Too Slow for Catenaccio

No barking from the dog

No smog

And Arsenal beat ManU.

Yes, Today was a good day
What a great game. Almunia played out of his mind (”Wookash”, on the other hand…), until Carrick kicked him in the face, and Nasri showed everyone why Wenger signed him. And all this happened without Arsenal’s first choice strikers. You can make a pretty strong case for Arsenal being lucky to concede only one–ManU had several excellent chances that they sent wide or scooped over the bar–but the mere fact of conceding fewer than they score is promising. If the team can hold the Devils scoreless, the results like the Tottenham and Stoke games can be chalked up to mental lapses and concentration issues rather than fundamental problems with the defensive personnel. Not that mental lapses are a good thing, but they can be corrected. As far as I know, no cure exists for shitty players.

This is not to say that this is a well-constructed soccer team, it isn’t, but these lapses can be overcome until the squad is strengthened (except the wastefulness in front of goal. Against teams that don’t play as open a style as ManU, chances are precious, and Arsenal needs to stop squandering them).

Of course, this game also highlights the ridiculousness of the season to date. You can talk until you’re blue in the face about how you need to show up and play hard every week, but if the team is capable of soundly beating Manchester United then it shouldn’t be losing to Stoke or Fulham.

One more thing…in extra time, when Arsenal is up, Kolo Toure should never have the ball inside of the other team’s penalty box. I don’t know what the hell he was doing up there, but suffice it to say, this team needs a bit of work on time-killing.

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It’s been two days. I think I’m finally ready to talk about the Arsenal match against them with something approaching maturity. After all, it’s not like Arsenal gave up a two goal lead to the worst team in the Premiership in five minutes, right? Those guys must be at least tenth…(checks table) Oh Shit, Arsenal just gave up a two goal lead in five minutes to the worst team in the league.

Really, it was a good game. Everyone enjoys seeing a tight match with lots of goals, and last minute comebacks are exciting, right? And those goals, any goalie could’ve let them in. After all, Darren Bent, Jermaine Jenas and Aaron Lennon have been scoring left and right this season. Wait…no, no they haven’t. Almunia let Jenas, Lennon and Bent score goals in the same game. Wow, he’s kinda failing at the whole goalie thing, isn’t he? Remember Kasey Keller at the 2006 World Cup? He’s playing like that. Good thing they’ve got an expirienced backup we can throw in for a few games… (whispers) Huh? All they have is Lukasz “Wukash” Fabianski? Has David Seaman been keeping fit?

To be fair, the loss wasn’t just Almunia’s fault. The outfield players are to blame as well. When you’re up by two goals late, you don’t need more points, you just need to freeze the ball. Freeze the ball. Freeze the motherf*ing ball. FREEZE THE GODDAMN BALL!!! AD:L<TJKGEDTJL:REJTL:KEJMRL:KKJEWA:LRKMD:KMALS:LKM~!LKSNF:LDNLF:NHDALNFL:KDANHF:LADNFL:NDALF:NLDJNLNSAHMDKLMJH

You know, maybe I’m not quite ready to write about that match.

As some of you know, the most important football team in the world just switched head coaches last week. The 49ers replaced Mike Nolan with Mike Singletary, who had never been a head coach or coordinator on any level. Of course, the question on everybody’s mind was whether or not Singletary would get timid his first game in charge.

Nope.

That’s TE Vernon Davis he’s talking about in that clip, the workout warrior the ‘Niners drafted 6th overall in 2006. Sure, he wasn’t a world-beater in college, but you should’ve seen him at the Combine. Shockingly, Davis has turned out to be a player with million-dollar talent and a ten-cent head on his shoulders. Sure, he could become a top flight NFL player, but first he’d have to learn the playbook, which, I understand, is kind of a big deal. Even better, on Sunday he decided to punch a Seahawks safety, drawinig a fifteen-yard unsportsmanlike for his troubles.

