final, and other than that, well, my World Cup viewing that season consisted of watching the special World Cup editions of the show
Soccer Made in Germany, a PBS program, which culled the highlights of the games into conveniently-sized packages. The sport was completely off the radar in this country at the time, and seemed destined to stay that way so long as U.S. Soccer were going about scheduling key World Cup qualifiers against Mexico at the L.A. Coliseum, caring far more about the gate receipts from the 85,000 Mexican fans in attendance than how the team actually did – a propensity for money-grubbing and brazen self-interest which has continued in U.S. Soccer to this very day. The sport was at such a pathetic place in this country that the World Cup qualifier I attended in 1989,
a 1-1 draw with Trinidad & Tobago, took place in a community college football stadium in Torrance, California, on a pitch which had been damaged in the days leading up to it by a pickup truck doing donuts. I don’t even remember who I went to the game with. I just remember that the game was bad. USA FC were pants. They were absolute rubbish and the entire affair was amateurish, if not outright shambolic. I’m still amazed that team
qualified for a World Cup. (The magic moments come at the 36:57 and the 1:38:48 marks of that video.)
In the bigger picture, it’s a good thing that people are mad about the U.S. not making the World Cup in 2018. Back in the 1980s, literally no one cared. (I have no idea on what page of the
L.A. Times the game story for that T&T Torrance debacle was found, but it sure as hell wasn’t on Page 1.) And we’ve had a few of these tell-all stories come out here recently, one from
ESPN and another from
The Ringer, in which everyone interviewed who was part of the program goes about pointing fingers without anyone just coming out and saying what the fundamental problem was, which is that everyone involved was arrogant as fuck, far too quick to pat themselves on the back and trumpet modest successes, yet still wanting to be able to slip back into “we’re still a developing soccer nation” mode when it was convenient, such as when they flopped on their faces and embarrassed themselves like they did against Argentina in the
Copa América semifinal or against Mexico in that Confed Cup playoff. (
But I’ve been over this before.) Now, obviously, no one being interviewed for those sorts of journalistic exposés is going to come right out and say, “yeah, we were arrogant as fuck.” The hope is that, behind the scenes, someone involved in the program is willing to admit that fact while doing a proper postmortem, but I’ve seen nothing amid the muddled, mixed messages coming out of U.S. Soccer to instill me with much optimism. But hey, at least they’re playing the kids now, and the kids are making all the sorts of mistakes in friendlies we want to see them making. It’s strange to watch USA FC field a team of young, athletic, talented kids who play hard. I didn’t know we did that in this country. Gosh, some of them might have even been useful in the qualifiers a year ago.
Being introspective about your shortcomings is something that should be done in the context of missing the World Cup – and part of that involves watching the event itself and reminding yourself of how good it is. And I suspect that Russia 2018 will be a good event, in the end, in spite of the fact that so many teams which, on paper at least, should be there will not be: no Italy, no Holland, no Chile, no U.S., almost none of the teams from Africa that we thought were any good. You could assemble a pretty terrifying first XI from the countries who didn’t earn a ticket to Russia:
Now, it’s their own damn fault, of course. The table doesn’t lie, and for all of those guys above and the teams that I mentioned, the table says, “you suck, and you don’t get to play next summer.” But as I’m watching the Belgians go about putting god knows how many goals past Panama in their first round game, I’m going to be thinking to myself, “what in the hell is that team doing in this tournament?” As bad as Panama could be, Saudi Arabia will likely be worse, and they’ll be front and center playing the Russians in the opening match of the tournament, and which point millions and millions of people around the world will scratch their collective heads and go, “huh?”
There is a decided lack of enthusiasm for this summer’s World Cup, one which stems, at the core, from the fact that FIFA is so corrupt and so beyond repair that, on the day that they awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia, they also awarded the 2022 World Cup Qatar in what was an act of brazen bribery. Those involved in FIFA were so self-involved and so determined to enrich themselves that they as much as killed their own golden goose with the awarding of that 2022 tournament, and are stubbornly going forth with the idea and going so far as to move it to winter time – a pretty good idea, given that playing soccer in the 115° temps of June is unideal – while completely disrupting the mechanics of the global game in the process. It’s such a dumb idea that it could only be carried out though sheer self-absorption and full-on commitment to graft.
