Losability: Your Short-Attention Span NBA Preview

Who hasn’t wanted to do this at the office?

WE love all sorts of failure here at In Play Lose. We love epic chokes, we love season-long death marches through the abyss. Losing takes many forms, many shapes and varying degrees of significance, and I’m interested in all of it. Obviously, we love the epic fails, those comedic bursts of idiocy, those gifable moments where a player does something jaw-droppingly incompetent. This is because losing is, ultimately, funny. This series of articles from The Athletic, about the worst teams that many excellent reporters had to endure, is far more funny – and ultimately far more revealing – than any series about the supposed ‘best’ teams they ever covered could be. Winning is boring. It’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s when it all goes wrong, and you are scrambling to come up with answers as to why that failure happened, that truly reveals your nature.

I mention this on the eve of another NBA season because the fact of the matter is that for 29 teams in the NBA – most likely everyone who isn’t the Golden State Warriors, although that is by no means a certainty – the season is going to prove to be unsuccessful. And that’s okay, really. It’s okay and it’s essential. You need winners and losers. Losing is essential. But even more importantly, you need a variety of losers. Because the fact of the matter is that while all 30 teams in the NBA would love to win the title, it isn’t realistic to expact that to be happening. Every team in a professional league has a ceiling, they have a level that they could realistically hope to attain and, in the big picture, reaching that level actually constitutes success.

I mentioned this idea this past summer while talking about the World Cup: if, in 2016, I’d said that  two years hence, the Croatians would finish 2nd in the World Cup, the Belgians would finish 3rd and the English 4th, both players and fans from those nations would say that, in the bigger picture, that’s a pretty good outcome. But in the moment, of course, in the here and the now of 2018, finishing third for the Belgians means, “god damn it, why are Fellaini and Chaddli still in this game and why can’t we break down the fucking French defense?” For the Croatians, it’s “jesus christ, we’re dominating this final and we should be beating this goddamn team.” The loss, in the immediate, feels painful and agonizing and frustrating. The immediate result runs contrary to the process. Finishing second or third is terrific, but finishing second or third also means that, at a critical moment, you failed.

I mention soccer even though this is an NBA blog, since there are an incredible number of similarities between the two – not the least of which being that players in each have come to have something of a mutual admiration society for each other. Both sports are star-driven, games in which the players have incredible agency over their careers. In both sports, players have taken agency over their careers to a much greater extent and come to realize their full stardom and earning potentials. With stardom potential, of course, comes petty drama and paparazzi – both sports are full of gossip, full of glamour, full of hangers-on and shady characters on the fringe.

And both games are great, even if the end product can come to feel like a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t matter, ultimately, that one team is a prohibitive favorite in the NBA, just as it doesn’t matter that Bayern or Barca or Juve or Man City is a prohibitive favorite in some European soccer league. As a whole, the NBA is better than it’s ever been. The players are more skilled, better drilled, and in better condition than they have ever been. They are also more “woke,” more aware, and more connected to fans than they have ever been. These are exquisite athletes, and the level of play in the NBA is the highest the sport of basketball has ever known. It’s worth following if, for no other reason, you’ll see something terrific and artistic and almost balletic on a nightly basis.

And, of course, you’ll also see the Sacramento Kings.

And like I say, within a given league, every team has a ceiling. If you break through that ceiling, your season is a success. The Sacramento Kings are going to play hard, they’re going to play with incredible enthusiasm and energy in lieu of having any talent, and if they, say, finish with a 33-49 record then, damn, that’s a decent season right there. It means the kids played their asses off and they beat a few teams along the way who took the night off or didn’t care or whatnot, it means their young players finally stopped making the sorts of game-ending, soul-killing sorts of mistakes that bad young teams make, and maybe they learned a few things along the way. (And this is about as nice as I’m ever going to talk about the Sacramento Kings, so you should roll with it.) As much as we all want to win, we do have to grade on something of a curve when the season is over.

And here at In Play Lose, where we are connoisseurs of failure, I love all of it. I love the 60-loss season just as much as the Game 7 choke job. There are plenty of layers and levels to losing. Love it. Bring it on. Let’s revel in the failure and have a good laugh, since laughter is always the best medicine. And just as there are different strata and levels of expectation that wind up being contained in any particular league, The Lose has different strata and levels of failure as well, some of which are more interesting to me than others. I have determined there to be nine different levels of Lose within the NBA, all of which provide different challenges to explicate for a purveyor of failure such as myself. Perhaps the best way to preview what is one of my favorite sports leagues in the world, on the eve of its new season, is to express it using those different levels of Lose:

1. Falling Short
These are teams who are striving to win the NBA title and have realistic expectations of doing so. Only one of them can do so, of course, so for the others, this constitutes the highest level of losing. But being in this category also speaks to general excellence of your franchise. These are the élite, after all – so it doesn’t make for great Lose blogging, at least not until the month of May.
I begrudgingly admired the Houston Rockets last season. At one point last spring, I think I said that the Rockets were the NBA’s equivalent of Three True Outcomes baseball, and that it wasn’t a compliment. Just because they attempt to play in the most efficient way possible – shooting only 3s and layups and free throws after Harden holds the ball for most of the shot clock – it doesn’t mean that I want to watch it. That said, they’re commitment to that style was admirable, and their ruthless efficiency was commendable. They were so committed to it that they willingly missed 27 threes in a row against the Warriors in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, chucking up one brick after another from deep as their double-digit lead evaporated and the series slipped away. I say that it’s begrudging admiration because I hate Harden’s flailing on his way to the hoop and his vague, near-travelling on stepback treys, and any team with Chris Paul is inherently going to be the most annoying team in the NBA, but goddamn it, this team is good, and I appreciate that in this era of whining about “the Warriors ruined the sport,” the Rockets said, “fuck it, let’s beat those guys,” and damn near did. That said, I hate their offseason. They lost role players and replaced them with Michael Carter-Williams, who can’t shoot, Carmelo Anthony, who can’t defend, and Marquese Chriss, who can’t do anything. Their window may close pretty quickly, but at the same time, it wouldn’t surprise me if Daryl Morey goes out and makes a deal for the malcontented Jimmy Butler. (More on him later.)
I love me some Boston Celtics and I’ll be curious to see how they fit all of these great pieces together. It may be a little murky at first, since Gordon Hayward is almost a newish quantity after missing the whole previous season, since Kyrie’s troublesome knee is probably always going to be a concern, the shooting tended to come and go last year and the offense occasionally verged on being impotent, and I wonder if there will be some strange sort of internal tension stemming from the fact that this may become less of Kyrie Irving’s team and more of Jayson Tatum’s team – as it probably should be. But they’re deep and incredibly well-coached, defend like hell, can play all sorts of different styles, and I think anything short of an NBA Finals appearance will feel like a failure.
Of course, the Toronto Raptors might get in the Celtics’ way, because they now have Kawhi Leonard on their team, who is the ultimate series wrecker, a guy who can just wipe most of the opposition’s best scoring threats off the map while also getting you 25 points a game. Toronto had a weird offseason after their obligatory playoff meltdown, entrusting their fate to an unproven head coach in Nick Nurse, then trading franchise icon DeRozan for Kawhi and creating a team that you’d probably not normally entrust a rookie head coach with. And the Raptors will be bothered all year, of course, with distractions created by media and fans pertaining to what Kawhi does next summer when he’s a free agent, but this season, they’ve got about 10,000 guys who can play the wing – when most teams have one or two – they’ve got one of the five best badass motherfucking players on the planet when healthy (which he appears to be), and the defense is going to be filthy. Obviously, trading a franchise icon and stalwart like DeRozan is a shock to the system, but Kawhi is such a ridiculous upgrade that this team has a potential to be terrifying.
But let’s be honest here, barring a catastrophic injury (which I don’t wish upon anyone, friend or foe), the Golden State Warriors are prohibitive favorites here. Anything other than winning a 4th title in five years will be construed as a failure. And I’m sure that I’ll write too much about the Warriors over the course of the season, as I’ll put my objectivity slant aside and devolve into being a fanboy. Much like with Kawhi in Toronto, I genuinely don’t care about all of the non-stories about how KD and/or Klay might be somewhere else next season that the media will create in order to have something to talk about. If that happens, sobeit. I don’t care. They’ve earned the right to make those decisions. The Warriors were only 58-24 last season, and lots of the narrative about them being lazy and unfocused conveniently omits that their four all-stars only played 41 games together over what was, in fact, an injury-plagued season. But the Dubs were admittedly dragging last year, and I actually think they’ll will be more engaged this year, finding the idea of incorporating the recovering Boogie Cousins into their lineups to be a fun sort of challenge. (Oh yeah, they added a 5th All-Star. Have fun with guarding them.) The focus here in the Bay Area seems to be on joy, celebrating the successes of late and honoring the last year in Oakland before moving into the new arena in downtown San Francisco next season, and when the Dubs are playing with energy, with joy and with love, you have no chance.

2. Knocking on the Door
This group of teams doesn’t make for great Lose blogging, either. They’re really good teams who are on the rise. They’ll most likely get some mention here on this blog if they somehow gag away a playoff series, but otherwise, keep doing what you’re doing.
Were I in Vegas (which I won’t be until early November), I would put money on Giannis being the MVP, because the Milwaukee Bucks have a coach in Mike Budenholzer who actually knows what he is doing, and with the spacing and movement on offense they’ve shown here in the preseason, Giannis could be absolutely unstoppable and we’ll finally have to bow down to our Bucks overlord.
The Indiana Pacers simply have a lot of guys who know what they are doing – a novel concept in the raw-talent obsessed NBA – they can play lots of different ways and their best players have taken the cue from their leader, Victor Oladipo, in that their secondary threats – Sabonis and Turner – also appear to be in great shape after significant off-season regimens. The Pacers are going to be good. I like this team a lot.
I also like the Utah Jazz a lot in the West, as their first five play so well together and they defend the hell out of the ball. They’ll go as far as Donovan Mitchell ultimately takes them, but fortunately, his potential verges on limitless. It’s a weird team to watch, in that we’ve been used to Ricky Rubio disappointing us and Joe Ingles looks like a high school gym teacher, but they’re impeccably coached by Quin Snyder and they always seem to know the right play to make. If I were the Houston Rockets, I might be looking over my shoulder, since I think the Jazz are in the rearview mirror and gaining rapidly.

