By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com, @AndyDisco on Twitter
- It seems like the 2010 World Cup is becoming a lot like the NCAA men's basketball tournament has been lately. Since kids are leaving college ball increasingly early, the smaller schools have pulled a lot more upsets. The reason is that the smaller schools graduate more of their players and that team is likely to have a cohesive team that is battle tested, has veteran leadership and oftentimes, has played together for a few years. When it comes to crunch time, the battle-tested, savvy veteran teams seem to be doing better against the favored, high-flying youngsters. It seems as though team cohesiveness really does count for something.
England's poor 2010 World Cup showing supports this theory. Algeria had no business tying them, but they did. One reason for England's slump is that they haven't played together. They're basically an all-star team and are playing against actual teams- albeit, teams that are less talented (so far). No professional soccer players play more games in a given year than English Premier League players. All of that club ball is cutting into National Team practices, film sessions, etc. A similar case could be made for France and Spain as well.
The upsets that have taken place have all benefited cohesive teams who lack multiple premier league players with club ball obligations, and victimized the teams with the most marquee talent.
- An investigation should be undertaken to look into how the referee in the U.S. vs. Solvenia screwed up as badly as he did. It looked like he had an interest in keeping the goal total low.
- I'm standing by Germany despite their wonky loss today. Miro Klose getting sent off like 10 minutes into the game kind of tinkled on their offense. So the kids got a baptism by fire and played on their own (kinda poorly). Michael Ballack would have helped there.
- England looks humiliatingly bad.
- One team has a dude named Shabalala. I really hope a racehorse gets named after him sometime soon because I would be way-too-interested in hearing Tom Durkin give him a stretch call.
- Mesut Ozil looks like Peter Lorre.
- Brazil's coach's name is Dunga and they have a player named Kaka. If fecal sounding names is a good thing, Brazil is a shoe-in to win the world cup.
- Is the tradition of holding hands with kids before the game really necessary? When did this tradition start? and why? and Whose idea was it? Unless they're Make-A-Wish kids, it's just odd.
- The announcer with the Scottish accent is just too hard to understand. Furthermore, two accented dudes in the booth can be a bit much. A jingoist, I am not, but it just takes more energy to decipher them and I'd rather focus that energy on watching.
- Despite England's struggles, I like their chances on Wednesday. The reason is that they're playing at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. Why is that significant? Because you can't spell "Mandelay" without the "Mandela". That link may be NSFW. It's for Mandelay cream (Man delay cream) that is the featured "male genital desensitizer" at stayerect.com.
- I have learned a bit about the world from the world cup. I didn't know a few of these countries existed. Like, North Career, South Career, and South Africker,
- This English team might be wussiest English sporting entity since Tim Henman's annual Wimbledon collapse in the semis or quarters after getting all of England wussydom's hopes up because he beat a lower-seeded player and this could be his year! The first Englishman to win Wimbledon since Moses's dad did it. I love it when a stereotype comes together.
UPDATE:
I thought of two more.
-Did U2 sponsor this World Cup or something? Enough of them already. It's bad enough they seem to do the Super Bowl every 3 years. And the Grammys. And any aid/relief telethons. Just enough. Not them. Not now.
-A while ago Jeff Van Gundy told a story about watching Rasheed Wallace during practice. During the scrimmage a foul was called on Wallace which he vehemently denied doing. Being a shooting a foul, the fouled player went to the free throw line and missed his first free three throw. Wallace then turned to the ref and said, "Ball don't lie." As if to imply that the ball refused to go in on an unjust call.
Well considering how France got into the World Cup and how they are doing now, I have to agree with Rasheed. Ball don't lie.
-THIS is bad as hell!!! I will tell you how it works, since it took me a minute to figure it out. You highlight the bubble to see which game the dot represents. (for this example I recommend going to Germany's 4-0 win over Australia on the bottom left). So you click on it and it takes you to a streaming twitter stream/feed kinda thing. Scroll down so you can see the moving time bar along the bottom to see which part of the game is being highlighted. The bigger the world bubble, the more mentions on Twitter that topic has had. So you can see the explosion of activity during goals.
That is a really, really cool concept.
That's how I roll.
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