"Growing up it all seems so one-sided/Opinions all provided/The future pre-decided/Detached and subdivided" -- Rush, "Subdivisons"
Normally 1980s Canadian synth-prog rock and the English Premier League don't exactly roll off the tongue in the same sentence. A song about Toronto FC, maybe. Welcome to the twisted place that is my brain. (Rush bassist/synth player Geddy Lee is a baseball fan, anyway.)
Something else that doesn't make a ton of sense -- league fixtures in the midweek. Do they really happen? Are they isolated on their little island with the events hidden to the rest of the world, like what happens on "Lost"?
That said, the last round of games in England this week finally clarified the rest of the season as teams have between 15-17 games remaining. It's been long established that this has been, finally, an unpredictable season in the Premier League, about the only things we've missed are polar bears and time travel. I'm fairly confident, though, we finally have the shape of things to come. To continue the lost analogy, the final season of the show premiers Feb. 2 and ends roughly around the same time in May that the Prem season concludes? Coincidence?
(If only I could insert an abrupt black screen here with that abrupt sound effect used by "Lost" to make the end of an episode seem like the most important thing that's ever happened in the history of television.)
Let's end the television comparisons, for everyone's sake. As it looks there are four clear cut designations up-and-down the table, yielding three distinct races to watch for the next four months.
The title troika: Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United
We can finally put to bed and tuck in any thoughts of anybody either than these three walking away with the trophy that wears a crown. Sorry Manchester City. (Hope Robinho brings you back a shirt that reads, "I loaned our mercurial Brazilian striker to Santos and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.")
And who doesn't love a good three-way, right? Be it wrestling, soccer or other places.
The title, at this juncture, is probably Chelsea's to lose. The Blues are atop the table by a point and hold a game-in-hand over both its direct chasers. Chelsea can even gain a little more breathing room as quickly as this weekend since Arsenal hosts United at the Emirates. Chelsea probably won't run away and hide with the title however since it does play Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool all away, with just Arsenal (Feb. 6) coming to Stamford Bridge. The Blues must also contend with fighting a war on three different fronts -- Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup -- as well as the long term layoff to Michael Essien. Even still, Chelsea is the clear favorite to finish in first.
As for the chasers? Manchester United really isn't the potent force of nature it was winning the last three titles, ever since No. 7 was sold to Madrid. No. 10 still patrols Old Trafford and based on the last week or so, Wayne Rooney could conceivably put the entire team on his shoulders. As well as Rooney is playing, he will need some help -- mainly a leaky defense shaping up -- which would seem unlikely. There doesn't seem to be a ton of upside in the Manchester United lineup at the moment.
And Arsenal? Every time you think Arsene Wenger's team has it figured out, they stub their toe. As the weather warms and players like Robin van Persie return, it'll still likely be the Gunners pushing Chelsea the hardest.
Fourth is the new first: Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool, Aston Villa:
Where else but the Premier League is playing for fourth place such a big deal? Beginning to wonder how this makes me feel.
As it stands today, these four are separated by four points and if you honestly think you can predict which of the four ends up in the Champions League spot, you're prescient like Desmond Hume. (Sorry, last "Lost" reference, promise.) Every one of the four has looked like world beaters at times this season and absolutely clueless the following week. Case-in-point, Liverpool beats Spurs 2-0, then draws at Wolves 0-0 the next week. It should be like that the rest of the way.
This race, though compelling, could turn out to be the team that doesn't screw up the most.
Manchester City can buy players, but it can't buy fourth place. Oddly, City needs the Champions League money the least of its rivals, but might need the prestige of the competition the most.
Liverpool? We know what missing out on the Champions League means, perhaps finally allowing the team to pull off the Rafa Benitez Band Aid all the way and move on with its life. Of course, Liverpool could always petition UEFA for a loophole to allow it into the competition like in 2005, where a new rule was created to allow defending champions a lifeline into the tournament.
Aston Villa seems like it's laying in the weeds, not quite great but after years of knocking on the Champions League door ready to pounce if the other three teams screw up.
And if Tottenham somehow makes the Champions League, isn't it written in the tea leaves that they'll lose in the final qualifying round before the group states anyway?
The Warm Bosom of the Mid Table: Birmingham City, Everton, Fulham:
Not much to say here. All three are fairly safe of surviving to play another season in the top flight, but not going to do anything else beside pushing for a Europa League spot.
Moving on.
Be cool or be cast out: Stoke City, Sunderland, Blackburn Rovers, Wigan Athletic, Bolton, West Ham United, Wolves, Burnley and Hull City:
Remember that weird time a couple seasons ago when Alan Curbishley had Charlton Athletic near the top of the table and primed for big things? Nowadays the Addicks are down in League One, joined by Norwich City and Southampton. Meanwhile teams that tasted the heights of the Premier League in the last five years -- Reading, Sheffield United, Crystal Palace, Derby County, etc. are floundering a league below in the Championship.
In the current financial climate, relegation could possibly the death of a club, or at least the end of its relevance. That could be a little drastic since most of these clubs haven't overstepped their bounds by buying super pricey players.
As it stands, when the music stops two of these nine teams are going down and unlike Newcastle United, yes the Magpies who are safely atop the Championship, we'll probably never hear from them again.
Trying to make a prediction here, again, is impossible without some sort of Biff Tannen-approved cheat guide. On current form, Hull and Wolves look like the worst of the bunch, but don't discount Sunderland who is sinking like a stone.
Unlike past seasons, since there are so many teams getting sucked down toward the bottom, a club can't expect to play well for three or four games and expect to be safe.
Life support: Portsmouth
Say what you will about American sports, but even as the Pittsburgh Pirates have been fantastically uncompetitive the last two decades in Major League Baseball, at least they aren't in a outright disgraceful crisis like Portsmouth this season.
Sure the Prem clubs want a laissez-faire approach, but shouldn't there by some kind of oversight or safety net to prevent this from happening? The rich jerks that buy and sell the clubs always end up okay, same with the players. But what about the fans? They get left carrying the bag? It's not fair.
And not having enough money to pay for website hosting?
Is this the football version of "This is Spinal Tap"?
Other stuff:
* After his sterling start at Everton, including a goal Wednesday vs. Sunderland, do you really think it's possible for Landon Donovan to stay in England? Is it possible we're overreacting? Is the Galaxy or MLS going to let its best/most important player go? I'd doubt, even with his performance, that Everton would break the bank to keep him around Goodison. We'll see. People seem to want him to stay.
* ESPN continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth on soccer. On a day it trumpeted it's World Cup coverage with, of all things, a countdown clock and glowing quotes from John Skipper about the event's significance, the network totally ignored Donovan's first Premier League goal. Or at least it did Wednesday night on ESPNEWS, which deemed Winter X-Games preview fluff more important. I don't want to get too worked up, but again, doesn't it behoove ESPN to show this highlight? Okay, it wasn't the greatest goal of all time, but really, you couldn't sneak it past an NCAA dunk in the Top 10 Plays? Really?
* One worry about the U.S. playing Algeria. Based on what happened yesterday vs. Egypt, it could be a dangerous proposition for the Yanks if Algeria has nothing left to play for. There is some serious North African machismo on the line. Nadir Belhajd's two-foot tackle in the ACN semifinals was as dirty as anything you'll see. U.S. should consider packing a second set of shin guards. (The more I think about it, the key match is taking three points from Slovenia.)