3. Precarious Positions
Okay, now this is more interesting to me from a Losability standpoint. Here we go. These are teams which could, or even should, be pretty good, maybe even good enough to belong in the previous category, and yet there are questions and concerns. All of these teams may bottom out and be a lot worse than we first thought, and we’ll look back and see that the preseason concerns were warranted.
I want to trust the process, but I’m wary of the process. This whole idea that the Philadelphia 76ers are going to start Fultz instead of J.J, Redick – thus breaking up what was the best lineup in the NBA last year – seems weird to me. It seems like the sort of move that a thin-skinned organization would make that didn’t want to admit they made a mistake – which is what history may judge it as, given that they traded the pick which landed Tatum, as well as what may be a plum Kings draft pick, to the Celtics in order to land Fultz. And this team really took off late last season after the buyout pickups of Belinelli and Ilyasova gave them lethal shooters off the bench – neither of whom are with this team any more. The Sixers rid themselves of their GM, Bryan Colangelo, after the embarrassing burner account scandal, which hindered their ability to make deals in the offseason, and I can’t look at this team and say that they improved the roster. They’re counting a lot on their internal development, but the externals aren’t positive.
The New Orleans Pelicans, of course, are the ultimate one-note franchise. I consider it to be simple math, Y = X + 2, where Y equals when Seattle gets an NBA franchise and X equals when Anthony Davis leaves New Orleans. That is how dependent upon AD this franchise is.  If Anthony Davis leaves, this franchise is dead. Of course, a good way to keep him, though not a guarantee, would be to keep winning, which New Orleans did a lot of last year. The Pelicans were great at the end of last season, as AD played at an MVP level and Jrue Holliday was beast and their frenzied approach simply ran opponents into the ground, and they need to play at that level again this season. If healthy, the Pelicans are a 4-seed in the West. Given that health is always an issue in New Orleans, who knows? I find the hand-ringing over losing Rondo curious – he was last season, and is now, a terrible defender who gets by on reputation – but he’s been replaced by Elfred Payton, who has never done anything in his NBA career. The Pelicans need him to do something, anything at all. The margin for error is small in New Orleans, the roster is thin and has a history of being brittle.
It’s easy to put your faith in Pop and say that it’s no big deal that they lost Kawhi, since the San Antonio Spurs were sans Kawhi and still won 47 games a season ago, but the Spurs are now sans Kawhi and sans Danny Greene, Slo-Mo Anderson, Tony Parker and Ginobili. That’s an enormous brain drain as well as a talent drain. Oh yeah, and they have now lost a starting point guard to an ACL and a backup for two months with a foot injury. It just gets worse and worse. They do have DeRozan now to go with LMA, and they’ll likely play a style of basketball straight out of the 90s absent the 3-point shot, but as much as I believe in Pop, this team has feasted on bad teams for years in order to prop up their regular season record, and I just don’t think there are enough downtrodden teams in the West any more which will enable them to do that. I know they’ve got a playoff streak dating to the 1990s, but this roster just isn’t very good, and repeating last season’s result of being an 8-seed in the West would probably constitute an achievement.
I’ll put the Denver Nuggets in this category, because the Nuggets simply have to be in the playoffs this year or everyone’s getting fired. They get something of a mulligan after losing out to Minnesota in Game 82 a season ago, given that first Paul Milsap, and then Gary Harris, suffered serious injuries which ultimately cost them last year. This team should be dynamite on offense with Jokic, Harris, Milsap, and Jamal Murray, but goddamn it, play some goddamn defense. They’re a 5-seed in the West, or better, if they play some defense. Given that Jokic can’t guard his own shoes, and they look like a bunch of toreadors on a regular basis, this is no sure thing.

4. Fun Bad
These teams aren’t great from a blogging standpoint, because they aren’t very good and everyone knows it. All of these teams are focused more on talent development, to some extent, and young players generally do a lot of stupid things along the way. They’ll all play like hell and will be extremely watchable, while periodically doing some jaw-droppingly dimwitted things which cost them wins. Now, it should be noted that all of these fun bad teams could, in fact, turn out to be better than we all thought, and if they figure out how to avoid the ‘bad’ part of fun bad, those timetables may be accelerated.
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel for the Dallas Mavericks, who wound up landing Luca Doncic in last year’s draft after all of the machinations were finished. Doncic is a young player years ahead of other rookies, in that he’s been playing in the Euroleague – the 2nd-highest level of the game – for years now instead of laboring in college and posterizing the Vanderbilts and the the Wisconsins and Washington States of the world. His game is way more savvy and nuanced than your typical teenager. Pair him and Dennis Smith Jr. and there is so much to like about the Mavericks, but young players still screw up a lot and this roster isn’t good enough to overcome it.
I was impressed with Doc Rivers’ coaching job for the L.A. Clippers a season ago. The Clippers competed and played like hell. They’re the epitome of fun bad, in that they’ve got enough talent in Lou Williams and Tobias Harris and their spate of wings to be competitive on a nightly basis, but lack that killer superstar who put them over the top and will probably lose a lot of the close games they could hope to win.
It’s probably a stretch to put the Swamp Dragons, aka the Brooklyn Nets, in this category, but the Nets will be fun as hell as well and play crazy games, shoot a tonne of threes and be willing to lose 120-118 in this, their first season where they have control of their first round pick since god-knows-when. The Nets are also in a nice position to land some free agents in the summer of 2019, when a lot of awful contracts come off the books and everyone in the league will have some money to spend. Being loose and fun and well-coached and playing like hell in New York City makes for a decent sort of selling point to prospective free agents. The results aren’t there yet, but all the signs indicate that the Nets are moving in the right direction.

5. Need To Be Better Than They Are
All of these teams need something good to happen to them. There is a sense of urgency among this group. The problem is that, well, they aren’t that good.
Both the Detroit Pistons and the Charlotte Hornets are desperate to make the playoffs, which is doable in the East, whereas there are probably 12-13 teams in the West who are better than they are. I can’t find a single reason to care about either of these teams. Detroit has, at least, been freed from the Reign of Error that was the tenure of coach/exec Stan Van Gundy, who walked away from this mess after assembling an unwinnable roster locked in salary cap hell. Having the freshly fired Dwane Casey on the bench should help, and they’ve got more tangible talent than the Hornets in the quest for the #8 seed in the East. But in the meantime, the Pistons will continue covering up those red seats in Bad Pizza Arena with black tarps to mask their lackluster attendance, while the Hornets try to figure out whether or not to hit the reset button by unloading Kemba Walker – their best player, who is something like the 5th-best paid player on their mismatched roster – or fully engage in a shamfest of a battle for the #8 seed in the East.
I bet you didn’t know that the Miami Heat have the highest payroll in the NBA. I bet you cannot believe what you just read. For all of his championship rings and his successes, the fact of the matter is that the roster Pat Riley has assembled in Miami is, well, underwhelming and he’s not gotten near enough stick for that. Their hopes to land Jimmy Butler from the Wolves is an effort to turn a 7-seed in the East into a 6-seed in the East. What’s the point? Spo will coach them up, of course, because he’s a voodoo witch doctor, but a team saddled with the dead weight that is Hassan Whiteside and Tyler Johnson’s ballooning bombast of a contract and the contract of the seriously injured Dion Waiters is a waste of time.
And then there are the Portland Trail Blazers, whose 2nd-best player, C.J. McCollum, got into a long series of arguments this offseason online in which he said he’d rather get swept in the playoffs than go to a “super team,” and who seems to be getting quite good at that, given that the Blazers got absolutely embarrassed last spring in getting whomped 4-0 by the Pelicans in the first round of the playoffs, and haven’t won a playoff game since 2016. The Blazers punch above their weight during the regular season, are exquisitely coached by Terry Stotts and climbed to the 3-seed in the West last year, but this is always a turkey waiting to be carved. People keep saying the Dame/C.J. backcourt isn’t a winning formula, which is dumb, since the problem is the mediocre frontcourt that never gets addressed, but this team is still suffering from the hangover after the gin bender that was GM Neil Olshey investing $347 million in the summer of 2016 in contracts to the likes of Evan Turner and Myles Leonard, who is 7’1” and managed not to block a single shot last season. Stotts routinely saves his GM’s head with his coaching jobs, but the Blazers, despite being a 3-seed last season, were three games out of missing the playoffs entirely. The frontcourt still sucks, and the margin is so thin with this team that you could see them being a tangibly better team in 2018-19 and still missing the playoffs. My money is still on Stotts, however, to get this team into the playoffs, as he is quite accustomed to doing more with less. Which is an excellent segue into my next category …

Kings fans are delighted with their offseason.