Now, any of our four previous coaches would have patted him on the back and told him in very strong language not to do that again, or he’d be in “trouble.” Singletary told him to hit the showers. It’s about time San Francisco had a coach who’d do that. The last really tough coach we had was Bill Walsh, and look where that got us. Don’t think Walsh was tough? The man cut Roger Craig and Ronnie Lot and traded Joe Montana.

Even better, the new boss told Dr. Moreau Mike Martz where he could stick the J.T. O’Sullivan expiriment. Not that Shaun Hill is a long-term answer. But damn, O’Sullivan looks like 2005 vintage Brett Favre. Anything would be better, even this (Yes, you read that right…not a single pass attempt). I don’t think Singletary will single-handedly turn around the franchise, but it’ll be a hell of a ride the rest of the season.

It’s been clear for the past few years that Italy is the undisputed European champion of unacceptable fan behavior. Hell, at this point, you could say anything, anything about Italian soccer fans, and I’d be inclined to believe it. Killing a police officer with a rocket flare? Yep. Celebrating goals with Nazi salutes? Oh yeah. Riots, the firebombing buildings and attacking cops sort of riot? Check. Proto-fascist fans burning Bulgarian flags at a recent World Cup qualifier in Sofia? Hell yes (what is it with Italian soccer fans and Mussolini? He may have made the trains run on time, but everywhere outside of Italy he’s a laughingstock).

But, there’s a challenger to Italy’s throne. Anywhere else in the world, Spain’s sports culture would be the epitome of dysfunction. There aren’t riots, there aren’t really any deaths, but there are astoundingly high levels of virulent, casual racism. Just this summer, there was the “eye incident” with the national basketball teams, who apparently didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. Earlier this year, there were these upstanding citizens at a Formula One race. Hell, the country’s patron saint is known as St. James the Moor-slayer.

In soccer, this sort of thing is so common it barely warrants recognition (when the national manager can call an opposing player a “black shit” without getting fired, you’ve got a problem). Watch enough La Liga, and you’ll hear the monkey chants, maybe see a banana or two, and if the touchline is close enough to the fans, you might even see a player spat on when he tries to take a corner. Sure you can make excuses, but those only go so far. Really guys, the Reconquista is totally not a valid excuse for behavior in the 21st century. Ferdinand and Isabella had to kick the Moors out of their country. What’s your excuse?

“So what?” you say, “Spain is a stinking cesspool of racism, a country-sized McCain/Palin rally, nothing new.” Ah, but what you don’t know is that UEFA finally punished someone for it. UEFA dropped the hammer on Atletico Madrid for racist chanting and abuse directed at Marseille players and visiting journalists during a Champions League match. The club was fined 150,000 Euros, but also had their next two Champions League home games suspended, meaning that they’ll have to play those games at least 300 kilometers outside of Madrid. I wonder if Sevilla is 300km from Madrid…it’d be a perfect enviroment for Atleti fans.

Naturally, the fact that this ban is noteworthy means that there’s still work to be done. This sort of abuse seems to be common during matches throughout Eastern Europe, and Feyenoord still has their, uh, odd gas chamber cheers when they play Ajax. The size of the club is also noteworthy. Atletico Madrid is a big club, to be sure, but nowhere near the biggest in Spain. I seriously doubt that UEFA would have the guts to punish a country’s “flagship” club, like Real Madrid or even Dinamo Zagreb for similar behavior. The next time someone talks about how much better sports are run in Europe (yes, there are people that delusional…I’ve met them), just think about what would happen if any fans in North America came close to this sort of behavior.

Just in time for the international matchdays, FIFA has released their new national rankings, from Spain all the way down to East Timor. It’s kinda like the BCS, if the BCS was devised by a cabal of drunk, corrupt, bureaucrats sitting around a table in Zurich. How are the rankings made?

It’s a simple system. Three points for a win, one for a draw. Each match is weighted from one to four. Then comes the adjustment for strength of opponent, strength of conference, date of results and home/away splits. That gives you a simple, easy to understand, number between 0 and 1643. Got it? Good.