* Another tweak to the official Premier League fantasy is needed. This is sour grapes, admittedly, but I was knocked out of the Fantasy Cup this week to a guy that didn't set his lineup and had Craig Bellamy at captain, or so I thought. Somehow the A.I. behind the game changed his lineup after the fact and gave him Peter Crouch and some other players he had on the bench. Naturally I lost. Shouldn't you be penalized for not setting your players? Isn't that part of being a "manager"?
Saturday:
* West Ham v. Blackburn Rovers -- So West Ham swung and missed on Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Eidur Gudjohnsen. What, they couldn't throw these guys a lifetime subscription to the British version of 'Swank' as an incentive? Benni McCarthy? Guess they have $1 stores in England, since he's a bargain basement replacement. I listed Blackburn in the blob of teams fighting to avoid the drop. If my old pal Morten Gamst Pedersen can keep playing like he has been the last couple week, it does give Rovers an edge. He does have the tools to keep the team alive by himself, when he's on form. Glad to see he's back, at least. ... West Ham 1, Blackburn 1
* Wigan Athletic v. Everton -- Wigan have shown a cockroach-like ability to survive in the Premier League, so consider it a backhanded compliment. Everton seems to be rolling. If it can get points here, we can officially label them stable. ... Wigan 1, Everton 2
* Birmingham City v. Tottenham -- (Live, FSC, 10 a.m.) Sad to see Birmingham's unbeaten run end at Chelsea, but you knew it was coming. The question, can a team that's not all that dynamic recover quickly and get it going again? Alex McLeish has talked about bringing in another striker, which would be smart but time is ticking. As for Spurs? It's weird a team with so many well-known attackers, that sometimes they struggle mightily to score. Gudjohnsen might actually help in this department since he's such a hard worker. I have a strange feeling about this game, though. ... Birmingham City 0, Tottenham 2
* Fulham v. Aston Villa -- (Live, ESPN2, 10 a.m.) Fulham, based on the midweek loss to Spurs, is a team without an attacking edge. Hell, they'd have trouble gumming a team to death at this point. Guess Clint Dempsey really did mean a lot to this team. This should be good news for Aston Villa, which needs to get it going since it hasn't scored in four-straight league matches. Yes, you read that correct. ... Fulham 0, Aston Villa 1
* Hull City v. Wolves -- The Mustard Bowl II. Awesome. Glad to see Amr Zaky is back in the Premier League. What will he do at Hull? Score four goals in his debut, and then go scoreless the rest of the season? It's entirely possible. On the Wolves side, watching that sleep-inducing Liverpool 0-0 draw made me think this is the most generic team I've ever seen in the Prem. They have no plus attributes. And hey, if you want a striker that does everything but put the ball in the net, Kevin Doyle is your guy. ... Hull City 2, Wolves 0
* Liverpool v. Bolton -- (Live, Setanta, 10 a.m.) More than one Liverpool supporter questioned running Steven Gerrard out there a little ahead of schedule. But that's Rafa these days, completely desperate so logic doesn't have any room at Anfield. Bolton did get unlucky, getting Arsenal in back-to-back matches before playing Burnley in the midweek. They haven't looked totally terrible under Owen Coyle, but this is still a tricky away fixture. ... Liverpool 2, Bolton 1
* Burnley v. Chlesea -- (Live, FSC, 12:30 p.m.) I think, stress think, we're past the part of the season where Chelsea might stumble here. ... Burnley 0, Chelsea 3
Sunday:
* Manchester City v. Portsmouth -- Brother, can you spare a dime? ... City 3, Portsmouth 0
* Arsenal v. Manchester United -- (Live, FSC, 11 a.m.) One thing I will say about this match, please, PLEASE, do not let either Wenger or Sir Alex Ferguson decide this match from their complaints on the sideline. Arsenal's defense has been a weakness and possibly without Thomas Vermaelen, if only for this match, could be tricky with an on-form Rooney. Let's see Rooney + atrophying corpse of Sol Campbell = mismatch. Still, the Gunners have too many ways to score and should be "up" for this match. ... Arsenal 2, United 1
Monday:
* Sunderland v. Stoke City -- (Live?, ESPN2, 2:45 p.m.) The battle of the red-and-white stripes. That's about it for this one, as both teams are slowly rotting right before our eyes. .. Sunderland 1, Stoke City 0
Last round: 5-3
Season: 118-101
Normally 1980s Canadian synth-prog rock and the English Premier League don't exactly roll off the tongue in the same sentence. A song about Toronto FC, maybe. Welcome to the twisted place that is my brain. (Rush bassist/synth player Geddy Lee is a baseball fan, anyway.)
Something else that doesn't make a ton of sense -- league fixtures in the midweek. Do they really happen? Are they isolated on their little island with the events hidden to the rest of the world, like what happens on "Lost"?
That said, the last round of games in England this week finally clarified the rest of the season as teams have between 15-17 games remaining. It's been long established that this has been, finally, an unpredictable season in the Premier League, about the only things we've missed are polar bears and time travel. I'm fairly confident, though, we finally have the shape of things to come. To continue the lost analogy, the final season of the show premiers Feb. 2 and ends roughly around the same time in May that the Prem season concludes? Coincidence?
(If only I could insert an abrupt black screen here with that abrupt sound effect used by "Lost" to make the end of an episode seem like the most important thing that's ever happened in the history of television.)
Let's end the television comparisons, for everyone's sake. As it looks there are four clear cut designations up-and-down the table, yielding three distinct races to watch for the next four months.
The title troika: Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United
We can finally put to bed and tuck in any thoughts of anybody either than these three walking away with the trophy that wears a crown. Sorry Manchester City. (Hope Robinho brings you back a shirt that reads, "I loaned our mercurial Brazilian striker to Santos and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.")
And who doesn't love a good three-way, right? Be it wrestling, soccer or other places.
The title, at this juncture, is probably Chelsea's to lose. The Blues are atop the table by a point and hold a game-in-hand over both its direct chasers. Chelsea can even gain a little more breathing room as quickly as this weekend since Arsenal hosts United at the Emirates. Chelsea probably won't run away and hide with the title however since it does play Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool all away, with just Arsenal (Feb. 6) coming to Stamford Bridge. The Blues must also contend with fighting a war on three different fronts -- Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup -- as well as the long term layoff to Michael Essien. Even still, Chelsea is the clear favorite to finish in first.
As for the chasers? Manchester United really isn't the potent force of nature it was winning the last three titles, ever since No. 7 was sold to Madrid. No. 10 still patrols Old Trafford and based on the last week or so, Wayne Rooney could conceivably put the entire team on his shoulders. As well as Rooney is playing, he will need some help -- mainly a leaky defense shaping up -- which would seem unlikely. There doesn't seem to be a ton of upside in the Manchester United lineup at the moment.
And Arsenal? Every time you think Arsene Wenger's team has it figured out, they stub their toe. As the weather warms and players like Robin van Persie return, it'll still likely be the Gunners pushing Chelsea the hardest.
Fourth is the new first: Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool, Aston Villa:
Where else but the Premier League is playing for fourth place such a big deal? Beginning to wonder how this makes me feel.
As it stands today, these four are separated by four points and if you honestly think you can predict which of the four ends up in the Champions League spot, you're prescient like Desmond Hume. (Sorry, last "Lost" reference, promise.) Every one of the four has looked like world beaters at times this season and absolutely clueless the following week. Case-in-point, Liverpool beats Spurs 2-0, then draws at Wolves 0-0 the next week. It should be like that the rest of the way.