6. Doing Less With Less
All of these teams are terrible, and scarcely worth my time.
The Clueless: Last season basically ended after 13 games for the Memphis Grizzlies when Mike Conley got hurt. That they were so dependent on one guy speaks to how pathetic this roster is. Conley is the last Grizzlies draft pick to get a second contract, and he was drafted more than a decade ago. The roster is so thin that if the oft-injured Conley, the grumpy Marc Gasol, and the waste-of-money that is $92m free agent Chandler Parsons get injured – which they seem likely to do – this team is DOA. I have zero faith in this team to stay healthy, and they are also saddled with J.B. Bickerstaff, a not particularly good coach who got the job primarily because he was cheap and available. They’re far more likely to lose 50 games than win 40. I’m amazed that GM Chris Wallace still has a job, given how terribly he’s gone about assembling a roster, and given that they’ve been losing about $40m a season, I worry for the future of the Grizzlies, who may very well wind up being Sonics 2.0 in Seattle if the Pelicans and, yes, the Clippers don’t see Seattle as a possible cash cow when the new arena opens two years from now.
The Hapless: The Atlanta Hawks are trying to be bad, and will succeed at that, likely to be the worst team in the league. But this past summer’s draft, in which they traded prodigy Luca Doncic to the Mavericks for Trae Young, is the sort of trade that ultimately gets GMs fired. Young is going to be bad for the Hawks, and that sucks. I read a ludicrous story this summer from Vegas Summer League from a Hawks fanboy talking about his “breakout game.” There are no breakout games in Summer League. Don’t kid yourselves. Young has condierable upside, of course, but is also going to be a target, having been foolishly laden with expectations after what was, ultimately, a marginal trade by his team at best. The Hawks will be awful.
The Hopeless: The Sacramento Kings are the dumbest franchise in the NBA, if not all of Nortb American professional sports. They can’t really tank this season, since they gave away their #1 draft pick in the dreaded Sauce Castillo trade with the 76ers. But even if they try, what difference does it make? They pulled a Sam Bowie sort of move in drafting Marvin Bagley with the #2 pick instead of Doncic, tabbing a guy who has no real discernible NBA skill to fit in with their endless run of non-impactful bigs. The Kings will play their asses off and probably play well enough late in the season against downtrodden teams to win some games and cost the Boston Celtics, who own their pick in next year’s draft, but at what point does anyone – and I mean anyone – in this organization realize that Vlade Divac is truly terrible at his GM job and that the small-change, mollify-the-quaint-fan-base-with-Kings-legends approach to running this team just isn’t conducive to being successful? If the Sacramento Kings didn’t exist, In Play Lose would have to invent them:

Sacramento Kings twitter is a wonderful and strange place

The Useless: The Phoenix Suns fired their GM, Ryan McDonough, a week before the season. This after firing coach Earl Watson three games into last season. Good God. Now, this is not to say that McDonough was good at his job. He wasn’t. He ran the franchise into the ground, he went from having too many point guards to having none, he turned three top-10 picks in the draft into Alex Len, Marquese Chriss, and Dragan Bender, who were three of the worst players in the NBA last season. He needlessly signed Devin Booker to a $133 million extension a year before he needed to, and when Booker turned up injured and needed surgery on his hand this summer, the Suns essentially had to write off this coming season before it started, even though they made a bunch of moves to indicate they were actually going to try to win. [Update: Booker is apparently going to be ready for the season opener, which is good news.] He’s been a terrible GM at the helm of a terrible franchise. But that last bit is the biggest point here. This is a terrible franchise, one which guys flee from at the first chance. Owner Robert Sarver is apparently more hands-on than ever, which is the kiss of death, as literally no one who leaves this franchise has anything good to say about how Sarver operates it. I hate this team. I hate everything about this team. They are everything wrong about North American sports, a team cynically exploited by a megalomaniac who suffers no real repercussions for putting out a terrible product year after year. Send this garbage franchise to the G-League. Or better yet, shoot it into the sun.

7. Blowhards
I have to admit, I love to kill these teams. You’ll note how many of these teams are in major media markets. All of them are self-important blowhards burdened with unreasonable expectations from zealous fan bases, and their tires generally get pumped by lapdog media.
Man, I’m going to love watching the L.A. Lakers be not very good this year. Okay, so they signed LeBron James in the offseason, and good for them for doing that. They also signed the biggest collection of misfits and jokers I’ve ever seen. The Lakers are, in keeping with their status of being the most-important story in the NBA, going to get lots of ink in spite of the fact that they have a 45-win roster. Lonzo Ball still can’t shoot, Brandon Ingram is a story only because he plays in L.A. – honestly, if he played for the Charlotte Hornets, would you care how good he is? They’ve signed a collection of clownshoes including Rondo, Lance Stephenson (on this roster only so LeBron doens’t have to be annoyed with him as an opponent), and JaVale McGee, who instantly sets this team as about the 13th-best team in the NBA’s Western Conference in terms of big men, which the Western Conference happens to be laden with – LMA, Jokic, AD, Gasol, Towns, Adams, Nurkic, DJ, Gobert, Ayton, and Draymond if the Warriors bother to play that way are all way better at center, and that’s off the top of my head. This is a very flawed roster. But this is also an era when NBA media is basically Pravda for the Lakers and we’re going to have to put up with every grade-on-the-curve story about how L.A. is somehow relevant, when they’re probably a 6-seed, at best. It’s only preseason and I’m already annoyed.
The New York Knicks are garbage, and this season, we’re going to hear nothing but how they’re going to sign KD and Kawhi and Jimmy Butler and every available free agent in the summer, in lieu of being any good in the present, especially because Porzingis is hurt. But why would anyone play for a team owned by Jim Dolan? Answer me that. Where is the upside in signing for this team? And Knicks fans deserve better than this. They do. But spending a season watching Tim Hardaway Jr. going 1-on-1 while Enis Kanter fails to guard his own shadow is going to kill the will to live of even the most diehard of Knicks fateful. I wouldn’t be shocked if this was the 2nd-worst team in the league.
The Chicago Bulls won’t stop anyone. God, this defense is absolutely horrible. Whatever improvement is seen on the offensive end, a team full of guys like Zac LaVine and Jabari Parker and Lauri Markkanen, none of whom can guard a chair, isn’t going anywhere. The Bulls are almost worthy of belonging in the fun bad category, as the games should be wildly entertaining, but the grand rebuild may not be as far along as everyone had hopes.
And, of course, there is no bigger blowhard in the NBA than OKC, who will, of course, promise big things with Russell Westbrook scowling a lot and going hall-bent-for-leather and putting up fluffy and puffy triple-doubles, but Russ had offseason “minor knee surgery” as did Paul George, and there is no such thing as “minor knee surgery,” and Andre Roberson, who keys their defense, suffered a patella tear last season, an injury the likes of which almost no NBA players ever recover. I’d be nervous about all of those injuries. On their day, the Thunder can compete with any team in the league. Off their day, they can’t beat the Phoenix Suns. The Thunder always make lots of noise and clamor to be relevant when, at best, they’re a 5-seed with a flawed roster that can’t make enough shots to advance past the first round of the playoffs. The delayed return of Roberson is huge, as he keys their defense – but if you’re team is so dependent on a guy who can’t shoot and scores little, you’ve got a problem. OKC are the ultimate much-ado-about-nothing group of blowhards in the NBA. At some point, the media who follows the NBA will hopefully stop pumping Russ’ tires and fawning over empty calorie statistics and acknowledge that a team constructed like this can never be all that good.

8. Putting the Fun in Dysfunctional
I love these teams. This is easy money for The Lose. This is all kinds of bad ideas played out on an NBA court, teams blessed with talent but zero awareness.
Well, the Cleveland Cavaliers used to be blessed with talent, but the circus has left town with LeBron taking his talents to the South Bay. LeBron’s presence always made for high drama, and the Cavs were constantly engaged in soap operas and chaos off the court, and sometimes on it, while he was there. I’ll miss all of the melodrama, because it was amusing. What LeBron’s left behind is, well, not a very good team. They had the point differential last season of a .500 team, only to be saved repeatedly by LeBron’s late game heroics in the clutch. Any time he’s been off the floor in recent years, the Cavs have been terrible. I don’t, for the life of me, understand why it is they felt a need to give Kevin Love an enormous extension, since he’s probably their only good trade piece among the guys on their bloated books. A roster tailor-made to compliment LeBron does not offer much without him. I’ve enjoyed the Cavs and it’s gonna be a bummer to see them floundering and flailing all season.
After being a tire fire last season, with players openly acting like they hate each other, the solution in Washington was, apparently, to throw more gasoline on the fire by adding Austin Rivers and Dwight Howard to the mix. Howard has had such a strange career, he was a sure-fire Hall of Famer who has morphed into this guy that teams just cannot wait to get rid of. Hopefully, some good health will come John Wall’s way this year, which would help matters quite a bit in Washington, but the Buzzards were an unfocused, disorganized mess most of last season, squandering what appeared to be a golden opportunity to gain some traction in the East.
And then there are the Minnesota Timberwolves. Be still my foolish heart. This team is actually going to attempt to play the season while there is a state of open warfare between its best players, Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns, who clearly cannot coexist. There were all sorts of rumblings and rumors to that effect a season ago, a season which was a case study in how good you can be in spite of yourselves, as the Wolves possess so many guys who can create their own shot that it makes up for not having a single guy on the roster who can pass. And from what I can discern from the reporting, Butler’s discontent this summer, leading to his demanding a trade, stemmed from wanting a contract extension that the Timberwolves weren’t actually in a position to give him unless they dumped a tonne of money, which is weird. Why would you ask for something when you know you can’t get it, and then make a scene about not getting it? Also, for someone who keeps saying he’s “all about winning,” asking to be traded to the Knicks, Clippers, or Swamp Dragons doesn’t seem to jibe with that idea. Frankly, most everything Butler said in the conveniently-timed tell-all interview on ESPN after his practice escapade sounded like nonsense. It all feels contrived and insincere. And Thibs, of course, doesn’t want to trade him, since Thibs wants to win and, more importantly, has to win to keep his job, but then you have the meddlesome owner going around saying Butler is available in trade and undermining his top exec. What a zoo. Look, the fact is that if I’m an NBA coach or GM not named Thibs, I’m looking at this situation, where player A is 22 and a skilled big capable of going 50/40/90 and putting up 28 and 12, and player B is 29, has an injury history, and has developed a questionable rep as a locker room guy (remember, the Bulls were a disaster in Butler’s last year in Chicago), and I’m tying my fortunes to the former. I don’t care if he’s not assertive enough or what have you. He’s 22! He can get better! But there isn’t a less process-based person in all of the NBA than Thibs, which is why it probably wasn’t the best idea to give him an exec role alongside the head coaching gig. The Wolves have spun themselves into this impossible tangle, and sure there is a lot of natural talent on this roster – enough so that they might win 50 games without ever declaring détente – but you could also see them just completely disintegrating and losing 50 games as well. Seeing the Bucks put up 84 in the first half against them in their last preseason game was pretty disheartening. Everything about this mess is pointing towards it all going over a cliff.