For this month, Oklahoma Spain is the number one ranked team, which admittedly makes a good deal of sense. The rest of the list? Not so much. Bulgaria, Bulgaria is ranked 15. I dare you to name two current Bulgarian players (and good Berbatov and bad Berbatov are not two players). Hell, I dare you to name the result of a single Bulgarian match ever. Croatia is ranked sixth. I understand that they’re everyone’s darlings after the 2008 Euros, but this is supposedly an impartial set of rankings. I expect this shit out of the AP poll where every Tom, Dick and Harry from local papers around the country gets to vote (seriously? BYU above Georgia and Florida? The Tebow is not pleased), but this FIFA poll is supposed to be impartial, damnit!

As with everything else in world soccer, “impartial” means “weighted in favor of Europe” (they’re kind of like the SEC of international soccer: overrated, full of themselves and clinging to the good old days when they used to oppress blacks.) Eight of the top ten teams are European, which isn’t all that much of a problem, but 16 out of 20 is a bit much. What do you have to smoke to rank Croatia ahead of Argentina (I don’t know, but I bet you can find it in #5)? Argentina has Messi, Aguero and Tevez. Croatia has Kranjcar, Modric and hype. Strength of confederation might make sense when you look at top teams, but when your computer tells you that Scotland is better than Nigeria and Northern Ireland is better than Chile, it’s time to get a new computer. Or time to watch the actual matches…because Chile would destroy Northern Ireland like a centuries-long intractable religious feud.

In local news, the USMNT is ranked +3. Well, we’re 21st in the actual rankings, but that doesn’t matter (see above). Who’s three spots below us? Oh, those guys. In the immortal words of Tom Friedman, El Tri and their fans can “Suck. On. This.” (yep, that guy is the foreign affairs columnist for our paper of record. Evidently he subscribes to the Tamerlane-Frederick the Great school of international relations). The previous statement is especially true if Rafa Marquez’s face “sucks” on Oguchi Onyewu’s boot. Now, don’t get me wrong. The Mexican team knows that they’re not as good…that’s why whenever the two teams play, the Mexican squad tries to cheap-shot their way to victory. But now our superiority is codified in a set of completely meaningless rankings. I call that progress.

Far from meaningless are this weekend’s fixtures, most of which are World Cup qualifiers. Be prepared for an angst-filled English victory over Kazakhstan, tons of goals and no defense when Ukraine plays Croatia, cue up the Eisenstein for an irony-free encounter between Germany and Russia and remeber to drink coffee before the workman-like, terribly boring USMNT victory over Cuba.

Newcastle just introduced new manager Joe Kinnear, and it seems to be going swimmingly well. His first words as manager at the press conference? “Which one of you is Simon Bird [a sports journalist?…You’re a c**t.” You can find the entire transcript here and audio here.

For those of you who have something, anything, better to do with your time, Newcastle’s new manager dropped fifty-two four-letter words in one press conference. And that’s before he’s actually managed a game. If newspaper articles get him this riled up, can you imagine what he’ll say once he’s forced to sit through an entire Newcastle match? I’m sure this performance will make it so much easier for Mike Ashley to sell this team off. Newcastle’s season has just been a never-ending series of disasters. We’ll have to update Newcastle’s Sports Dysfunction Index from Blue (Detroit Lions) to Orange (New York Knicks). Hell, if this keeps up, Oakland Raiders is right around the corner.

In this situation I don’t feel that much sympathy for Newcastle fans. After all, they got just what they wanted in the resurrection of Kevin Keegan, Geordie Messiah, until they realized that he’s completely behind the times. And then, they tried to force the owner out with terribly witty signs like “Cockney Mafia Out!” (With a “lil’ bit of bloomin’ luck”, of course).