This race, though compelling, could turn out to be the team that doesn't screw up the most.
Manchester City can buy players, but it can't buy fourth place. Oddly, City needs the Champions League money the least of its rivals, but might need the prestige of the competition the most.
Liverpool? We know what missing out on the Champions League means, perhaps finally allowing the team to pull off the Rafa Benitez Band Aid all the way and move on with its life. Of course, Liverpool could always petition UEFA for a loophole to allow it into the competition like in 2005, where a new rule was created to allow defending champions a lifeline into the tournament.
Aston Villa seems like it's laying in the weeds, not quite great but after years of knocking on the Champions League door ready to pounce if the other three teams screw up.
And if Tottenham somehow makes the Champions League, isn't it written in the tea leaves that they'll lose in the final qualifying round before the group states anyway?
The Warm Bosom of the Mid Table: Birmingham City, Everton, Fulham:
Not much to say here. All three are fairly safe of surviving to play another season in the top flight, but not going to do anything else beside pushing for a Europa League spot.
Moving on.
Be cool or be cast out: Stoke City, Sunderland, Blackburn Rovers, Wigan Athletic, Bolton, West Ham United, Wolves, Burnley and Hull City:
Remember that weird time a couple seasons ago when Alan Curbishley had Charlton Athletic near the top of the table and primed for big things? Nowadays the Addicks are down in League One, joined by Norwich City and Southampton. Meanwhile teams that tasted the heights of the Premier League in the last five years -- Reading, Sheffield United, Crystal Palace, Derby County, etc. are floundering a league below in the Championship.
In the current financial climate, relegation could possibly the death of a club, or at least the end of its relevance. That could be a little drastic since most of these clubs haven't overstepped their bounds by buying super pricey players.
As it stands, when the music stops two of these nine teams are going down and unlike Newcastle United, yes the Magpies who are safely atop the Championship, we'll probably never hear from them again.
Trying to make a prediction here, again, is impossible without some sort of Biff Tannen-approved cheat guide. On current form, Hull and Wolves look like the worst of the bunch, but don't discount Sunderland who is sinking like a stone.
Unlike past seasons, since there are so many teams getting sucked down toward the bottom, a club can't expect to play well for three or four games and expect to be safe.
Life support: Portsmouth
Say what you will about American sports, but even as the Pittsburgh Pirates have been fantastically uncompetitive the last two decades in Major League Baseball, at least they aren't in a outright disgraceful crisis like Portsmouth this season.
Sure the Prem clubs want a laissez-faire approach, but shouldn't there by some kind of oversight or safety net to prevent this from happening? The rich jerks that buy and sell the clubs always end up okay, same with the players. But what about the fans? They get left carrying the bag? It's not fair.
And not having enough money to pay for website hosting?
Is this the football version of "This is Spinal Tap"?
Other stuff:
* After his sterling start at Everton, including a goal Wednesday vs. Sunderland, do you really think it's possible for Landon Donovan to stay in England? Is it possible we're overreacting? Is the Galaxy or MLS going to let its best/most important player go? I'd doubt, even with his performance, that Everton would break the bank to keep him around Goodison. We'll see. People seem to want him to stay.
* ESPN continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth on soccer. On a day it trumpeted it's World Cup coverage with, of all things, a countdown clock and glowing quotes from John Skipper about the event's significance, the network totally ignored Donovan's first Premier League goal. Or at least it did Wednesday night on ESPNEWS, which deemed Winter X-Games preview fluff more important. I don't want to get too worked up, but again, doesn't it behoove ESPN to show this highlight? Okay, it wasn't the greatest goal of all time, but really, you couldn't sneak it past an NCAA dunk in the Top 10 Plays? Really?
* One worry about the U.S. playing Algeria. Based on what happened yesterday vs. Egypt, it could be a dangerous proposition for the Yanks if Algeria has nothing left to play for. There is some serious North African machismo on the line. Nadir Belhajd's two-foot tackle in the ACN semifinals was as dirty as anything you'll see. U.S. should consider packing a second set of shin guards. (The more I think about it, the key match is taking three points from Slovenia.)
* Another tweak to the official Premier League fantasy is needed. This is sour grapes, admittedly, but I was knocked out of the Fantasy Cup this week to a guy that didn't set his lineup and had Craig Bellamy at captain, or so I thought. Somehow the A.I. behind the game changed his lineup after the fact and gave him Peter Crouch and some other players he had on the bench. Naturally I lost. Shouldn't you be penalized for not setting your players? Isn't that part of being a "manager"?
Saturday:
* West Ham v. Blackburn Rovers -- So West Ham swung and missed on Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Eidur Gudjohnsen. What, they couldn't throw these guys a lifetime subscription to the British version of 'Swank' as an incentive? Benni McCarthy? Guess they have $1 stores in England, since he's a bargain basement replacement. I listed Blackburn in the blob of teams fighting to avoid the drop. If my old pal Morten Gamst Pedersen can keep playing like he has been the last couple week, it does give Rovers an edge. He does have the tools to keep the team alive by himself, when he's on form. Glad to see he's back, at least. ... West Ham 1, Blackburn 1
* Wigan Athletic v. Everton -- Wigan have shown a cockroach-like ability to survive in the Premier League, so consider it a backhanded compliment. Everton seems to be rolling. If it can get points here, we can officially label them stable. ... Wigan 1, Everton 2
* Birmingham City v. Tottenham -- (Live, FSC, 10 a.m.) Sad to see Birmingham's unbeaten run end at Chelsea, but you knew it was coming. The question, can a team that's not all that dynamic recover quickly and get it going again? Alex McLeish has talked about bringing in another striker, which would be smart but time is ticking. As for Spurs? It's weird a team with so many well-known attackers, that sometimes they struggle mightily to score. Gudjohnsen might actually help in this department since he's such a hard worker. I have a strange feeling about this game, though. ... Birmingham City 0, Tottenham 2
* Fulham v. Aston Villa -- (Live, ESPN2, 10 a.m.) Fulham, based on the midweek loss to Spurs, is a team without an attacking edge. Hell, they'd have trouble gumming a team to death at this point. Guess Clint Dempsey really did mean a lot to this team. This should be good news for Aston Villa, which needs to get it going since it hasn't scored in four-straight league matches. Yes, you read that correct. ... Fulham 0, Aston Villa 1
* Hull City v. Wolves -- The Mustard Bowl II. Awesome. Glad to see Amr Zaky is back in the Premier League. What will he do at Hull? Score four goals in his debut, and then go scoreless the rest of the season? It's entirely possible. On the Wolves side, watching that sleep-inducing Liverpool 0-0 draw made me think this is the most generic team I've ever seen in the Prem. They have no plus attributes. And hey, if you want a striker that does everything but put the ball in the net, Kevin Doyle is your guy. ... Hull City 2, Wolves 0
* Liverpool v. Bolton -- (Live, Setanta, 10 a.m.) More than one Liverpool supporter questioned running Steven Gerrard out there a little ahead of schedule. But that's Rafa these days, completely desperate so logic doesn't have any room at Anfield. Bolton did get unlucky, getting Arsenal in back-to-back matches before playing Burnley in the midweek. They haven't looked totally terrible under Owen Coyle, but this is still a tricky away fixture. ... Liverpool 2, Bolton 1
* Burnley v. Chlesea -- (Live, FSC, 12:30 p.m.) I think, stress think, we're past the part of the season where Chelsea might stumble here. ... Burnley 0, Chelsea 3
Sunday:
* Manchester City v. Portsmouth -- Brother, can you spare a dime? ... City 3, Portsmouth 0
* Arsenal v. Manchester United -- (Live, FSC, 11 a.m.) One thing I will say about this match, please, PLEASE, do not let either Wenger or Sir Alex Ferguson decide this match from their complaints on the sideline. Arsenal's defense has been a weakness and possibly without Thomas Vermaelen, if only for this match, could be tricky with an on-form Rooney. Let's see Rooney + atrophying corpse of Sol Campbell = mismatch. Still, the Gunners have too many ways to score and should be "up" for this match. ... Arsenal 2, United 1
Monday:
* Sunderland v. Stoke City -- (Live?, ESPN2, 2:45 p.m.) The battle of the red-and-white stripes. That's about it for this one, as both teams are slowly rotting right before our eyes. .. Sunderland 1, Stoke City 0
Last round: 5-3
Season: 118-101
Labels: Landon Donovan, Prem Picks, Premier League, Soccer
Trying something semi-different this morning.