9. Irrelevant
Seriously, what’s the point of the Orlando Magic?

Quick Misses

Graphic by @effinbirds. Always good to be back after a long break ...

THE LOSE is back, there are a few things on my mind and I have a short attention span, so quick, let’s get to the buzzard points!

• It’s hard to imagine someone having a worse start to their NFL career than Nathan Peterman has had. You may recall that, last year, he was thrust into the starting QB role midseason for the Buffalo Bills in a game against the San Diego Los Angeles Chargers and was woefully unprepared, throwing five interceptions in the first half. He then reprised the role of the woefully unprepared QB during the Bills’ playoff game with Jacksonville. (And simply typing the words ‘Bills’ and ‘playoff’ together made me do a double take.) Forced into the game in a key situation late in the 4th Quarter after Bills QB Tyrod Taylor was knocked out of the game, Peterman promptly threw a pick that essentially ended the Bills season. But Taylor’s off to Cleveland now and Bills head coach Sean McDermott entrusted Peterman at the helm to christen the new season against the Ravens, and with Peterman at the helm, he promptly ran the ship aground:

Putting up a 0.0 QB rating is impressively terrible. The last person to do that was in 2014, and it was Geno Smith for the Jets who, strangely enough, also managed to put up a perfect 158.3 QB rating later in the same season – which may be a sign of hope for Peterman and the Bills, because if Geno Smith can do that, then anyone surely can. (Though I suspect there was some some indifferent Miami defending going on that day.) Peterman’s day against the Ravens was so bad that, at one point, he threw an incompletion and his in-game QB rating actually increased. I have not encountered such absurd sports math since the time the time the Pacers were 103% favorites against the Sam Hinkie Sixers. It was 40-0 Ravens two minutes into the 3rd Quarter when Peterman was finally pulled by McDermott, who said afterwards that he would have to “look at the film” before determining the starting QB for this week’s game, as if there was going to be some sort of magical insight discerned besides that the QB is not very good. Bad QB play is nearly impossible to overcome in the NFL, and it’s the QB play which makes Buffalo one of the front runners for being the worst team in the league a season after a playoff berth which, in hindsight, feels almost like it was accident.

• There were two wholly predicable disasters in NFL Week 1, with the Bills being one of them and the second one taking place at Ford Field in Detroit, where the Lions got blasted by the Jets in an error-strewn mess of a game, after which the Jets players said they’d figured out the Lions play calls and hand signals before the game, which speaks to a lack of preparation and organization. Now, disorganization is nothing new to the Detroit Lions, of course, but they decided to take dysfunction to yet another level this past off-season when, after a few decent-but-unsuccessful seasons (which is about the best the Lions can hope for), they fired Jim Caldwell and promptly hired Matt Patricia who, when we last saw his handiwork, was the defensive coordinator for a New England Patriots team that allowed the Philadelphia Eagles to score eight times in the Super Bowl. Literally no one I know who follows the Pats was sad to seem him go, and no one I follows the Pats thinks he’s any good as a coach, as whatever defensive success has happened in New England in recent years owes to the fact that the best defense is a good offense – the Pats hold the ball a long time, gain a lot of yards and score a lot of points, so the defense doesn’t have to rise to any level above mediocrity in order for the team to be successful. And this is yet another one of those bizarre “coaching tree” hires where a team assumes that everyone on that other team that wins all the time must really know what they’re doing. Quick, name me a Bill Belichick protege who has ever had any success whatsoever outside of Foxboro. This was a classic dumb hire by a dumb organization, one that seems hell-bent on wasting the prime years of their franchise QB’s career. The Lions do not appear to have any idea what they are doing, which is something we have all come to count on over the years.

• We can no longer speak of the Cleveland Browns losing streak after their 21-21 tie with Pittsburgh. Now we must speak of their winless streak. In Cleveland, this constitutes progress.

• I generally don’t care about tennis, in part because, in my experience dealing with athletes over the years, tennis players and their people were probably some of the least pleasant and most difficult to deal with. That, and the game is a bore to watch. But disciples of The Lose have specifically requested that I comment on the incident which took place in the Women’s final of the U.S. Open, which I did not watch but have now done so, during which Serena Williams was penalized three times – first for “receiving coaching” from the stands, which was iffy and is a dumb rule, then a second time for smashing her racket, and then a third time late in the match for continuing to argue with the umpire about what happened when she was penalized the first time.
Oh boy.
Now, admittedly here, I don’t know much about tennis – but I do know that Serena is boss. She’s probably the best women’s tennis player of all time, given her résumé. Of this, I think I know. But I’ve found the backlash to this incident rather curious, since people seem to want to pick-and-choose in going about spinning whatever narrative suits them. There is sexism, there is racism, there is a double standard because so-and-so did such-and-such in a such-and-such a match and didn’t get penalized to the extent Serena did. Now, sexism and racism and double standards may well exist and probably do. That would not surprise me, but that’s not for me to say. But there is a basic principle here about officiating which applies to literally every sport and game on the planet, one which people would do well to remember.
Officiating is necessarily the subjective application by human beings of objective criteria. It is inherently interpretive, because human beings are doing it, and human beings are inherently affected by biases, whims, past histories, what time they woke up that morning and so on and so on and so on. And every single individual game or match is, ultimately, a self-contained affair. It is in the present and in the moment, and officials react in real time to what they see taking place before them. This is why comparing what Serena did in the U.S. Open Final to what “so-and-so did such-and-such in a such-and-such a match” is, ultimately, irrelevant. We heard this same sort of line time and again during the World Cup this summer: “that shouldn’t have been a penalty because it wasn’t in this other game,” and so forth. Well, officials aren’t watching that other game. They’re watching the game unfold in front of them right now and reacting to what they see.
Another good footballing analogy here is a serious foul where the official has to determine if it’s worthy of a yellow or a red card. Footballing fans everywhere have seen fouls where guys, or gals, should have been sent off and weren’t, or vice versa. It’s ultimately a judgment call by the official – but, in the case of something like the issuing of a yellow or a red, there is little doubt that the player is in some hot water.
And see, Serena got herself in hot water. I think the coaching thing is dumb. It’s dumb and pointless – but it is a rule. All three times that Serena was penalized, she was deemed, in my less-than-expert opinion, to be in violation of rules, no matter how dumb or inane those rules may be. And when you do that, you put yourself at the mercy of the officials. Whether or not they choose to enforce those codes is not up to you. By the letter of the law, the officials in that match acted in a manner afforded them in the rules of the game. If you get yourself into that situation it is, first and foremost, your own damn fault. This is a basic, universal principle of sport here: if you don’t want to have a foul called against you, the best way to go about doing so is not to commit a foul.
And think about this for a moment here: what if the officials in that match don’t penalize Serena? I can guarangoddamnty you that there would be a rumbling of “Serena gets all the breaks” in the aftermath, because we do that sort of thing all the time. It’s mostly sour grapes, of course, to whine about “stars get all the calls” and such. The rookie pitcher doesn’t get the pitch on the black, LeBron and Harden always travel, blah blah blah. Given the petty nature of this sort of thing, I can say with almost 100% certainty that there are women’s tennis players who are annoyed with what they perceive Serena can get away with, simply because she’s a star. And she is a star. She is arguably the biggest star the sport has ever known. She’s such a star that her losing this match in such a manner rendered her victorious opponent’s triumph irrelevant in the public consciousness. Quick, how many of you knew Naomi Osaka’s name without having to go and google it?
Now, in the greater context, if this incident does, in fact, point out issues pertaining to sexism and double standards in tennis officiating and those issues get addressed, some good may come of it. But on a fundamental level, I can’t really have much sympathy for Serena here. Ultimately, you don’t get to behave in a manner that runs afoul of the rules and then complain when those rules are enforced, even if you think there are shitty or dubious motives involved in that enforcement.

• The WNBA is badass, people. Watch that sport. Given the women’s basketball players in this country some love. They’re among the most dominant of athletes we’ll ever see in our lifetime. The U.S. women’s national team has won six straight Olympic golds and lost one game in the last 19 years. It is the pinnacle of performance in the sport of women’s basketball. The WNBA season which just concluded with the Seattle Storm winning their third championship was great, interest was up, and I appreciate that ESPN dedicated more attention and more resources to the league. Now we need to get more money in the league, so these players aren’t breaking their bodies playing year-round all across the globe in order to make a living. And I’m happy that in Seattle, they’ll get to close out the era (error?) of Key Arena with a championship. I’ve sent many, many, many, many, many days in that building, which is due to be razed here this fall as a new arena is going to be built.

• I’ve spent the whole goddamn summer drafting blog after blog after blog about how bored I am with the game of baseball. In short: Three True Outcomes baseball sucks. But I was so bored watching it that I also got bored writing about it, and there’d be a very good possibility that all of you would be bored reading about it.

