"In the wake of their performances it seems to me that it is legitimate to ask how the media of both countries and the coaches of both teams could have gotten their expectations so wrong.
Sven Goran told everybody England was a finalist. Bruce told everybody that the U.S. could compete with anyone on the world stage. The media, with some exceptions in each country, bought into the idea that both nations were really quite legitimate contenders. Everyone was radically wrong. Why?
I believe both Eriksson and Arena have great difficulty evaluating players because of the leagues they look at.
Eriksson sees his England candidates in the EPL, a league which has grown much stronger in the past decade, but where competition for the title is essentially among four teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester Utd) with the rest acting only as cannon fodder.
Why weren’t Lampard, Gerard, Crouch able to replicate their EPL form? Because their EPL teammates are much better than their England teammates, their own games are skewed to make them look better than they are. Once England lost Owen, Gerard was not able to find space (nor Joe Cole) and once Lampard did not have a Makele or an Essien or a Robben on the field with him he was nothing like the same player he is for Chelsea. It is not accidental that the best England players were Cole, Ferdinand and Terry, all of whom do the same thing for England that they do their clubs and are not dependent on being set up by gifted colleagues.
So Eriksson and the British media saw a different Gerard, a different Cole, a different Lampard in Germany from the players they see in the EPL. It is interesting, in my view at least, to suggest that they saw exactly the same David Beckham that we see with Real Madrid, a player who slots into a specific role and can turn a game with a free kick, but is not the team leader nor can he be. There’s no Zidane in the England side, after all.
Arena, by the same token, sees players in an MLS context where they look much, much better than they actually are. To his credit, he has worked hard to create opportunities to see the likes of Donovan, Mastroeni, Pope, et. al. in tougher settings, but we all know that friendly games are no longer places to blood talent and that if a player consistently plays in a weak league he will have great difficulty lifting his game against better players. Look at Ukraine (the quarterfinalist with by far the fewest `name’ players) and how they struggled against Spain and Italy; Dynamo Kyiv and Shakthar Donetsk players are apparently as far away from the big arena as those at Los Angeles, Chicago and Kansas City.
That is not the players nor the managers fault and it may not the media’s fault either. After all, you can only play against the teams on your schedule and the fact that both the American and British media are incredibly insular suggests that they have little outside frame of reference to judge teams.
We knew the U.S. was not a high quality team and that it lacked match-dominating players. Even now, there are people actually believing that Clint Dempsey (off two average WC games) will be a future star. He won’t be if he stays at New England and he may not make it on a bigger stage where he has to do it 40 times, not twice.
We also knew that England would need the best performances possible from Beckham, Owen and Rooney to actually challenge. None were on top form and all three were hurt. Lennon and Crouch are no closer to being world stars than Donovan and Brian Ching, but I am sure that the English media would scream `silly Americans’’ at you for saying that.' "
But a great and well-deserved win for Portugal. How ironic is it that it is Manchester United's star of the future that drives home the dagger on England?
Please hop over to Nick "I am running as fast as I bloody well can from Leipzig to Stuttgart you ####s!!" Webster and his blog for live coverage of England-Ecuador and then hop back here for Portugal-Holland LIVE from Nuremburg.
Heh. Our train leaves in twenty minutes and it's only an hour and a half ride. Poor Nick. Heh heh.
...as Cornell Glen goes off. That's 2 subs already for the Soca Warriors, with 50+ left to go. However, England is kindly helping them out, with Joe Cole scoring to give the Brits the lead.
We seem to be seeing a lot of tired legs tonight. While Paraguay and T&T parrying a bit, neither that game or the England-Sweden match seems to have the urgency one might expect. And T&T now has to dig itself out of an even deeper hole after Brent Sancho errantly guides one into his own net. Seems a bit far now for the islanders.
Sadly, the game is ninety minutes long. A fine performance by Trinidad and Tobago to hold England off for this long, but Crouch's goal was well deserved.
We’ve poked some gentle fun at England’s national team over their complaints about the so-called “searing heat” at the World Cup so far but reports of the how much water the team went through during the game have caused us to take a second look.