A thought dawned on me Sunday night after enduring about seven straight hours of NFL on television, including a loss by the Jets -- my favorite team -- in the AFC Championship game. (Yes, I just outed myself as a Jets fan. Oh well.)
Roughly around halftime of the Colts/Jets game around the globe in a couple different set of circumstances -- they don't have to worry about 3G coverage maps in Cabinda -- the Cote D'Ivoire was in the process of losing in epic fashion to Algeria in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations 3-2 in extra time.
Why is this worth bringing up? Well, the Soccer Elephants appeared to have won the match with a 99th-percentile strike from Abdul Kader Keita. Few match-winners could compare with this strike. Stunning. (Watch here, until copyright police rear their ugly heads.)
In short, if you hit that kind of goal in the 88th minute, you have to win that match. Have to. (See, emphasis.)
So for Cote D'Ivoire, who are considered the best team in Africa because they have Didier Drogba, Toure Yaya, Saloman Kalou, etc. in their lineup, to lose in the quarterfinals, it's an epic letdown.
If you happened to be a Cote D'Ivoire a.k.a. the Ivory Coast (the non-preferred name that many use) diehard and watched your team allow an stoppage time header to force extra time, and then give up another goal in a very similar fashion, that's crippling. Like you're unable to think for a couple hours or days. Just dazing. (Great audio commentary, here, for the winner.)
Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
Then, a couple hours later in New Orleans, Minnesota Vikings fans endured, probably a worse kick in the junk. No need to get into the gory details, but you have about four lost fumbles, coaching breakdowns, penalty breakdowns, question calls by the refs, questionable replay calls by the refs, overtime and of course, the Brett Favre factor.
For a franchise that's lost in four Super Bowls, this was a brutal loss to stomach for a tortured fanbase. Oh yeah, let's not forget the "Gary Anderson" game, either.
If I were a Vikes fan and lived in Minnesota, I'd probably just go out my door and pull the crazy penguin routine and just walk into the snowy wilderness until I collapsed.
Can these two disparate sets of fans, find that misery loves company Monday morning?
Is the Cote D'Ivoire's loss even comparable to what happened to the Vikings? Should the fact that the African Cup of Nations happens every two years mitigate things?
Either way, both are terrible ways to lose. Does it really matter all that much which one is worse?
And maybe as a USMNT we ought to erase the penciled in three points for the World Cup against Algeria. Not a ton of household names, but a win like that on Sunday shows a lot of guts. The "never-say-die" team sometimes can be harder to knock off than a squad of stars. We'll have plenty of more time to discuss it, but the match on June 23 in Pretoria probably decides if the U.S. gets through to the knockout stages.
* * *
Hey, the Premier League is back in action in the midweek after a break for the FA Cup. We only had three matches in the last set of games, but they were all important. Manchester United is now on top the league by two points -- but with two more games played than Chelsea. Arsenal is now even with the Blues, but the Gunners have played an extra game, too. And there is hope back at Liverpool, with Rafa's Rejects only a point out the final Champions League spot.
Tuesday:
* Portsmouth v. West Ham United -- Hey, at least Portsmouth won an FA Cup match over the weekend. Saturday I was chatting with a friend who couldn't believe that Pompey actually won the Cup two years ago. Then you remember that Harry Redknapp had Lassana Diarra (now at Real Madrid) and Sulley Muntari (now at Inter) in the mix, plus about half the current Spurs' team along with Glenn Johnson and semi-amazingly, Milan Baros. Oh, better days. West Ham? Anytime you can get a British smut magnate back involved in the Premier League, that's a good thing. Changing the club's name to West Ham Olympic? Err, not as much. Curious to see if this mystery check that West Ham is dangling to an unnamed striker amounts to anything. ... Portsmouth 1, West Ham 1
* Tottenham v. Fulham -- (Live, FSC, 2:45 p.m.) This match sets up favorably for Spurs since Fulham's best guns -- Bobby Zamora and Clint Dempsey won't play because of injuries. But is anything ever a lay-up for Tottenham? Interesting fact. Tottenham destroyed Wigan 9-1 on Nov. 23. In the 10 matches in the league since that, they've scored a total of 10 goals. These two teams played a scoreless draw on Boxing Day. I'm sure Roy Hodgson would sign up for repeat. ... Spurs 1, Fulham 0
* Wolves v. Liverpool -- (Live, Setanta, 2:45 p.m.) Wolves are about as non-descript a side we've seen in the Premier League in a long time. Do they have any sort of identity? Once again, Liverpool is on watch. This would seem like another chance for the club to stub it's toe. The track record for Liverpool this season is, "save the season", "blow the season." Frankly, I'm tired of guessing. If they can't beat Wolves with Steven Gerrard back in the fold, then they don't deserve to play in the Champions League. ... Wolves 0, Liverpool 1
* Bolton v. Burnley -- Good thing we had the whole Owen Coyle saga, otherwise this would be a totally forgettable match. If Bolton can't pull the full three points away from this one, well, it doesn't look good for long-term safety. If Coyle is a smart enough manager, you'd think he'd be able to field a lineup to exploit Burnley's weaknesses, right? And with the club in a relegation fight, how much playing time is Stuart Holden going to get between now and the end of the season? Worth the gamble if you're him, though. ... Bolton 2, Burnley 1
Wednesday:
* Aston Villa v. Arsenal -- Could be a fun one at Villa Park. Aston Villa has allowed six goals in its last two matches, both Cup games. As we know Arsenal likes to score and should be in a foul mood after losing in the FA Cup on Saturday. You wonder if Villa has the mental resolve to get a result here, because right around this time last season the Gunners blew past them up the table and into the Champions League. Considering how Aston Villa's defense has played the last couple matches, plus the congestion of fixtures, it could be tough to slow down the Gunners. ... Aston Villa 1, Arsenal 2
* Chelsea v. Birminham City -- (Live, FSC, 2:45) Birmigham is the club that keep on chugging along. I think that the unbeaten run, which began in October ends here. Brum got lucky to get a 0-0 draw on Boxing Day to Chelsea, in a game where it took 30 shots. Chelsea got some good news from Africa, with Didier Drogba on his way back sooner than later, but it also lost Michael Essien for the near future, which probably doesn't cancel out. ... Chelsea 2, Birmingham 0
* Blackburn v. Wigan Athletic -- Case and point of the blob-like mass of teams that are going to contest the relegation fight over the next four and a half months. ... Blackburn 1, Wigan 1
* Everton v. Sunderland -- Two teams going in different directions. Everton seems to have gotten its act together, even if that includes bringing in Phillippe Senderos. With Mikel Arteta returning from an 11-month layoff, maybe the Toffees can make a run and secure a Europa League berth. That's about all they can do at this point, out of the Cups and all. Meanwhile, something is rotten with Sunderland. Not sure what it is, but the team hasn't seemed right for weeks. If he plays, this could be the best chance for Landon Donovan to get onto the scoresheet for Everton. ... Everton 3, Sunderland 1
Last round: 3-0
Season: 113-98:
A thought dawned on me Sunday night after enduring about seven straight hours of NFL on television, including a loss by the Jets -- my favorite team -- in the AFC Championship game. (Yes, I just outed myself as a Jets fan. Oh well.)