• When you’re football team is condemned to the swirling, sucking eddy of despair that is life in the second division, you’d best find ways to have fun with it. Norwich are, well, not very good, owing mostly to the fact that, after not being very last year while nonetheless being blessed with several élite young talents, the club promptly sold those élite young talents for large numbers of quid – one of whom, James Maddison, has looked mighty fine so far for Leicester City – while maintaining the same roster full of mediocre players who were mediocre a season ago. It does bring me joy that Ipswich Town are garbage, and that the 1:1 with Norwich two weeks ago means those clowns still haven’t beaten us since 2009, but that’s about all to be happy about so far. Bleah, Div. 2 sucks. We do, however, have the Taco League going amongst myself, The Official Spouse of In Play Lose – a loyal Swansea City fan – and local Stoke City fan Mike “Words With” Frentz. Fan of the losingest team buys the tacos at the end of the season. If your team gets relegated, you buy twice. If your team gets promoted, you eat twice. Spouse is currently four points ahead of me after seven games, while Words With is two points in back of me. The first full-on, no-holds-barred, double-or-nothing grudge match occurs this Tuesday when Stoke host the Swans. If all our teams get relegated – not impossible, since all of our teams are varying degrees of trash – then we’ll, well, I don’t know what the others will be doing but I’ll be pouring some stiff ones:

 • It’s good to be back. Drop me a line at inplaylose@gmail.com if you have comments or suggestions. At some point we will do another mailbag edition here soon. And even though I’m still very down on American football, I’m sure there is some bad football happening somewhere on one of the many dozens of sports channels at the moment so I’d better get busy. (Go, Rutgers, go.) I already know there will be bad baseball today, since I’m going to the Giants game, although the Giants are undefeated in my trips to Phone Co. Park this season. We’ll see is the winning streak is sturdy enough to withstand the collective ennui and malaise.

It Will Get Better

THERE is no need for me to rehash the story of what the 11th of September means to me. The story is here. But I feel a need to speak today, during what has been deemed to be National Suicide Prevention Week. What I will continue to say, and do so to anyone who is listening in any corner of cyberspace is this: if you are suffering from depression, addiction, or other forms of mental illness, get help. Seriously, it will be the day that your life starts to get better. I promise you, it will get better. Take it from me, who survived. Take it from the countless people who have confided in me over the past 12 years, have come looking to me for advice and assistance, and who have managed to make it. It is hard, it takes patience, it can be really frustrating, but it will get better. I promise you, it will get better.

I have a whole bunch of things to recap and rehash here on the blog from the past few days, but for right now, I just feel like playing some beautiful music. I love this guy's work. Peace and love.

Programming Note

HONORING the French winning the World Cup, The Lose decided to make like all right-minded Frenchmen – seeing as how I aspire to be one someday – and take the month of August off. There is not a whole lot to write about during the month of August, anyway, save for baseball, except that I found baseball so boring these days that all I want to write about is how boring it is in intricate detail.

I did make a trip to the Eastern bureau of In Play Lose, which was worthwhile:

The In Play Lose Eastern bureau

Anyway, I thought I would respond to several inquiries I have had recently about the lack of Lose of late. I have been busy working on novels, graphic design projects and an assortment of other things during this hiatus, but rest assured, the Lose will be back swinging soon. As always, you can drop me a line at inplaylose@gmail.com, and we should probably have another mail bag edition here at some point this fall. And I will always consider guest columns from Friends of the Lose, of course. (One of whom has promised me a column about his beloved Washington Capitols finally winning it all, although I suspect he may have made like Ovechkin and swan-dived into a fountain of beer in response and may no longer be with us.)

I hope you have had a good summer filled with productive outs and moral victories.

And One More Thing ...

How appropriate

THE LOSE didn’t have the chance to write about the World Cup Final the other day, owing to having some work obligations. Apologies for that, and thanks to the many people who’ve made it a point to visit this space over the course of the past month. I always enjoy writing about the World Cup, finding it to be the single-most compelling sporting event on the planet, one whose meanings and metaphors often transcend the game of soccer itself.

But, of course, the final game itself is often bad. It’s usually bad, in fact. It’s tense, it’s tight, players are nervous, the tactics are cagy, the pace ponderously slow. There hasn’t been a truly good final in more than 30 years before this past Sunday, when France defeated Croatia 4:2 in a game which embodied the entire tournament. There were set piece goals, a goal from a penalty kick, a VAR controversy, another tally for vaunted striker Own Goal, the play was generally progressive and attack-minded, the game was competitive but generally disciplined, the underdogs took no shit and played like hell, and there were goals galore. It’s about all that you could ever want in a final.

Was it ‘great’ in terms of play? Well, yes and no. There were mistakes galore, some of them of the jaw-dropping variety – what are you doing, Hugo Lloris? – but I ultimately judge matches by how exciting and entertaining they are, and this year’s final (and the tournament as a whole) left me wildly entertained. Frankly, playing well is overrated a lot of the times in the game of soccer. It’s a game, more than any other, where playing really well will frequently not make a damn bit of difference.

And Croatia were great. They were great in that first half and the first 15 minutes after break. Quite honestly, if the Belgians had approached the semi final in the manor that the Croatians approached the final, Belgium probably would have wound up beating France and winning the damn World Cup. I’m still annoyed about that, even though my winning Las Vegas ticket will cushion the blow:

Viva Las Vegas, baby

And early on in the game, The Official Spouse of In Play Lose actually asked me, “which side are you rooting for,” since I was applauding the Croatians for their efforts. More than anything, I wanted a good game. I didn’t want to sit through another 90 minutes in a dentist’s chair that was France playing pragmatic soccer.

But where was I? Oh, right, the Croatians were great. Their spacing was terrific, they used the full width of the pitch to great effect, they pressed the French high and were committed full-bore to attacking. It was one helluva risk to do that, of course, but it was also the right strategy. It’s what Croatia does best. They have a whole stableful of fantastic players going forward. It’d be stupid to be cautious and minimize those talents. So the Croatians pushed high and pressed the French and really controlled the game. The French defense looked pretty shaky at times, and more than a few lethal Croatian passes fizzed through the box and came perilously close to their desired target. Croatia were all over them for the first 60 minutes.

And they were losing, 2-1, because soccer is a stupid fucking game sometimes.

And to blame both of the goals entirely on the officiating is, well, simplistic. The first goal was an own goal from Mandžukič as he defended a set piece given for a foul on Griezmann that was clearly a flop. It was a flop. It was a bad call, but guess what, bad calls happen all of the time. There are plenty of free kicks given out for bad calls that don’t result in a goal. So play the next play! Defend the set piece! And for godsakes, don’t score on yourselves in the process! The second goal, coming at 1-1 after a spectacular volley by Perisič to equalize, came from a penalty that was, well, by letter of the law probably the right call, but one which would have bothered no one if it hadn’t been given. That sucks. That’s just a tough break, and those happen from time to time. What’s lost in the discussion of whether or not it was a penalty is the fact that the penalty stemmed from a French corner, which stemmed from Vida aimlessly, sloppily shanking a ball over the end line. One play always leads to another, and Vida’s bumbled clearance is what started this whole mess. So yeah, the officials played a part in these two goals, but Croatia also contributed to its own demise, which is what usually happens.

And mistakes happen all the time, of course, but the point here is that, as the underdogs, the Croatians had such a small margin of error when it came to winning this game. France had barely got a kick in during the first 15 minutes, then they get one opportunity and boom, the  Croatians are down a goal. All of their excellent work, their precise passing, their adherence to a solid strategy and game plan, came undone in just a couple of moments here and there, both of which went against the run of play. This is why soccer is a stupid game sometimes. Moments change matches, for better and, often, for worse.

But we should love the Croatians for going for it, for not trying to sit back and play it safe. It’s the World Cup final, damn it. You’re the underdogs! Take some risks! And Croatia doubled down and went hell-bent for leather in the second half. It was breathtaking to watch, with the action going end-to-end at a frenzied pace.

At which point the French said, “oh, you want to run with us? How cute,” and then did this and this. Game over.

And that’s just mean. That’s just nasty. That’s the killer instinct, the next gear. That’s Tom Brady throwing two TD’s on consecutive possessions sandwiched around a three-and-out. That’s the Warriors going on a 22-2 run to start the third quarter. That’s “we’re better than you, and we’re going to kill you, and we don’t care who you are.” It’s that sort of display of talent we all want to see, but dread when it happens. I’ve been annoyed with the French during this tourney because we don’t see it enough. They get down a goal against Argentina and score three in 20 minutes. They have the Croatians running at them and taking it to them and then they go scorched earth and end it all. It seemingly takes being legitimately threatened in order for that switch to be flipped and that talent to be unleashed.

I thought the Croatians were terrific in this game. They played with class and they were worthy adversaries to a team which were, in the end, a worthy champion. And France had to win this game. Remember, they lost two years ago on home soil in the finals of the Euros. Lose two straight finals, and some hack with a blog about failure is likely to brand you a bunch of choking dogs. There was legit pressure on this team, and not winning this game would have been seen as nothing other than an enormous failure.

But the French are worthy winners, and we should just get used to them winning all the things from now on, because they were one of the youngest teams in the tournament and still have room to improve. With Varane and Umtiti, they found their center back pairing for the next two World Cups. Pogba played, and behaved, like the future captain of this team that everyone knows he can be. Mbappé, meanwhile, is only 19 years old, he’s humble and well-spoken and exceptionally generous, and he’s one of those unique talents who has literally no limit to what he is capable of doing. He embodies pretty much everything that’s good about the game. He can win everything, as far as I’m concerned. Ballon d’Ors, World Cups, you name it. Go ahead and win all of it. Soccer is moving away from the world of Messi and Ronaldo and into the world of Mbappé. In that regards, the game is obviously in excellent hands.

Not only is this French team ridiculously young for a championship side, but there is room to grow. Deschamps, whom I figured would be fired by now, did a marvelous job coaching this team, all of whom bought into his plan. But they can get better. Deschamps knows it, the players know it. They can be more dynamic, more decisive, and they struck me as a group that is not all that interested in resting on their laurels. They want to get better. This could get really terrifying in the future.

The main reason to be excited about the French is that not only are they barely scratching the surface of their abilities on the pitch, but they are only beginning to wade into their pool of talent. They have more young players in the pipeline, as Paris is the richest talent pool on earth right now. The French are producing enough good players to field entire national teams for other countries: we’ve seen multiple African nations now throw out World Cup sides made up predominantly of members of the diaspora who’ve grown up in the French system (a fact whose long-term impact on CAF football is yet to be determined, but will likely be substantial). There will be more. Lots more. Success is never a guarantee, of course, but the French are well-positioned to dominate international soccer for the next decade.