No, I feel sorry for the poor, dumb bastards who support any team below Newcastle in the table. Oh…it’s Tottenham. So much for sympathy. I’m sure fighting relegation is exactly what legions of Spurs fans meant when they said “this is the year we’ll finish ahead of Arsenal” in August. Ahead in losses? Ahead in goals conceded? Ahead in agnst? Yes, yes and hell yes. Ahead in points? No. On the other hand, they’re in the right place for their dream of qualifying for the UEFA Coca-Cola Champions(hip) League. Hey, Southampton is close to the Continent, right?

Oh my God! Chelsea and Manchester United play each other tomorrow! *Squeal!*

I don’t think you heard me…

Manchester United

Against Chelsea

This is

THE

MOST.

IMPORTANT.

FOOTBALL.

MATCH.

EVER.

Is there a player, present or future, who can hold a candle to Christano Ronaldo’s skill on the ball? I’ll give you five seconds

…

Couldn’t think of any, could you? There. Christiano Ronaldo is the greatest attacking player of all time. Better than Alan Shearer, better than George Best. And nobody’s better than those two.

And John Terry, John freakin’‘ Terry. I’m honored, honored, that I get a chance to watch him play. He might just be the very definition of Englishness. Those foreign center-halves tackle, but they don’t tackle like England’s own John Terry. They might have better positioning and fancy continental ball skills, but John Terry has a bulldog’s tenacity. Gordon Brown needs to make a Football VC and award it to Terry for bravery. He’s the Light Brigade’s thin red line that won the battle of El Alamein on the playing fields of Eton!

Sure he missed a penalty in the Champions League and then cried like Nancy Kerrigan afterwards, but that’s because HE CARES THAT MUCH about the game. You can’t fathom the depths of Terry’s passion!

It’s clear. Outside of the 1966 World Cup squad, these are the two best teams to ever play the game. Huh? Real Madrid? Five European Cups in a row? Ajax? Total Football? Did they play in the Premier League? No? Then they don’t count! These are the greatest teams ever in the greatest league ever.

After this game, I can die happy. My life will be complete. I’ll have seen the greatest game of football ever played. There’s no point in going on living after tomorrow.

It’s mid-September, and that can only mean one thing: Spurs’ season is over before it starts again. Okay, okay, two things; that and the start of the Champions League group stages. As usual, the teams are reassuringly familiar: Four from the “Big 3″ leagues, a smattering of German and French sides, and of course, league champions from middling countries that have no business playing Man U et. al. (I’m looking at you BATE Borisov).

Sadly, this is the last year of the current format. Michel Platini’s term as UEFA president has been marked by shameless attempt after attempt to ingratiate himself with smaller FAs at the expense of good soccer, and the Champions League is no different. Starting next year, the national champions from the 13th-53rd ranked leagues will go through a separate qualification system that prevents them from meeting non-champions from better leagues (for the coefficients, and an explanation of how they’re calculated, look here). Five spots in the group stage will be reserved for these teams

If all this sounds confusing (and it is), think of it this way: the teams people actually want to see will have a much harder path to qualification, while the champions of, say, the Azerbaijani league will have a much easier path to qualification. Expect less Fiorentina and Atletico Madrid and expect more Anorthosis Famagusta. I can’t wait!!!!!

On to groups A-D (Tomorrow’s televised game is Chelsea-Bordeaux… Barcelona-Sporting looks as if it’ll be streamed on ESPN.com)

Group A (FWIW, in order of predicted finish)

Chelsea: blah, blah, blah, easy qualification for the knockout round, blah, blah, blah

Roma: As usual, Roma will be interesting to watch–there’s no team that relies on one player as much as Roma relies on Francesco Totti–but, again, this is a team that should qualify for the knockouts with little trouble

Bordeaux: As you might imagine, if Chelski and Roma qualify, Bordeaux won’t, which is a shame. It was Bordeaux, not the vaunted Marseilles, that pushed Lyon to the wire last season, and they did it with a largely unheralded roster. The only household name on the sqaud is, uh, Alou Diarra. You know, there actually isn’t a household name on the roster, which makes their success even more intriguing. Given their group, they’ll have to be intriguing in the UEFA cup.