Roughly around halftime of the Colts/Jets game around the globe in a couple different set of circumstances -- they don't have to worry about 3G coverage maps in Cabinda -- the Cote D'Ivoire was in the process of losing in epic fashion to Algeria in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations 3-2 in extra time.
Why is this worth bringing up? Well, the Soccer Elephants appeared to have won the match with a 99th-percentile strike from Abdul Kader Keita. Few match-winners could compare with this strike. Stunning. (Watch here, until copyright police rear their ugly heads.)
In short, if you hit that kind of goal in the 88th minute, you have to win that match. Have to. (See, emphasis.)
So for Cote D'Ivoire, who are considered the best team in Africa because they have Didier Drogba, Toure Yaya, Saloman Kalou, etc. in their lineup, to lose in the quarterfinals, it's an epic letdown.
If you happened to be a Cote D'Ivoire a.k.a. the Ivory Coast (the non-preferred name that many use) diehard and watched your team allow an stoppage time header to force extra time, and then give up another goal in a very similar fashion, that's crippling. Like you're unable to think for a couple hours or days. Just dazing. (Great audio commentary, here, for the winner.)
Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
Then, a couple hours later in New Orleans, Minnesota Vikings fans endured, probably a worse kick in the junk. No need to get into the gory details, but you have about four lost fumbles, coaching breakdowns, penalty breakdowns, question calls by the refs, questionable replay calls by the refs, overtime and of course, the Brett Favre factor.
For a franchise that's lost in four Super Bowls, this was a brutal loss to stomach for a tortured fanbase. Oh yeah, let's not forget the "Gary Anderson" game, either.
If I were a Vikes fan and lived in Minnesota, I'd probably just go out my door and pull the crazy penguin routine and just walk into the snowy wilderness until I collapsed.
Can these two disparate sets of fans, find that misery loves company Monday morning?
Is the Cote D'Ivoire's loss even comparable to what happened to the Vikings? Should the fact that the African Cup of Nations happens every two years mitigate things?
Either way, both are terrible ways to lose. Does it really matter all that much which one is worse?
And maybe as a USMNT we ought to erase the penciled in three points for the World Cup against Algeria. Not a ton of household names, but a win like that on Sunday shows a lot of guts. The "never-say-die" team sometimes can be harder to knock off than a squad of stars. We'll have plenty of more time to discuss it, but the match on June 23 in Pretoria probably decides if the U.S. gets through to the knockout stages.
Hey, the Premier League is back in action in the midweek after a break for the FA Cup. We only had three matches in the last set of games, but they were all important. Manchester United is now on top the league by two points -- but with two more games played than Chelsea. Arsenal is now even with the Blues, but the Gunners have played an extra game, too. And there is hope back at Liverpool, with Rafa's Rejects only a point out the final Champions League spot.
Tuesday:
* Portsmouth v. West Ham United -- Hey, at least Portsmouth won an FA Cup match over the weekend. Saturday I was chatting with a friend who couldn't believe that Pompey actually won the Cup two years ago. Then you remember that Harry Redknapp had Lassana Diarra (now at Real Madrid) and Sulley Muntari (now at Inter) in the mix, plus about half the current Spurs' team along with Glenn Johnson and semi-amazingly, Milan Baros. Oh, better days. West Ham? Anytime you can get a British smut magnate back involved in the Premier League, that's a good thing. Changing the club's name to West Ham Olympic? Err, not as much. Curious to see if this mystery check that West Ham is dangling to an unnamed striker amounts to anything. ... Portsmouth 1, West Ham 1
* Tottenham v. Fulham -- (Live, FSC, 2:45 p.m.) This match sets up favorably for Spurs since Fulham's best guns -- Bobby Zamora and Clint Dempsey won't play because of injuries. But is anything ever a lay-up for Tottenham? Interesting fact. Tottenham destroyed Wigan 9-1 on Nov. 23. In the 10 matches in the league since that, they've scored a total of 10 goals. These two teams played a scoreless draw on Boxing Day. I'm sure Roy Hodgson would sign up for repeat. ... Spurs 1, Fulham 0
* Wolves v. Liverpool -- (Live, Setanta, 2:45 p.m.) Wolves are about as non-descript a side we've seen in the Premier League in a long time. Do they have any sort of identity? Once again, Liverpool is on watch. This would seem like another chance for the club to stub it's toe. The track record for Liverpool this season is, "save the season", "blow the season." Frankly, I'm tired of guessing. If they can't beat Wolves with Steven Gerrard back in the fold, then they don't deserve to play in the Champions League. ... Wolves 0, Liverpool 1
* Bolton v. Burnley -- Good thing we had the whole Owen Coyle saga, otherwise this would be a totally forgettable match. If Bolton can't pull the full three points away from this one, well, it doesn't look good for long-term safety. If Coyle is a smart enough manager, you'd think he'd be able to field a lineup to exploit Burnley's weaknesses, right? And with the club in a relegation fight, how much playing time is Stuart Holden going to get between now and the end of the season? Worth the gamble if you're him, though. ... Bolton 2, Burnley 1
Wednesday:
* Aston Villa v. Arsenal -- Could be a fun one at Villa Park. Aston Villa has allowed six goals in its last two matches, both Cup games. As we know Arsenal likes to score and should be in a foul mood after losing in the FA Cup on Saturday. You wonder if Villa has the mental resolve to get a result here, because right around this time last season the Gunners blew past them up the table and into the Champions League. Considering how Aston Villa's defense has played the last couple matches, plus the congestion of fixtures, it could be tough to slow down the Gunners. ... Aston Villa 1, Arsenal 2
* Chelsea v. Birminham City -- (Live, FSC, 2:45) Birmigham is the club that keep on chugging along. I think that the unbeaten run, which began in October ends here. Brum got lucky to get a 0-0 draw on Boxing Day to Chelsea, in a game where it took 30 shots. Chelsea got some good news from Africa, with Didier Drogba on his way back sooner than later, but it also lost Michael Essien for the near future, which probably doesn't cancel out. ... Chelsea 2, Birmingham 0
* Blackburn v. Wigan Athletic -- Case and point of the blob-like mass of teams that are going to contest the relegation fight over the next four and a half months. ... Blackburn 1, Wigan 1
* Everton v. Sunderland -- Two teams going in different directions. Everton seems to have gotten its act together, even if that includes bringing in Phillippe Senderos. With Mikel Arteta returning from an 11-month layoff, maybe the Toffees can make a run and secure a Europa League berth. That's about all they can do at this point, out of the Cups and all. Meanwhile, something is rotten with Sunderland. Not sure what it is, but the team hasn't seemed right for weeks. If he plays, this could be the best chance for Landon Donovan to get onto the scoresheet for Everton. ... Everton 3, Sunderland 1
Last round: 3-0
Season: 113-98:
Labels: African Cup of Nations, brett favre, cote d'ivoire, English Premier League, fox soccer, losing sucks, nfl, Prem Picks, Soccer
Honduras 3, U.S. 1.