Not only is France going to keep producing players, but their national team is likely to keep looking like this one does – and this is important to remember, in this age of xenophobia and intolerance. France’s players had their pick of nations for which to play, and they chose to play for France. Pogba could have played for Guinea; Kante could have played for Mali; Mbappé has parents from Cameroon and Algeria, etc., etc. Even a white kid like Griezmann is a child of immigrants. Football runs so deep because, in some way or another, it reflects the true nature of a society – whether or not you want to admit it. It was French striker Karim Benzema who said, “when I score goals, I’m French, and when I don’t, I’m an Arab.” France’s national football team is half-Muslim, more than half-black, and all of those guys were out there shouting, “Vive la France! Vive la republique!” once the World Cup match was over. They are proud to be French, and France should be proud to have them, and have those who are like them.

The World Cup was once the undisputed pinnacle of the game. This has changed, over time, mostly due to the fact that the entire world has integrated. Talent moves from nation to nation, coaching ideas travel across the globe. When I first started watching the World Cup, back in 1982, this rarely happened, so there was a sense of mystery and intrigue about the proceedings. One of the fascinations of that 1982 tourney was that the 19-year-old wünderkind, Diego Maradona, was set to join F.C. Barcelona after the event was over – and a South American venturing to play in Europe was scarce at that time. There was a mystery and an intrigue, an element of the unknown to the proceedings. You knew a side of domestic Brazilians would be good, but you didn’t know just how good they would be.

That uncertainty has been lost, of course, in this day and age. Every great player is plying his trade in Europe somewhere. There are no secrets or golden nuggets waiting for the World Cup to be unearthed. And with integration has come a homogenization of tactics and of techniques. Most everyone plays in a relatively similar way, with only minor tactical variance. It’s really a question now of just how organized you can be. It’s no surprise so many goals in this tourney were scored on set pieces, since set pieces are about all a national team has time to practice for these days.

But I challenge someone to find something better. And no, the Champions League is not better. Some cup tourney where the 3rd-best team in Spain is playing the 4th-best team in England in the final is not the pinnacle of the game. Seriously, go back and watch the Real-Bayern semis from this year’s Champions League, in which two teams with hundreds of millions of euros of talent produced 180 minutes of the most comically awful football imaginable. I don’t know where you’re going to find the ‘best’ of the game, as best is this nebulous concept which lacks definition. Club football rules the calendar year, but I’ll take the World Cup any time. I’ll take the passion and the drama, the resourcefulness among its coaches, the pride and the desire. Give me that any day.

This was nothing short of the best World Cup I’ve ever seen, in terms of day-in, day-out drama and competitiveness. The minnows gave zero fucks and felt like they could punch the big guys in the mouth and challenge them to a street fight. We had tension, we had high drama, we had the throwing of caution to the wind time and again. For consistently fun and energetic and exciting play, this was as good as I can remember. In most of the confederations there have been efforts to try to maintain interest in the international game (including the UEFA Nations League debuting this fall, which sounds ridiculous, but who knows?), but I think the World Cup showed that the international game is alive and well. Not even the largesse and bombast and arrogance of FIFA has managed to kill it quite yet. In time, they still might – that time being this nonsense in 2022 if it actually comes to pass – but if anything, what this event in Russia showed is that those who grossly mismanage the game can, and often are, saved both by those who decide to play it.

It’s Going Home

Croatia need to wear the checkers tomorrow, which is one of the coolest looks in sports

THE CONSOLATION game of the World Cup is always enjoyable to watch – far more enjoyable than the final, in fact. The final has all of the tension and the drama, of course, but the consolation game usually has far better actual play, and there is usually plenty of goals. Belgium’s 2:0 win over England was, in fact, the lowest-scoring consolation game since 1974. Even so, it was a pretty spirited encounter and both teams took it seriously – doing so in part, I suspect, because they all know each other so well. It was basically a Premier League all-star game out there, with quite a lot of club teammates on either side. Guys like to beat their enemies, of course, but they love to beat their friends.

It’s always a relaxed game and, in the moment, an enjoyable one – albeit one that almost no one cares about. Seriously, no one cares whether you finish third or fourth in the World Cup. Don’t believe me? Okay, quick trivia question here: there are 11 countries whose best finish in the World Cup is either third or fourth. Name them. Go. (No looking it up.) You can’t do it. Probably a lot of people don’t even remember that the Netherlands beat Brazil 3:0 to finish third four years ago. It doesn’t really matter. No one cares. But it’s a chance to have some fun, play without any pressure, and whichever team can muster up enough motivation amid their bitter disappointment at being there can have the tournament end on something of a high note.

And in the abstract, of course, both the Belgians and the English accomplished a lot. If you’d told them six months ago they’d wind up reaching the semifinals of the World Cup, they’d have thought about that and said it sounded like a success. The problem, of course, is in the immediate: having only reached the semifinal means that you didn’t win it. Obviously, in the moment, it feels like a failure.

And given how the tournament shook out, it’s easy to say that both of these teams will rue the final outcome and consider it an opportunity lost. The usual powerhouses all fell by the wayside. (Or, in the case of Italy and the Dutch, didn’t even make it to the tournament.) The Germans were garbage. When have the Germans ever been garbage? The Argentines were a hot mess. Spain was disjointed, knee-deep in distractions. Brazil underachieved and never found another gear. If neither Belgium nor England could win this World Cup, when both were, in my opinion, good enough to do so, then when are they ever going to win it?

• And yeah, I know England’s won before, 1966 and blah blah, I’m aware of this fact. I was made very well aware of this with all of the “football’s coming home” nonsense. English fans are very good when it comes to talking about ancient history, given that so much of the recent past has been rubbish. Well, guess what? It isn’t coming home.
And I’m not trying to mock the Three Lions faithful here, because I’m a fan as well, and have been for a long time. I enjoyed seeing them do well in this tournament. A good England side makes the world game better. It’s just that the expectations are always so out of whack that, until this year anyway, you never get the sense that anyone playing for England is all that happy to be doing it. Playing for England has all of the appeal of going to a Thanksgiving dinner with the relatives you don’t like who all bring casseroles – it’s a trying affair and it never tastes good.
But England was fun this year, a young team who, unfortunately, showed their youth and inexperience at the wrong time. After getting the lead early on against Croatia, their front line let them down and they couldn’t get that second goal. Hell, they could barely get a shot on goal, for goodness sakes. This was a recurring theme for England in this tournament. Before Saturday’s consolation game, through 600 minutes of game time, England had as many shots on goal in open play – six – as Saudi Arabia had in 270 minutes. Almost all of their goals were the result of set pieces which, while you want to do them well, wasn’t in keeping with the way they wanted to play. Teams like Iceland live and die with set pieces because they’re always bunkering down. If you want to play an expansive, attacking style, you’ve got to be capable of creating chances in open play.
But England couldn’t really do that, because they lack the sorts of passers that a team like, say, Croatia have, and even though they were down a goal, the Croatian midfield started to boss the game. England’s response was to try and play over the top and avoid the midfield entirely, hoofing it long repeatedly but to no effect. Once Croatia got a foothold, you could sense that the equalizing goal was coming, and that they would then figure out a way to win the game after that.
And people haven’t given Croatia enough credit. That is one savvy side, and that team is tough as hell. They came from down a goal in three straight knockout matches to win, playing 120 minutes in all of them, which speaks to some incredible resiliency. Even so, at 70’ up a goal, England has got to win that game. Keep the shape, manage the clock, use your speed and your youthful legs to see the game out. But instead, it was England who were looking fatigued at the end, having been forced to chase while Croatia maintained control of the game and the flow.
And can people stop it already with the narrative about what a small country Croatia is? You don’t need 50,000,000 players. You need 11 guys who know what they’re doing. It can be argued, in fact, that it’s easier to produce good players in a smaller country, because it’s easier to implement a comprehensive development system in a smaller space – but even that doesn’t really work in the case of Croatia, whose second-best player, Rakitić, actually grew up in Switzerland. Sometimes, there’s no real logic to it. This is why reproducing results, over time, can seem impossible. When it comes to player development, there is never any guarantee of success.
England’s got a bright future for themselves, as they have a young team that can learn from this experience, and they have even more young players in the pipeline, as England are currently the world champions at both the U-17 and U-20 levels. The problem is, though, that a lot of that good young talent is likely to be squandered in the Premier League. I’ve heard the argument before that England’s not any good because not enough Englishmen play in the Premier League, which both is and isn’t true. It’s not the job of the clubs in the Premier League to develop young players for England. They have more money to spend than they know what to do with, and they’re going to spend it worldwide. The biggest clubs in England are already redundant at most positions. They don’t have room on the roster for most kids, nor do they have the time.
So what do you do if you’re a young player stuck on the reserve side for one of England’s big clubs? Go find a game. You need to play, you need to compete, you need to learn through getting your head bashed in by the big stars and growing from the experience. There is so much talent in the EPL, both on the pitch and on the sidelines, from which to learn and grow and improve. Can’t get in the side at Man City or Arsenal? Go to Bournemouth, go to Southampton, go to Newcastle or Leicester or Huddersfield or some such, just get out there and play and learn. Those bigger opportunities will ultimately come.
And I think there are going to be more opportunities for The Three Lions as well, but now it is a question of whether or not patience can prevail, or if the expectations of more success will become too great.