The English press (which didn’t buy the “searing heat” argument either) reports that the England team went through 148 pints of water to players during the game and that some players lost as much as 10lbs. of water weight.
Believe it or not, that’s not unusual; we did a story on dehyrdration a week and a half back, and it is (if we don’t say so ourselves) a must-read for folks whose kids are out playing soccer this summer.
One of the things we think may have happened to the English players (and we base this purely on observations from our armchair as opposed to the sweat samples and empirical data that a gent like Ron Maughan would insist upon) is that they didn’t drink enough water BEFORE taking the field and thus were already dehydrated at kickoff.
U.S. Soccer recently released a set of guidelines on hydration for young players: We urge you to check it out . Unless, of course, you want your kids to droop like Beckham.
Elsewhere we can report: Polish fans are 1, English fans 0 (based on one fistfight in the street.)
Note to all: Just because the Polish fan is thin as a rail, has his shirt off, and has been singing drunkenly non-stop for several hours doesn’t mean he’s not crazy-stupid and can’t still kick your ####. Please, listen to us. We live in Chicago, and we know this to be true.
One of our moles in Warsaw, Jaro, writes that the Polish hooligans are eagerly awaiting the teams’ clash in Dortmund: “They say they’re going to go for anything wearing the yellow, red and black.”
This shouldn’t surprise anyone: Look for this to be the first real test of policing at the Cup. So far, things have been quiet here at the Cup with only minor disturbances and flare-ups. But the Poles HATE the Germans (and with good reason, mind you) and are spoiling for this one both on the field and off.
The hot accoutrement tonight in Munich is the Mohawk. Throughout the city as night falls are roving groups of fans, at least one of whom, in their foolishness, has purchased a hairpiece that reflects their nation’s colors. It’s marketing genius — tough bits of old, worn out plastic wig sprayed in three colours; all yours for €15. While it may not do much for the fans’ chances of getting a date, it is indeed a talking point, as well as a good, old-fashioned point-and-laugh point, and there are a lot of folks doing both of this sort of thing this Thursday night.
For the streets in Munich around the old city centre are closed this evening. Men in peculiar #### suits (is "teal" still a colour?) and wearing large credentials have taken over the Marienplatz, where a giant stage has been set up to accommodate the city’s official kick-off for the World Cup. And, like so many things with the word “official” in them, there are a group of people talking on a dais whom no one is paying any attention to at all.
The English fans are dressed snazzily, if tastelessly, in WWI-era German helmets , and have spent most of the night trying to outdrink the Costa Ricans, who, in turn, had already outdrunk the Tunisians, at least one of which was passed out under a table. Both groups were singing the “Ole” song, though one of them was only singing it in attempt to drown out the folks on the stage. They were doing a fine job of it as well, despite the soundman’s continued efforts and the interference of the lone, overzealous South Korean fan and his large flag.
As a heartwarming film about poor nations playing soccer unspooled behind the speakers, folks took the opportunity to hit the Rathskeller for more beer and sausages. We saw a small, pickled group of Aussies, who justifiably wanted to play on the miniature, fenced in Astroturf that we believe was intended either for demonstrations or restraining small children. Nonetheless, the lone female polezi in charge of enforcing the no “on the turf” rule seemed about to have a serious case of the screamies despite what truly were incredibly charming attempts by the Aussies to sneak ’round her, distract her with beer, and in one case, drunkenly amble between her legs. How can you mad at such happy folks?
Well, the Germans can. We gather we were supposed to pay attention to whatever that academic on stage was saying and said so well for so long that at one point one of his counterparts actually seemed to drift into a fugue state. We've been told that as badge holders there is a certain dignity to be upheld at these things and that we shouldn’t have been distracted by the family who slept in the car to get here from Poland, and who dressed their newborn up in a tiny Polish kit. Nor should our heads have swerved in that arcane, uncontrollable (yet wife-alerting) motion toward the Brazilian samba girls when the learned man was speaking. Football, after all, is about rules and art and theory!
Well, what can we say? We must tell the truth.
Apparently, Munich has been over-run by soccer fans.
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