And sure, we know these people are sleazebags and always have been. FIFA’s never been squeaky clean, and its structure as much as ensures that it never will be. It’s never been a group which was afraid of cozying up to a strongman – this organization did allow its showcase event to be overseen by a military junta, after all. But just because you’re corrupt, it doesn’t mean you can’t also be proactive and, on occasion, be visionary. It was a no-brainer to hold the World Cup in 1994 in the U.S. People didn’t think it at the time, but the end result was the most successful tournament in the sport’s history in terms of attendance and income. It was a no-brainer to go to Asia in 2002 and Africa in 2010. All three of those World Cups that I mentioned sought to grow the game, both in terms of markets where it was being underserved, if not floundering, and also in terms of potential talent pools for the future, since talent is ultimately what you’re selling. But the original proposals for 2022, featuring temporary stadia that would be fully air conditioned while still outdoors, were absolute fairy tales. To entrust this event to a 115° climate, to somehow buy notions that a place the size of Connecticut could welcome 3,000,000 visitors, and to knowingly look away from the fact that the place’s barbaric labor laws would result in countless worker deaths, constitutes a selling of what was left of their souls.
In doing something which screams out, “we are actively accepting bribes and we like it,” everything connected to FIFA, be it past or present or future, is assumed to be compromised beyond reproach. Even if you think that Russia made sense as a host nation (which I did, given its size and also its sizable footballing tradition), simply being associated with this mess of a double bidding process leaves you tainted by proxy, deservedly or not. Throw in some logistical issues – it’s a huge country, after all, even if you’re only using a sliver of it for this tournament – the persistent problems with racism that don’t jibe with a global audience, and the disturbing propensities towards
hooliganism that reared it’s ugly head in Marseille during the Euros in 2014, and no one seems terribly excited to want to be there. The Confed Cup in 2015 drew shockingly few foreign visitors – mostly Chileans, but hardly anyone else. You’d think that Iceland would be huge into this, given that, during the 2014 Euros, as much as 10% of the population of the country was in France during the tournament, but even in their maiden voyage to the World Cup, expectations are that only about half as many Icelandic fans will turn up in the seats of the stadia for the games. Everything feels off for this tournament. Everything feels weird.
And this should be cause for concern to FIFA, because the international game is less popular than ever before. With the full-on integration of the world’s talent pool, combined with the massive brand appeal of the world’s largest clubs, club football is where it’s at. And with good reason – you have the greatest players in the world all playing together, and witnessing it is seeing the actual game itself being played at its highest level. UEFA is already trying to do something different this upcoming fall, experimenting with an international league in order to generate some more interest in the international game. The FAs need that sort of interest to continue in order to sustain themselves, but when you see USA FC barely able to fill a 10,000-seat stadium for a friendly, and the likelihood that a pre-season match between Liverpool and Manchester United is going to draw 110,000 in Ann Arbor, you know where the bigger interests truly lay.
My main reason for being fond of international football is that club football’s time-tested strategy for problem-solving is just to go out and throw money at the problem. You can’t do that in international football. You have to make do with what you have, you have to adapt to the personnel available to you. This couldn’t have been made more clear than in a recent friendly between Spain and Argentina where
La Albiceleste got thrashed 6-1. Even with Messi not playing in that game, Argentina still have about eight good forwards they can throw out there, but as I’ve said before, Messi has to be more of a midfield playmaker on that team, a position which otherwise goes wanting for Argentina at the moment, and as was on display against Spain, the defense is even weaker than the midfield, and the goalkeeping might be worse further still. Okay, now what? Their head coach, Jorge Sampaoli, has a distinct system of play he wants to use, but I suspect playing in a 0-0-3-8 formation isn’t it, and he doesn’t seem to have the kind of athletes in his squad he needs to do what he wants. Well, you have little more than a week to figure it out, because Argentina has by far the toughest opening group of the eight and they haven’t looked anywhere close to being a World Cup favorite.