• Before we go any further here, there is a podcast which I want to point you to, one which should constitute required listening for all disciples of The Lose and budding connoisseurs of failure.
I’d been meaning to listen to the WYNC Studios production, American Fiasco, and finally got around to doing so in the past week. I cannot recommend it highly enough. American Fiasco, hosted by Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers fame, is the story of the U.S. World Cup campaign of 1998, which resulted in the U.S. finishing dead last in the tournament in France. And as bad as not qualifying in 2018 may have been, the 1998 team was, in many ways, worse. This was a team, mind you, that devolved from being Argentina 3:0 in the 1995 Copa América in Uruguay into a disjointed, disorganized side which couldn’t beat Iran at the World Cup three years later. The series features about two dozen interviews and everyone looks bad: a lot of the players come off as brats, the accidental head coach was a lightweight who was way out of his depth, the administrators come off as pompous and pigheaded and thinking the game is all about them. So, in other words, it’s all a lot like now. It’s been just long enough since that disgrace occurred that the lessons learned from it have been forgotten. Everyone in U.S. Soccer would do well to go back and learn from those mistakes, and while American Fiasco is a cautionary tale, it should also be pointed out that four years later, in 2002, the U.S. was in the quarterfinals in Korea. Things can turn around in a hurry.

• Being an American, I tend to use a lot of basketball metaphors when I’m talking about soccer. But other than the fact that in one game you score 100 and in the other you score 1, I do find a lot of similarities between them in terms of the geometry of the game, the need for spacing and the abilities to manœuver and operate in tight space. And I’m going to use another one here to make a point about the French, who remind me of one of those college basketball factories – something like Kentucky or Louisville or, even a better example from the recent past, all of the UCLA teams when Ben Howland was the coach.
The reason why I make that comparison is that the university basketball programs I just mentioned are overloaded with talent. Great talent, guys who will play in the NBA one day. But what you get, when you watch them play, is far too many basketball games where the score is something like 60-55. It’s slow, it’s boring, and wholly lacking in imagination. And needlessly so, in my opinion – all of a sudden, bang, there comes a game which is open and fast and up and down, it’s 100-98 or some such thing and all of that talent takes over, you see the skills on display and you wonder why it is that they don’t play that way all of the time. The reason the games aren’t always 100-98, of course, has to do with the fact that the head coach is paranoid. Letting talent run free means ceding control, so college basketball coaches overly emphasize defense and running sets and being ludicrously attentive to detail. Now, in a 60-55 game, better talent still usually prevails, of course, but it’s also a whole lot less enjoyable to watch.
This is France to me in a nutshell. Oh jeez, Argentina is attacking and scoring goals. Well, I guess we’d better score more. The talent on that team is absolutely ridiculous. With the attacking talent on hand, they can run any team into the ground.
But instead, what we got in France’s 1:0 win over Belgium in the semifinals was a case of cold, hard pragmatism. It had all the excitement of watching some Man United game in which Mourinho takes £250m worth of talent and uses it to park the bus. The French set out to do little more than frustrate the Belgians. That was basically the entire point of the operation. They were really struggling at first, since the Belgians were shifting shapes from defense to offense and confusing the French, but once they figured out what Belgium was up to, they adjusted the defense and turned the entire affair into a claustrophobic slog.
And fair play to them for that. The whole point is to win the damn game, and the French did so. But it certainly wasn’t fun to watch, and it wasn’t the type of game between the two teams that anyone was hoping for.
It would’ve helped if Roberto Martinez, whom I was quick to praise in my last post, hadn’t blindly continued to ride a hot hand. His insertion of Fellaini and Chadli into the Japan game as substitutes had saved them. He left both in the starting lineup against Brazil, and Fellaini had a terrific game. But neither was of any use against a French team intent upon gumming up the works. Fellaini got beat for the goal on a set piece, and if he’s not any good in the air, then what good is he on the pitch? Chadli, meanwhile, was so poor on the right flank that the French just left him alone after a while, sloping their defense the other way to deal with Hazard on the left. It was such a bog in the middle of the pitch for the Belgians, with Witsel and Dembele and Fellaini all getting in each other’s way, that finally they stuck Fellaini on the left wing, which is an even more useless place for him. Martinez got it all right against Brazil, but got it all wrong in this game. Belgium could have played for six hours and they weren’t going to score.
I do think the Belgians go home with more regrets than the English. England’s case for being good enough to win this tournament stemmed from the how the draw and the bracket shook out – get yourself into a 1-game, winner-take-all situation, and there’s no reason to think you couldn’t win. But on talent, the Belgians were good enough to win this tournament, they were good enough to beat literally any and everyone and they failed to do so. They could have, and maybe even should have won this tournament – which is the kind of thing that you can’t say very often. And it’s a big ask to expect this group to come back four years from now, which would be the third World Cup. You saw just how old and slow the 3-timers from Germany and Spain looked in this event. These guys play so many games every year and eventually it takes its toll. There are some good young players in the pipeline in Belgium, to be sure, but how good is a question. They have élite talent right now, they have game changers like Hazard and De Bruyne who can turn a game on a dime. You just don’t know where and when you’re going to have even one of those types of players, let alone more than one. I can see them giving it a go two years from now in the Euros, however. Winning that tournament should be the goal – the main problem being, of course, that the French are likely going to be in their way.
And in general, I’m down with the French, I’m cool with the French and I still have a ticket here for France at 11/2 which, I suspect, is going to pay off tomorrow. (Though I would have liked my Belgium at 9/1 paying off even more.) But I find pragmatic soccer to be incredibly tiresome, and I didn’t much care for seeing Deschamps’ risk-averse, conservative tactics wind up being rewarded. I understand pragmatic soccer when you don’t have any good players. Then it makes a lot of sense. But seeing the French do this just seems like a waste of talent.

I’m hoping that the game tomorrow is a little more open and expansive. It’s probably not going to be a very good game, because World Cup finals rarely are. I’ve been watching the World Cup for 36 years now, and the only final that I would say was actually good was Argentina 3:2 West Germany in 1986. My hope is that Croatia will have all of their moxie and street smarts on display. I think they’ll get beat, and it may not ultimately be that close, but I hope instead that they fight like hell and we get a really exciting game, one worthy of capping off a really exciting tournament. That, and I want to see me some checkers. Let’s get the red and white checkerboard design out tomorrow, which is one of the coolest looks in sports. They may go down to defeat, but I want the Croatians to look good while doing so.

Down to Four

Pow!

WELCOME to the semifinals that we all would have liked to see at the Euros two years ago, instead of the dross match-ups we wound up getting. On balance, I would say that the four best teams in the tournament have managed to reach the semifinals. Neither Belgium nor Croatia has lost a game, while the only blemishes on the records of France and England have come in games that didn’t really matter. Oftentimes, this isn’t the case, of course. Instead, you’ll often have some team reach this point in the competition who were sort of feeling their along in the dark before finally getting it together, or perhaps you’ll have a team that rides their luck and doesn’t necessarily seem like they deserve to be there. This is not the case this year. We have four really good teams capable of playing really exciting, attacking football. I’m hoping these four sides will throw caution to the wind in the next couple of days and really try to play their preferred styles and to their strengths.

• It could be argued, I suppose, that Croatia has ridden their luck a little bit in the past two games, though in general, I don’t have too many regrets when I feel like the team which is actually the better team winds up advancing on penalties. The reason I say that is not to discredit those who lost that one particular game on penalties – an act which ultimately feels a bit random. But the better team advancing makes for the prospect of the next game to be a better game. I’d rather watch the Croatians come out and try to take the game to England in the semifinals than watch the Russians set 10 or 11 behind the ball.
Though to give them proper due here, Russia were terrific at the end of their match with Croatia in the Quarters. Russia fell behind in extra time by soccer’s equivalent of a ground ball with eyes, a strange ball that found the net and just sort of eluded everyone off the head of Vida (who was once fined £80,000 for drinking beer on the team bus, which should make him a hero to us all). Extra time generally sucks, of course, and for obvious reasons: both teams are absolutely paranoid of making a mistake, so neither team is willing to risk. It’s such a waste of time that some competitions have done away with it entirely, preferring to go straight to penalties – which I happen not to like, since I’d rather see stoppage time turn into a mad dash rather than a slow, cautious slog. But extra time is pretty much useless – unless, of course, someone scores, which Croatia did, and to which the Russians responded by throwing everyone forward in a mad scramble to equalize. And they did so, eventually and deservedly, on a set piece with the Brazilian-turned-Russian Fernandes heading home against an exhausted Croatian defense. The Croatians were sort of fighting on two fronts in this game, battling fatigue and also trying to avoid running afoul of the dumbest rule of the World Cup, since pretty much everyone on the team was on a yellow card and a second would see them suspended for the semi final they’d not even qualified for yet. I hate that rule. It’s a dumb rule.
But the Russians equalized, and they deserved it, and we’ve probably not given them quite enough credit for their performance in this tournament. They maxed their talents and went a whole helluva lot further in this tourney than I certainly thought they would. Their fans were terrific and it was an impressive performance to reach the quarters.
But jesus christ, those penalties. My god. This might be the worst penalty I’ve ever seen:

What the hell was that? Subašić had time to drive, lay down, have a drink, have a sandwich, and then casually paw away a shot which was right at him. It was the easiest block I’ve seen since Steven Adams:

Seriously, what the actual fuck? I could understand Fernandes’ miss later on for the Russians – it had the hallmark of a guy seeing the goalkeeper moving and hastily trying to change his mind – but that first miss was just incomprehensible.
So Croatia advance and I don’t really read that much into the fact that they’ve had to go to penalties twice in a row in the knockouts. It’s really hard sometimes to break down a well organized defense. You can do it right and the ball still won’t go in the damn goal. My hunch is that, after facing two stifling and claustrophobic opponents, the Croatians are looking forward to playing an England side that will – gasp! – actually want to play a little bit. They might actually be able to have some fun.
And this is a strange place for Croatia to be, as stories such as this and this have pointed out. The FA is a mess, the game is under scrutiny in Croatia, and viewed by the public with mistrust and derision. Apparently, there has been a subset of fans over the years who’ve gone to these extreme lengths of bad behavior at matches in order to try and embarrass the FA as much as possible. Thus is the extent to which people are fed up with the corruption and the graft – and not even World Cup success can sweep it under the rug, not when some of the best players in the country are caught up in the mess. With its mass appeal, sport always makes for a natural symbol, and often becomes adopted by the worst sorts of scoundrels. Over time, those symbols become less clear-cut and less well-defined. Overall, my friends of Croatian descent are happy to see their team in the semifinals of the World Cup, but there is still deep skepticism, and deservedly so, and winning two more games isn’t going to paper over all of the cracks.