To quote the great philosopher Wayne Campbell, "That blew goats." (Though, you'll see in a see paragraphs there is actually some good news to come from this match.)
As I "tweeted" last night, I watched the game at a friend's house who doesn't get Fox Soccer, so it was the Telefutra feed. Considering what transpired Saturday night at the Home Depot Center, it seemed like the cromulent decision. Or at least a decision that was on par for the proceedings from Carson, Calif.
Not to take away the focus from the game itself, but any USMNT team fan should be a tinge disappointed how the supposed crown jewel of U.S. soccer was turned into a party for a festive Honduran crowd that seems to already have contracted World Cup fever. How else to explain how they want to canonize Jonathon Bornstein, who amazingly unlike most of the U.S. team wasn't a total trainwreck.
Hey, no knocking the Honduras fans, well, except for the shall we say rather "ample" woman squeezed into a replica kit who's gut was literally hanging over the railing during Roger Espinoza's goal that made it 3-0. Honduras, with a second-string Palacios, looked downright frisky. The game may have been a friendly, but Los Catrachos came out like men on fire. Switzerland, I'd be worried.
On the other hand, what can we say about the U.S.? A month of training sure did a lot of good.
Before glossing over what was a truly forgettable 90 minutes of U.S. soccer, a wrinkle of good news. Yes, good news.
Saturday was the last time the U.S. will need to deal with the abomination that is CONCACAF officiating in 2010 in a match that matters. (Okay, that El Salvador friendly, too.)
Not to take Jimmy Conrad off the griddle for his two mindless jersey tugs, which resulting in a pair of yellow cards and a sending off coupled with a penalty kick in the 20th minute. They were stupid plays and the result of Conrad lacking any real pace. There is no disputing this.
However, when I got home around 2:30 a.m., I fired up the DVR to watch these plays and see a little of the FSC broadcast. (Hey, Mark Rogandino, who knew?!)
The first foul by Conrad, where he bumped arms into Walter Martinez as Honduras tried to break the other way from a U.S. corner, was a borderline card. Could a ref award a yellow? Sure. Could Mexican ref Benito Archundia have simply gotten away with giving Conrad a verbal warning? Probably. It was a cluttered break near midfield, not a clear breakaway.
Put it in context, too. It was only the sixth minute. This was a friendly. These teams weren't out for blood. There was nothing really at stake. It wasn't a violent two-foot slide tackle, it was a jersey tug at worst. The whole point of the match was for Bob Bradley and Reinaldo Rueda to evaluate their players, though the way Honduras played they might have actually wanted to prove a point. Should a man officiating international matches understand this?
Archundia's harsh early decision, led to where he had to send off Conrad for his foul in the box (which was somewhat dubious depending on the angle), thus ending any realistic chance to evaluate this match for the U.S. To counter my own argument, in theory Archundia could have given Conrad a red card in the box, if he really wanted.
Bottom line, this was a friendly and to give out a quick card like that instead of a warning nullified the entire purpose of the game. To use a line by my old pal Mike Francesa, Archundia was "Lawst" but so was Conrad, who's days with the U.S. effectively ended Saturday night.
Oh well. Thus is the state of officiating in the region.
That's not an excuse, since nothing the U.S. did while it had a full complement of XI men didn't do much to inspire. Again, this group of players, Soup Kitchen versions of the full U.S. team or not, did have roughly a month to train and looked like a group of players that never saw the field together.
Other stuff:
* As my father told me over the phone Sunday morning, "What was the point of this game other than money?" and "without Donovan this team doesn't know how to play." Summed up the entire night in about 1,000 less words than me. Bravo Pops!
* The Jeff Cunningham brief experiment doesn't seem to have much more of a shelf live. Granted he or Robbie Findley never saw much of the ball, but he's a guy that's essentially useless unless he scores. Trotting around the field at half speed is not the way to win the heart of Bradley the Elder.
* To put it nicely, Sacha Kljestan and Marvell Wynne likely don't see the field in a U.S. shirt for a long time. In fairness to Wynne, he does look about 45 years old.
* Troy Perkins. Egads. Who did he piss off to get stuck in goal for this one and the 5-0 drubbing to Mexico in the Gold Cup final?
* Robbie Rogers did have about the only U.S. highlight, a beautifully struck bomb from distance that rattled off the bad. Other than that, didn't seem to do much.
* Benny Feilhaber and Kyle Beckerman in the center of midfield? Didn't put their stamp onto the match.
* Good for Clarence Goodson scoring, though he got away with a power elbow to the head of the Honduran keeper. My one quibble with Bradley was why he waited until the second half to take off Cunningham and replace him with a defender. It's hard to say if another true central defender would have prevented Jerry Palacios' diving header. Then again, most coaches in Bradley's spot likely would have waited until halftime for a move.
* All the second-half subs, including the debut of Alejandro Bedoya didn't have much time to put any imprint on the match.
* From this match, how many guys get on the plane to South Africa? Feilhaber? Goodson? Findley? And of course, Bornstein.
Final thought:
I probably wrote more than I thought on a match that really didn't mean anything other than fan the flames for people that don't think MLS is a good way to prepare American players for international matches. Considering Honduras played a lineup of mainly domestic-based players, that makes the league look even worse.
Anyway, this was a game with very little to gain for the U.S. and once it went down to 10 men with 70 minutes left anything useful went down the tunnel and into the locker room with Jimmy Conrad.
Suffice to say, not the greatest way to kick of 2010, but nothing to lose any sleep over ... unless a couple more U.S. starters get hurt between now and June. The depth chart is like a Hollywood actress on a crash diet -- skeletal.
P.S. -- Carlos Pavon, Randy Watson called. He wants his hair back.
To quote the great philosopher Wayne Campbell, "That blew goats." (Though, you'll see in a see paragraphs there is actually some good news to come from this match.)
As I "tweeted" last night, I watched the game at a friend's house who doesn't get Fox Soccer, so it was the Telefutra feed. Considering what transpired Saturday night at the Home Depot Center, it seemed like the cromulent decision. Or at least a decision that was on par for the proceedings from Carson, Calif.
Not to take away the focus from the game itself, but any USMNT team fan should be a tinge disappointed how the supposed crown jewel of U.S. soccer was turned into a party for a festive Honduran crowd that seems to already have contracted World Cup fever. How else to explain how they want to canonize Jonathon Bornstein, who amazingly unlike most of the U.S. team wasn't a total trainwreck.
Hey, no knocking the Honduras fans, well, except for the shall we say rather "ample" woman squeezed into a replica kit who's gut was literally hanging over the railing during Roger Espinoza's goal that made it 3-0. Honduras, with a second-string Palacios, looked downright frisky. The game may have been a friendly, but Los Catrachos came out like men on fire. Switzerland, I'd be worried.