See, I got going in that last paragraph and now I’m enthusiastic. I can tell everyone how I think this World Cup is going to be weird and strange and probably something of a downer, but I’ll watch every minute of it, and write too many words about it, and there will almost certainly be some compelling, intense matches and individual moments both of brilliance for me to praise and folly for me to mock. To varying degrees, we can overlook all of the off-field stuff if the football is good. The 1990 tournament in Italy ultimately went off pretty well, but it’s still not thought of very highly in hindsight, because the games were absolutely terrible. The games were generally terrible in Japan and Korea in 2002, owing to moving the schedule forward several weeks on account of weather and rendering many rosters either dog tired or injury laden, but for us here in the U.S., of course, 2002 was fantastic because our team played terrific and reached the quarterfinals and got
Torsten Fringsed out of a possible semifinal spot. Barring something incredibly catastrophic or appalling happening, how we come to view the event depends on the on-field product.
And I’m going to attempt to be optimistic on that front, even though I’m not so sure that I should. I felt that, Nos. 1-32, the 2014 field was as strong and deep as any in the 32-team era, but I look at the 2018 field, Nos. 1-32, and I think it’s clearly the worst. My goodness, how did some of these teams get into the tournament? There is going to be some pretty dreadful games in the first round. (There always are.) That said, I do have some vested interest here, as I foolishly wagered on the World Cup during my last trip to Las Vegas, and while it’s absent some of the bigger names amid both the upper and middle-classes, the tournament still has plenty of potential for surprises, and there are some at the top end who, if they get their shit together, can be really dynamic and exciting. So I’m going to assume here that the games themselves will be good to watch until proven otherwise … which may last all of one game, but we’ll see.
And since I’m here, I may as well write-up my short attention span preview of the World Cup, because I’ve managed to talk myself into being enthusiastic during the 3,300 words of this blog post, so the hell with it, why stop now?
Group A just might be one of the worst groups ever assembled for a World Cup, in part because Russia are probably the weakest host side of all-time. Then again, the last comparably weak team that played host – the U.S. in 1994 – rode that good home cooking all the way to the 2nd round, and the Russians have traditionally had a terrific home field advantage. How bad this group will be depends upon whether or not Mo Salah can get healthy for Egypt. If Salah’s on the pitch, the Pharoahs have a legit chance of qualifying for the 2nd round. If not, they’re probably toast. I cannot see anyone other than Uruguay winning this group, given their high-end talent and their uncanny ability to get results, although I do not expect the latter to be that necessary in their first three games, as the former should suffice.
Group B is where I start to care because I got a really good price in Vegas on Spain back in November, before they unleashed the ruthless killing machine on Argentina this spring and announced that the post-2014 rebuild was over. With players like Isco and Ascencio, they now have young athletes to pair with their typically savvy ball possession game. I’m liking that 9/1 I got more and more by the day. Portugal were my long shot, a $10 bet at 22/1, simply because they proved in the Euros in 2016 that they know how to win stuff. Everyone needs a long shot bet, and who was I gonna take? England? Pfft.
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| Well played, Scottish Humour. Well played. |
Portugal always interests me simply because unlike at Real Madrid, where Ronaldo can show up for 10 minutes and strut, when it comes to Portugal, he has to actually lead, he has to make plays for others and be fully engaged. The football wasn’t always great in France in 2016, but the Portuguese have some steel and some moxie. The other two teams in this group are interesting and you don’t really know what you’re going to get. Iran typically has the best talent in Asia but rarely gets the results, as the team always seems to be mired in some sort of political mess or another. (Get used to hearing that.) Morocco, meanwhile, took the Algerian tactic of recruiting any and everyone they could find playing the game on the European continent who could be eligible for a passport and giving it to them. There are 17 of their players who grew up on the continent – all of whom, of course, grew up in club and academy development systems, which means this team has more sophistication than previous Moroccan sides, many of whom still did pretty well in their own right. They looked pretty damn impressive when I watched them smack down the Côte d’Ivoire in their CAF qualifying group, but then again, the Côte d’Ivoire had hired the Belgian bumbler Marc Wilmots as a coach, who brought along his penchant for doing less with more, and I’m not sure how much of it was incompetence on the part of Elephants. Interesting team though, and having them in the same group as Spain and Portugal certainly provides a little extra regional spice.