• My English friends, meanwhile, seem to have abandoned all of their usual skepticism and gone for full on, nutters embracing of “it’s coming home.” The scenes from London and elsewhere of people jumping all over each other and throwing beer on each other and losing their minds is, well, it’s long overdue is what it is.
And maybe I’m wrong here, but I was living in England back in 1990 – the last time The Three Lions reached the semifinal – and I just don’t recall there being so much genuine joy at reaching this stage of the tournament. Perhaps it’s simply a case of absence making the heart grow fonder. There was, I think, a much higher level of expectation back then, and with good reason – England had an outstanding side that year, had been consistently good throughout the 1980s, and reaching the semis was no great shock. The last 28 years for England have run the gamut from being underachieving to overly optimistic, with repeated golden generations proving to be fool’s gold, and with healthy doses of penalty shootout heartbreak and wanton self-destruction added to the mix. People want something to believe in after all that time.
And it’s cool for England and their fans. They’re a really good team, and a fun team, and their 2:0 victory over the Swedes was notable for how decidedly comfortable it was. England had the better team, they knew it from the start and they played like it from the get-go. It helped that Sweden didn’t play very well, although they did force some nice saves from Pickford while still trailing by only a goal. (Pickford being one of the three favorites, along with Subašić and Belgium’s Courtois, to win the Golden Gloves.) But England seemed to know what to do against them all along, with the ball moving well and Sterling running in between the lines and opening up the spaces for everyone else. A Sweden equalizer would have only delayed the inevitable demise.
You can only play who is before you, of course, and England have found themselves being the beneficiary of some astonishingly good fortune in that regard. Their road to the semis includes Tunisia, Panama, the Belgian B team who beat their B team, Colombia without James, and a Sweden side who’d clearly reached their outer limits. This leads me to wonder if everything really is so rosy for the English. They’ve had to be patient, of course, since so many of their opponents have sat deep and let them have the ball, but it is hard to tell just how good they really are. I’m curious as to how they’ll respond to an opponent who dares to attack them.
But England and its fans have earned the right to dream big, because as much as the fans are inclined to get ahead of themselves, the team continues to deliver. I’m worried however, about England winning a World Cup. Were that to happen, who would I take the piss out of?

• Uruguay were a center forward short against France. They were always going to be up against it without Cavani up front, he being the type of player who can make up for a lot of your deficiencies. With their attack limited – the attack consisting basically of Suárez and some dude I’ve never heard of – Uruguay really had to be flawless against the French defensively, and not make any mistakes, to have a chance to win. And even then, maybe not so much, as I wouldn’t even call the first goal – a skimming Raphaël Varane header off a free kick – a mistake. It was just a really nice play from the French, who are entirely capable of making lots of really nice plays over the course of a game. But once that happened, and once Lloris parried away a header and Godin flubbed a chance to level, it never seemed like Uruguay was going to get back in the game.
With the second French goal, of course, being a horrible mistake:

Sigh

Muslera’s always been something of a flaky and eccentric goalkeeper. He does have a mistake in him. That said, he’s been a rock for La Celeste over the years, his shot-stopping having quite a bit to do with them finishing fourth in South Africa back in 2010. It was an awful mistake, and as a lifetime member of the goalkeepers union, this one absolutely made me cringe. One of my wacky punster friends, who is also a grumpy Liverpool fan, said that Muslera got caught up in the heat of the moment and got kariused away.

No, I didn’t think it was any good either.
But as I’ve said, oftentimes the hardest shots to judge are the ones right at you, and there is just enough english and swerve on Griezmann’s shot to mess him up. Whatever faint hopes Uruguay still held out were pretty much extinguished by Muslera’s gaffe. You could tell that their heart wasn’t in it any longer.
And the French now find themselves in something of a strange position, in that of the four teams remaining in this tournament, they’re probably the most conservative tactically as well as the most defensively-oriented. And this creates some interesting sorts of dilemmas for their next opponent(s). First of all, you don’t want to run with France. Don’t run with France. Bad, bad, bad. The best way teams come up with to deal with France is to just give them the ball and stack the lines and let Les Bleus try to figure out what to do. But none of the remaining teams in this tournament want to do that. All of them want to be on the front foot and going forward. We saw the Belgians trying to park the bus the other day against Brazil in the second half. It didn’t go very well. They were all out of sync and got outshot 17-1 in the second half. So you’re probably better off, if you’re the Belgians, just playing your game and hoping for the best. Which we’d all be better for, to be honest, because if there is one team on the planet who can run with the French and live to tell about it, it’s probably the Belgians.

• I wasn’t at all surprised that the Belgians beat Brazil. This is because I thought, going into this match, that the Belgians had the better team. People in the media were saying, “the Brazilians have all of these great players,” to which my response was, “well, yeah, and so do the Belgians.” “Oh, but look at all of that attacking talent in yellow shirts.” “The red shirts have Hazard, De Bruyne, and Lukaku up front. Do you really want a piece of that?”
When you look at their line-up, 1 through 11, the Belgians have as much talent as any team in the world. Brazil, France, you name it. They can go player for player with all of them. Which is weird to say, and which is hard to believe, but these aren’t the Belgians of yore. For years the Belgians were this plodding and overly defensive side which succeeded through lulling their opponents into a stupor, a dismal mix of numbness and frustration.
Talent hasn’t been an issue for several years now. The Belgians have had tonnes of good players, but none of them ever seemed to know where they were supposed to be on the pitch. After their rather embarrassing exit from the Euros, where the Welsh ran circles around them in the quarterfinals, they finally put us all out of our misery by getting rid of tactical lightweight Marc Wilmots, whose tenure at the helm of the Belgians was tantamount to coaching malpractice. But the hiring of Roberto Martinez was a surprise, to say the least. I’ve always enjoyed him as an analyst and a commentator, and he did a nice job taking lesser sides in England and making them into winners, but he’d just been fired at Everton and his teams have always had an approach to defending resembling that of a toreador. To be honest, the hiring didn’t make much sense.
And, apparently, the joke was on all of us. Not only has Martinez infused his usual positivity into this Belgian side, and employed the aggressive attacking tactics which best suit the talent at his disposal, but he’s also shown that he has some serious chops. All of us who doubted his coaching ability over the years may have to begrudgingly give the man his due.
It was an fun little tactical wrinkle Martinez threw out there against Brazil, playing De Bruyne at false nine and slipping Lukaku over into the space on the right – the space Marcelo, Brazil’s swashbuckling left back, frequently vacates as he ventures forward. And at first, Brazil had to be a bit more cautious on the attack, wary of this threat. Everyone tries to figure out how to take advantage of that empty Marcelo space, be it playing against Brazil or against Real Madrid, and it usually doesn’t work because there aren’t guys around to fully take advantage, but Lukaku is one of the most devastating transition players in the world and he created the second Belgian goal all by himself by rampaging at the Brazilian defense. That goal was another devastating counter from a corner in which Lukaku, playing on the right, went scorched earth on poor Fernandinho and then set up De Bruyne, who unleashed a cannonball into the bottom corner.
Poor Fernandinho. The guy played maybe the single worst game of midfield ever four years ago against the Germans, and here he is, four years later, forced into the lineup to replace the suspended Casemiro, and first he bats a Kompany header into the net for an own goal, and then he winds up BBQ chicken against Lukaku. The guy’s a good player, but the World Cup’s never been kind to him.
And the Brazilians ultimately couldn’t find the second goal – thanks in part to Courtois, who is monstrous and reminded everyone that oh, yeah, the Belgians also have a great goalkeeper to go with their ridiculous Hazard-De Bruyne-Lukaku front three and deep midfield and solid back three. The Brazilians’ fortunes picked up after making a trio of substitutions: Firmino and Douglas Costa and Renato Augusto, terrific players all of them and all of whom, arguably, should have been playing more. But it’s hard to mess with success, and Brazil has been rolling the past couple of years, so you certainly cannot blame them for wanting to roll with the guys who got them that far. But even though they were winning, I kept wanting more from them in this tournament. I wanted better finishing and more incisive play. Neymar didn’t play well and I doubt he was fully fit, Gabriel Jesus didn’t play well. The offense failed to click and the defense, meanwhile, was stingy about conceding goals but seemed periodically shaky while doing so. They could get by for a while, but they finally ran into a team who had no fear of them and who could match their talent on the pitch.
Which, again, is shocking to say. The Belgians? The Belgians?
And Belgium’s rise to this place is instructive when considering the plight of poor old USA FC. It’s a small country, of course, so it’s easier to implement the sorts of structural changes necessary to overhaul a system, but in the middle of the past decade, after sinking into dire levels of malaise, the Belgians basically blew everything up. They changed the idea of how they wanted players to play, they changed the way they coached, they changed the way they administrated the game at every level. A decade later, and the national team is two games away from winning a World Cup. But it’s the first part of that statement – “a decade later” – that’s important.  It took the Germans more than a decade for “das reboot” to result in winning a World Cup. This stuff takes time, it requires patience and a commitment to a process which, at times, may not seem like it’s going to pay off. And at the national level, that also means you have to have to have modest expectations, at first. You have to play the kids, you have to let them screw up and make all of the right kinds of mistakes, and hope that, eventually, they won’t be making those mistakes any more.
Now, not even the most optimistic Belgian would have thought, a dozen years ago, that 12 years hence they’d be playing in the semifinals of a World Cup. But in order to one day exceed your wildest expectations, you have to first be realistic about the point where you’re at – which, in the case of the Belgians, was nowhere. But the Belgians are proof that it can, in fact, be done. It’s only when you first meet your realistic expectations that it’s possible to eventually exceed them.