On the other hand, what can we say about the U.S.? A month of training sure did a lot of good.
Before glossing over what was a truly forgettable 90 minutes of U.S. soccer, a wrinkle of good news. Yes, good news.
Saturday was the last time the U.S. will need to deal with the abomination that is CONCACAF officiating in 2010 in a match that matters. (Okay, that El Salvador friendly, too.)
Not to take Jimmy Conrad off the griddle for his two mindless jersey tugs, which resulting in a pair of yellow cards and a sending off coupled with a penalty kick in the 20th minute. They were stupid plays and the result of Conrad lacking any real pace. There is no disputing this.
However, when I got home around 2:30 a.m., I fired up the DVR to watch these plays and see a little of the FSC broadcast. (Hey, Mark Rogandino, who knew?!)
The first foul by Conrad, where he bumped arms into Walter Martinez as Honduras tried to break the other way from a U.S. corner, was a borderline card. Could a ref award a yellow? Sure. Could Mexican ref Benito Archundia have simply gotten away with giving Conrad a verbal warning? Probably. It was a cluttered break near midfield, not a clear breakaway.
Put it in context, too. It was only the sixth minute. This was a friendly. These teams weren't out for blood. There was nothing really at stake. It wasn't a violent two-foot slide tackle, it was a jersey tug at worst. The whole point of the match was for Bob Bradley and Reinaldo Rueda to evaluate their players, though the way Honduras played they might have actually wanted to prove a point. Should a man officiating international matches understand this?
Archundia's harsh early decision, led to where he had to send off Conrad for his foul in the box (which was somewhat dubious depending on the angle), thus ending any realistic chance to evaluate this match for the U.S. To counter my own argument, in theory Archundia could have given Conrad a red card in the box, if he really wanted.
Bottom line, this was a friendly and to give out a quick card like that instead of a warning nullified the entire purpose of the game. To use a line by my old pal Mike Francesa, Archundia was "Lawst" but so was Conrad, who's days with the U.S. effectively ended Saturday night.
Oh well. Thus is the state of officiating in the region.
That's not an excuse, since nothing the U.S. did while it had a full complement of XI men didn't do much to inspire. Again, this group of players, Soup Kitchen versions of the full U.S. team or not, did have roughly a month to train and looked like a group of players that never saw the field together.
Other stuff:
* As my father told me over the phone Sunday morning, "What was the point of this game other than money?" and "without Donovan this team doesn't know how to play." Summed up the entire night in about 1,000 less words than me. Bravo Pops!
* The Jeff Cunningham brief experiment doesn't seem to have much more of a shelf live. Granted he or Robbie Findley never saw much of the ball, but he's a guy that's essentially useless unless he scores. Trotting around the field at half speed is not the way to win the heart of Bradley the Elder.
* To put it nicely, Sacha Kljestan and Marvell Wynne likely don't see the field in a U.S. shirt for a long time. In fairness to Wynne, he does look about 45 years old.
* Troy Perkins. Egads. Who did he piss off to get stuck in goal for this one and the 5-0 drubbing to Mexico in the Gold Cup final?
* Robbie Rogers did have about the only U.S. highlight, a beautifully struck bomb from distance that rattled off the bad. Other than that, didn't seem to do much.
* Benny Feilhaber and Kyle Beckerman in the center of midfield? Didn't put their stamp onto the match.
* Good for Clarence Goodson scoring, though he got away with a power elbow to the head of the Honduran keeper. My one quibble with Bradley was why he waited until the second half to take off Cunningham and replace him with a defender. It's hard to say if another true central defender would have prevented Jerry Palacios' diving header. Then again, most coaches in Bradley's spot likely would have waited until halftime for a move.
* All the second-half subs, including the debut of Alejandro Bedoya didn't have much time to put any imprint on the match.
* From this match, how many guys get on the plane to South Africa? Feilhaber? Goodson? Findley? And of course, Bornstein.
Final thought:
I probably wrote more than I thought on a match that really didn't mean anything other than fan the flames for people that don't think MLS is a good way to prepare American players for international matches. Considering Honduras played a lineup of mainly domestic-based players, that makes the league look even worse.
Anyway, this was a game with very little to gain for the U.S. and once it went down to 10 men with 70 minutes left anything useful went down the tunnel and into the locker room with Jimmy Conrad.
Suffice to say, not the greatest way to kick of 2010, but nothing to lose any sleep over ... unless a couple more U.S. starters get hurt between now and June. The depth chart is like a Hollywood actress on a crash diet -- skeletal.
P.S. -- Carlos Pavon, Randy Watson called. He wants his hair back.
Labels: 2010 world cup, bob bradley, Friendlies, honduras, Soccer, USMNT
Welcome to the first post in this here slice of the Inter-nets of 2010 yapping about the U.S. National Team. This post was going to be titled, "State by State" but that was already taken by a 1990s sketch comedy troupe, which had a show on MTV that took forever to release its DVD box set and when it did, it couldn't get all the music cleared.
Before digging into the D & D boys, Bradley the Elder (and Younger) and the rest of the wacky old Gulati Gang, an aside, which I half-promise will make sense when it's over. Maybe.
* * *
One of the weird pet peeves I've always had about sports media is the reliance on the past. Sure, the past is a pretty good indicator in certain areas. When a guy is batting over .500 against a certain pitcher, yeah, it means he owns him. Or if a guy like Shane Battier can consistently hold Kobe Bryant to under his average, lightbulb! it might mean something.
On the other hand, should we care what the lifetime record the Cincinnati Reds have playing against the Cubs in nearly 100 years of Wrigley Field means? Is Brandon Phillips walking into the batter's box wondering how Ernie Lombardi or Johnny Bench fared in the "Friendly Confines"?
It's sort of like an old algebra equation. If X = A does Y = A? In theory, shouldn't they be independent of each other?
Where this gets tricky is the World Cup, which as we know, only happens every four years.
Should the consistent track records accrued by Das Germans mean something? Or how about the tempermentally inconsistent play of nations like England and the Netherlands? Do African nations -- collectively seeking a World Cup breakthrough -- get a home continent boost even though the African land mass is enormous and disparate?
And what of the U.S.?
If you're a fan of weighting track records, we only really have three World Cups to go by. Throw anything pre-1990 completely out of the equation, though be ready to hear about the famous 1950 match against England in Brazil plenty in the build up to the match in Rustenberg on June 12. (In fact, this proves the theory. The U.S. is 1-0 all time vs. England in the World Cup, which means absolutely next to nothing in actuality. If Frank Lampard is lining up a free kick outside the box on June 12, I severely doubt that the names "Joey Gaetjens" and "Stan Mortensen" are cursing through his mind.)
Does, or should, it mean anything that the U.S. reached the semifinals of the first World Cup in 1930? It's like comparing an old Thomas Edison crafted phonograph that played music recorded on beeswax cylinders to an 80 gig iPod touch. We can probably extend that comparison all the way to the 1990 Cup, too, which is a lot like Sony Walkman again compared against the almighty iPod. It's different animals. Same thing with 1994, where the U.S. made it as hosts. (If there's a comparable from that 1994 Cup team it might be the current South African team hosting the upcoming tournament.)
So all we really have to stand on are three Cups. Two disasters and one an almost still hard to believe success. What we need to examine, or at least learn from these three Cups is what was the pre-tournament gameplan.