CFR Cluj: I have nothing remotely intelligent to say about the Romanian league champions, and if you say you do, you’re lying.

Group B.

Inter Milan: The club from the blue half of Milan is, incredibly, the only Milan team in this year’s Champs League. The winners of the last three scudetti (well, they didn’t exactly win in 2006, but Juventus and Milan were both DQ’d thanks to the Calciopoli scandal) have consistently underachieved in the Champions League (perhaps Serie A isn’t as strong as advertised). Now, with new manager Jose Mourinho, they should still underachieve, but they’ll underachieve while playing ugly, cynical soccer. Even with that said, they’ll progress out of the group stage with no trouble.

Werder Bremen: Werder never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Their struggles to win the Bundesliga are well known, but they’re no less snake-bit in the Champions League. Last year, they drew a group consisting of them, Olympiakos, Real Madrid and Nazio. Somehow, somehow, they managed to finish third in the group, dropping both games to Olympiakos by a combined score of 6-1. I think that Werder can handle Anorthosis Famagusta in their first game, and as much as I’ll regret it, I think they can beat out the other Greek team, Panathinaikos for the second group stage place.

Panathinaikos: Well, they’ve got Gilberto Silva. He’s pretty much the only guy on the team whose name I feel comfortable spelling. To be frank, I don’t really think they have a chance.

Washington Generals Anorthosis Famagusta: I suppose it’s unfair to compare them to the Harlem Globetrotter’s erstwhile opponents, but it’s not far from the mark. The Cypriot champions are, well, not very good. If you see that handballing bastard Torsten Frings (not the slightest bit bitter over the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal) whistling “Sweet Georgia Brown” on the pitch tomorrow, you’ll know why.

Group C

Barcelona: Billy Beane’s “shit doesn’t work in the playoffs” and Barcelona’s shit doesn’t seem to work in La Liga this year. As interesting as it is to build a team composed of nothing but attacking midfielders, tricks on top of tricks doesn’t really work when the other guys can play defense. In La Liga, most, if not all, of the teams are good enough at defense to limit the efficacy of this tactic. The Champions League group stage is another matter altogether.

Shaktar Donetsk: You might be wondering why Shaktar is in Sporting Lisbon’s spot. Shaktar, just like Dynamo Kyiv, CSKA and Zenit St. Petersburg is one of the best teams you’ve never heard of. From top to bottom, this team has quality players: Bogdan Shust, Ilsinho, Razvan Rat, Darijo Srna, enough quality to surprise people this year. As Charles XII found out, Ukraine has terrible weather, and by the end of the group stages, visitors might find a trip to Olimpiyskyi a chilling prospect.

Sporting Lisbon: Sporting Lisbon is a good team–a team with Joao Moutinho and FM 2008 hero Miguel Veloso in the midfield can’t help but be good–but beyond their midfield, I wonder about their strength. Their keepers aren’t bad, ditto for their forwards, but there’s a big gap between “not bad” and “good enough.”

FC Basel: Roger Federer doesn’t play soccer. Sorry.

Group D (The “D” is for “Death”)

Atletico Madrid: Is there a team in the world more fun to watch than Atleti? The other Madrid club managed a fourth place finish on the basis of a great offense and no defense. Simao Sabrosa and Maxi Rodgriguez make this offense a force to be reckoned with. Sergio Aguero, the best Argentinian in La Liga (yeah, I said it), makes the offense sublime. When Aguero is on, and thanks to the defense, he’s frequenly on, there’s not a player in the world who looks more dangerous with the ball–not even Adrian Peterson. This is not dangerous in the Ronaldinho “dribble around in circles” way we’re talking about here.  No, when Aguero gets the ball he looks to score. And he does. Youtube him…you won’t be disappointed.

Looking back on the team as a whole, they look destined to run up against team, say Inter or ManU that will take advantage of their defensive issues. For the time being however, they’ll run circles around their group opponents, even if group D is the strongest in the tournament.