It’s funny to me that so much attention is being given to
Group C front-runner France’s potential future coach, be it Zinedine Zidane or Arsene Wenger or whatnot. This is because pretty much everyone I read associated with the French game is of the belief that one way or another, current head coach Didier Deschamps is going to find a way to take what is one of the most talented teams in the tournament and screw it up somehow. I’ve also got a bet on the French, even though I’ve been underwhelmed by their performances the past couple of years. I would like to think this is the tournament where Paul Pogba really busts out, but so long as Deschamps is going to do stupid things like have him playing as a Number 6, like he was doing in the Euros, I’m not so sure. In any event, they’re not going to have any trouble in what is, on balance, a pretty bad group. No one other than Christian Eriksen particularly scares me about the Danes. We all owe Peru a debt of gratitude, because it was them beating Brazil in the 2016
Copa América that got Dunga fired from the
Seleção, and he took his terrible football with him, for which we’re all better off. I like me some Peru, they play hard and they’re tenacious, and their ploy of having Peruvian fighter jets buzz the New Zealand hotel during their 2-legged playoff was the stuff of trolling lore, and having captain Paolo Guerrero back from suspension bodes well. My general rule of thumb is that in a game between a mediocre European team and mediocre South American team on neutral grounds, go with the South Americans, so I suspect Peru will get the second spot. I’ve said nothing in this paragraph about Australia and there’s a reason for that.
Group D, aah Group D, give me some of that. This is the Group of Death. This is some fantastic stuff. As mentioned before, I have no idea what Argentina is going to do. They usually just muddle their way through first rounds, anyway, often looking terrible in the process. Croatia has high-end talent in Modrić, Rakitić, Kovačić and Mandžukić, but they’ve also had this propensity in the past for completely losing their minds when things stop going their way and resorting to seeing which one of them can get thrown out of the game the fastest. I’ve always loved me some Super Eagles, of course, and while this year’s Nigeria are shorter on experience, they’re never short on talent and, for once, seem to be shorter on political discord and longer on harmony, which bodes well for their chances. As for the 4th team in the group, SLEEP ON ICELAND AT YOUR PERIL. I said that two years ago and am still being proven correct. Besides being the feel-good story of the tournament (and, by the way
Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl
has the best job ever), Iceland are a pain in the ass to play against. How well they do will likely depend on the health of Gylfi Sigurðsson, but they’ve shown the ability to adapt and adjust. They won their UEFA qualifying group ahead of Croatia, and have now morphed from just being defensively rigid into also being able to play possession football as needed, and they’re still ruthless on the set pieces. I have no idea how this group is going to shake out.
I suspect there will be some tension in
Group E when Serbia take on a Swiss team which has recently been laden with a number of immigrant kids from the Balkans who took refuge during the assorted wars of the 1990s. The Serbs have some young players on this rise, but this roster for Russia is sort of
meh, and they got here by winning what turned out to be the weakest of the European groups. The Swiss, meanwhile, were unable to do what they did in 2014, which was to game the FIFA World Ranking system enough to land a top seed that they were wholly undeserving of. (And if you don’t believe me, go back to the video in 2014 of them getting slaughtered by the French.) But they’re going to duke it out for second, because this group is all about the rebirth of Brazil, and Jesus, this team has got a lot of talent and now looks as if they’ll have a healthy Neymar in the fold, to boot. Tite has brought the fun back to the
Seleção since taking over for Dunga at the helm. Brazil absolutely steamrolled CONMEBOL in qualifying, and they have a legit
élite player, plying his trade at an
élite club, at pretty much every position on the pitch. The fourth team in this group are Costa Rica, who were quarterfinalists in 2014 and probably going to live off their laurels. They’re an older team now, a well-organized and experienced team, but that run in 2014 was due in large part to Keylor Navas standing on his head in between the sticks, which is a big ask. They might be able to get some points in this group, but I’m not sure they can get enough.
I expect the Germans to do plenty of German things in
Group F,
and by that I mean they’ll probably win a lot of games and not look all
that great doing it. We tend to remember the 7-1 thrashing of Brazil in
2014 and forget that, among their other games that year, they also had
three 1-goal wins, with none of those games being very impressive, a 2-2
draw with Ghana that they probably should have lost, and a World Cup
final they would have lost if Gonzalo Higuaín could’ve hit the side of a
barn. This isn’t to say the Germans were undeserving of being champions in 2014. Obviously, they had
one magnificent night in Belo Horizonte which showed how great they can
be, but more often, they were
just good enough – which is, in
fact, the sign of a great team to be able to eke out so many wins, but it also
speaks to the margins being closer than you might think. The core of
that team is still intact, of course – Neuer, Hummels, Boateng, Müller,
Özil, Kroos, etc. etc. etc. – but just when you think they’re about to
get old and slow, they throw a B team out there and win the Confed Cup
with it and remind you that they grow players on trees. I actually think
El Tri are gonna be good and the Germany-Mexico game in Moscow on June
17 could be the best first round game of the tournament.
El Tri are deep, experienced, and they have
playmakers all over the pitch. This is going to be a good one. South
Korea were awful four years ago, and my only watch of them since was in a
dreadful AFC game against Uzbekistan where the Uzbeks threw away a
possible World Cup spot, and the fact that I’m talking about Uzbeks
should tell you what I thought of the South Koreans, which wasn’t much. As for
Sweden, I’ve seen them quite a bit in the past few years, both with
Zlatan and without, and I’m shocked they are even in this tournament. I
have to say that other than about 10 good minutes in their playoff game
in Italy, during which time they deservedly scored, I’ve seen literally
nothing in any of those matches that impresses me. I guess there is
something to be said for their resourcefulness. I’ll give them that.
That does count for something.
In
Group G, the first XI for Belgium is absolutely terrifying. If I had
to bet on the tournament’s top scorer, I’d pick Romelu Lukaku because
he’s got three legit Number 10s in Hazard and DeBruyne and Mertens
feeding him the ball. Roberto Martinez-coached teams always seem to have
this propensity for believing that defending is optional, but Mousa Dembélé and a healthy Vincent Kompany should shore that up. I also got 9/1 on the Belgians in
Vegas. I’m loving those odds. I actually think England are going to
pretty good. For once, they aren’t relying upon has-beens living off
their laurels. England are actually young, quick, have a stud goal
scorer up front in Harry Kane, and if they can actually figure out who
the hell is going to play in the center of the park, I could easily see
them reaching the quarters and getting ousted on penalties by the
Germans. I already said what I think about Panama, and I suspect Tunisia
will be in the same boat, but whereas I think the Belgians are just
going to run all over those two teams, it’s usually the England way to
play terrible against one of the minnows and send the entire nation down
a swirling, sucking eddy of despair.
This year’s How The Hell Are They A #1 Seed team is Poland in
Group H. Poland are a good team – solid keepers, a stiff defense, a terrific goal scorer in Lewandowski paired with an excellent strike partner in Milik – but I think I’d still be more inclined to favor James and the more dynamic Colombians to win this group. They were terrific in Brazil four years ago, looked good in finishing third in
Copa América in 2016, and while they weren’t great in CONMEBOL qualifying for the World Cup, CONMEBOL is so rigorous and stressful that it has a way of making a lot of teams look bad. Senegal could also be exciting and competitive it what looks to be a pretty even group, although be honest, I’m not terribly interested in Japan, especially not after writing 5,500 words of this blog post.
Predictions? Hmm. In 2010, I wished that I’d been wagering, since I got the Spain-Netherlands final right, 3/4 of the semis right, most of the quarters right, and would have made bank betting on the U.S. to win their group. So obviously, I’m never, ever wrong about this stuff …
*checks previous predictions* … eh, okay, so, never mind. So take this to the bank, but do not cash the check. The winner of the July 6 quarterfinal between Brazil and Belgium will be in the final, beating France in the semis. Having dispatched of England on penalties in the quarters, because it could end no other way, the Germans will then lose to Spain in the semis. So give me a Spain-Belgium final, and the winner is me at that point, since it’ll give me a reason to go to Vegas and cash my winning ticket.
And it’s worth watching, because there is always the potential for something great to occur, something magical and brilliant, something completely confounding and utterly nutters. And the top-end talent that will be on display in this event can, on their day, deliver something absolutely exquisite. So don’t be a bunch of sourpuss homers, my American friends, and my disappointed Dutch friends and family, and my passionate Italian readers – one of whom recently wrote to me, “Dear Mr. Lose, yes you are correct Italy is crap,” which is my favorite fan mail of all time. Yeah, our teams are crap right now, but we can get better. And as weird as the vibe has been surrounding this tournament in the run-up, it’s probably going to be worth watching, even from afar.