Liverpool: This seems just about right for a Liverpool team that’ll be going through the motions in the group stage. A team that frequently starts Dirk Kuyt shouldn’t advance on general principle, but they will.

PSV Eindhoven: In keeping with Dutch law, PSV is a young, exciting team that plays attractive soccer. Much like Sporting Lisbon, this isn’t a bad team, but they’re just not good enough to beat the top half of their group.

Marseille: L’OM have assembled a squad that could challenge for the Ligue 1 title this year.  Ligue 1 kinda sucks. In another group, this team might have an outside shot at the knockout round, but not here. Mamadou Niang, Lorik Cana and Taye Taiwo, among others, are all good players, but it ultimately comes down to the opposition. Are they better than Los Colchoneros? No. Are they better than the Reds? No. Are they better than PSV? Maybe.

            You have to wonder about the USMT 2008 schedule. First we play Spain, and now we play Cuba. I don’t know about you, but I think the Spanish-American War trifecta is in play. The USSF needs to schedule a game against the Philippines as soon as possible. Sunil Gulati, make it so!

            We’re all aware that the United States and Cuba have a bit of a, er, history. This history probably explains why the last US squad to play a game in Cuba played them in 1949, before the revolution, back when men were men, women were women, and everyone was oppressed. When most Americans think of Cuba that long ago, they tend to think of the Cuba portrayed in The Godfather: Part II. Rampant corruption, organized crime everywhere…aaah, those were the days. Of course, Cubans also remember that Cuba, which might explain why they decided to revolt in the first place. And, to be fair, judging from the Cubans forced out of power who emigrated to the U.S. it was the right decision. I mean, I wouldn’t want them running my country either. 

            Of course, the revolution took place in 1959, and since then nothing of interest has happened between the U.S. and Cuba, right? Well, okay, we did sort of try to assassinate Castro once or twice. Okay, okay, A few times. But what’s attempted assassination between friends? It’s not like they were successful, or anything, right. Oh, and the Bay of Pigs? Yeah, that happened too. Soviet IRBMs? Almost forgot about that one. But at least it’s gotten better. Despite the embargo (which has done a wonderful job of destabilizing Castro), there’s quite a lot of trade between the U.S. and Cuba. They send us pitchers and in exchange we send them (alleged) terrorists. 

            But the USMNT isn’t in Havana for tourism or trade (which is good, because those are both illegal under U.S. law). They’re there to play a game of soccer. Well, hopefully it’s soccer. Our last opponent, Guatemala didn’t get the memo about playing Association football instead of Rugby football, and the match was correspondingly ugly. Specifically, this match is the 2nd in our semifinal qualification group (the other teams in our group are Guatemala and Trinidad).

            This is one of those games that the U.S. should win, i.e. a CONCACAF game outside of Estadio Azteca. Cuba’s squad is not terribly impressive. To be fair, twelve of their players have defected in the past 6 years, but really, this team is awful. Their twenty-man squad has scored a grand total of 17 goals in international play (less than half of Landon Donovan’s tally), and not a single Cuban player is on a team outside of Cuba. This has all the makings of a typical CONCACAF cakewalk for the USMNT. 

            With that in mind, look for Bradley to give Brad Guzan at least a half in goal and there might even be a Marvell Wynne sighting in defense (but only if we’re up by at least 2…he’s quite awful at defense). As usual, the biggest questions are up front. It’s not that the MNT will have trouble scoring against Cuba, but of the four strikers the manager has on the roster, two of them, Deuce and Landon Donovan can’t seem to play well together. Hell, they really can’t even play striker all that well, being more suited for deeper play. The other two strikers on the squad are Brian Ching and Eddie Johnson, both known quantities. Ching is decent and Eddie Johnson blows hot and cold. It won’t be a problem here, but the MNT needs someone to step up and play forward. The Confederations Cup is coming up next year, and while playing Donovan and Dempsey out of position can work against Trinidad, it won’t against Brazil, Italy or Spain.