Take 1998 in France. Steve Sampson had a plan, at least on paper. Except his ill-fated 3-6-1 formation coupled with jettisoning John Harkes on the eve of the tournament led to a last-place finish. Suffice to say, trying a formation that has never been used or proven successful in a century of the modern game isn't exactly the savviest idea of all time. Call it the "attacking the Russian front during winter" of soccer tactics.
Would the U.S. have finished better than 32nd if Sampson went a more conventional route? Impossible to figure out, but perhaps the embarrassing lose to Iran would have been avoided. Either way, getting past Germany and Yugoslavia in its then-still-united swan song would have been tricky whatever Sampson cooked up. (Fun fact, Yugoslavia featured a then 19-year-old Dejan Stanković, or about 45,000 packs of cigarettes earlier Dejan Stanković.)
So let's look at 2002, where the U.S. made it to the quarterfinals in South Korea before being undone by Ze Germans and Torsten Frings hand. How you want to look at this depends on perspective. It can't be discounted the U.S. got some very fortunate breaks and got through its group with just a 1-1-1 mark. On top of that, they drew Mexico in the knockout round, a team it knew it could beat.
If you want to take it another step further, the U.S. got a one-in-a-lifetime two week performance from John O'Brien, before he faded away to help Axl Rose put the finishing touches on 'Chinese Democracy.'
Yet that does dismiss a little of the pre-tournament planning by Bruce Arena, who most importantly unleashed two players from the then still nascent MLS -- Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley. Arena used players the world didn't know and certainly caught a Portuguese team overflowing with hubris in the tournament opener.
Granted four years later in Germany, using many of the same players that were heroes in Asia led to the U.S. crashing and burning and scoring just two goals -- one by an American in three games. Yes, a miserable draw that included the eventual winners -- Italy -- crushed the U.S. spirits, but it did seem like Arena figured what worked in 2002 would work again in 2006 and got burned by it.
If there was a game plan for 2006, it was probably that the U.S. players have evolved to the point where they could stand toe-to-toe with the world's best. Didn't quite work out. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
All that leads us to 2010, where the U.S. in theory should be flying high thanks to a manageable draw and recent success in South Africa during last summer's Confederations Cup. You'd think this tournament draw more parallels to the 2002 version, if only since it's not being held in a traditional FIFA hotbed. Logic would dictate, too, that with another four years of seasoning, American players are inching toward a threshold of the world's elite.
The million dollar question for the U.S. and its fans is this, can coach Bob Bradley pull off a Hannibal Smith and draw off a plan that comes together? Or at least gets the U.S. into the knockout rounds?
And what is that game plan?
Before theorizing on that, how would a opposing coaches' cursory scouting report about the U.S. read?
* Landon Donovan is the offensive force.
* Adept on the counter attack.
* Strong physically, especially in the defense.
* Erratic and prone to reckless cautions and red cards.
* In Tim Howard, a first-rate shot-stopper.
* Play up or down to the level of the opponent.
This isn't trying to be mean or critical. We've seen enough of the U.S. to draw these conclusions, so I'm sure the staff of Fabio Capello has done the same. You'd think. He does wear stylish glasses which science has proven makes anyone look about 33 percent more intelligent.
And to that point, using a 2002 strategy of un-earthing a couple undiscovered gems from MLS or guys plying their trade in the far reaches of Scandinavia might not exactly work either. Again, maybe it's the glasses thing, but I'd guess Capello is dispatching a scout of some form to Saturday night's U.S. friendly against Honduras at the Home Depot Center (9 p.m. Eastern, FSC) to watch some of these players and take notes -- hey, free California vacation, right?
This isn't a problem only for the U.S. Aside from the cryptically secretive North Korean team, every team should have a pretty thick scouting report written on at least it's three group-stage opponents. Other than Portsmouth defender Nadir Belhadj and Rangers' Madjid Bougherra most of Algeria's team is about as anonymous as a typical Division-III college basketball team. But I'm sure Bradley and his staff are getting as many looks at the Desert Foxes as possible.
In short, the world isn't as big as it was in 2002. Just think of all the streaming of live games and tube sites available to us fans. Think what coaches have at their disposal.
For all his warts, Bradley the Elder does take on a Princetonian, academic approach to the game. I'd hope he has the soccer acumen to figure out a way to break down and expose the three U.S. group stage opponents, especially since the book written on the U.S. is fairly simple and straight forward.
It's a shame that the two biggest X-factors, two players opposing defense would have to account for at almost all times besides Donovan -- Davies and Dempsey -- have their status in major doubt ahead of June. Dempsey, we are relieved will probably play, but counting on a guy with a knee injury is risky. (The news on Dempsey's knee earlier this week was good, but also very vague.)
And we've seen with those injuries, coupled with the loss of Oguchi Onyewu that for all the strides taken by the U.S., quality depth remains a major issue.
What's left is a strange roster, to say the least, saying nothing of the group of semi-unknowns Bradley called into came earlier this month ahead of Saturday's friendly. Of course, many other second-tier nations at the Cup find similar dilemmas with players split between a fledgling domestic leagues and disparate clubs across Europe. The whole MLS equation seems to raise the hackles more than it should, doesn't it?
In short, the U.S. has one truly dynamic player -- Donovan. A plethora of central midfield crunchers and a decent stable in central defense. At the other end, all the wide positions from midfield to back are inconsistent with a couple round pegs for square holes. See Exhibit A, Bornstein, Jonathan.
This leads to just another question. Should the U.S. simply toss out the best XI it can onto the field and shoehorn some player into positions that they aren't naturally adapted for? OR does Bradley figure out a system and find the best players for it? Remember, this second option could lead to the likes of Conor Casey starting a World Cup match.
With those two options, why not take Plan C and simply scout the hell out of England, Algeria and Slovakia. Use the resources at the disposal of the USSF to amass massive data on the players and tenancies. Figure out a way to boil it down and distill it to the players.
And since we figure your opponents are doing the same thing, run as much misdirection as possible between now and June 12. Or at least development some stuff to unleash at the Cup.
If we want to consider this the fourth real, modern World Cup for the U.S. program it'll probably need to draw on the experiences dating back from 1998. There's a lot to learn from.
The U.S. needs to study up and show that its learned from the sins of the past. The path to success has never been as simple or straightforward. There clearly isn't a magic bullet formula to propel the U.S. from the pretty-good teams to the greats, either.
Again, the two-fold question remains. Can the U.S. cook up a plan that will yield positive results in South Africa? And does the U.S. have the proverbial horses to pull it off?
If you say you know either answer, please call Bradley the Elder as soon as possible. Thanks.
About this actual game:
* Me? I'm not putting too much stock in the result. I'd have to wager that Bradley the Elder wants to try a few things the squad has worked on over the last month, more than going out and grinding a result.
* Revoke my blogging "credentials" if you want, but honestly until about three days ago I'd never heard of Alejandro Bedoya. Don't taze me, bro.
* Four keepers on the roster -- Kevin Hartman, Nick Rimando, Troy Perkins and Zach Thornton. If we're basing it on the last MLS season, Rimando probably gets tabbed to start, no?
* Glad to see that Jimmy Conrad is back in the mix. If he doesn't make it to South Africa, a network ought to hire him for some off-beat commentary. Oh wait, MLS is playing through the Cup.
* If Heath Pearce doesn't get serious minutes in this match, his chances don't look very good going forward.
* If you can figure out the midfield mix for the match, you're clairvoyant. From what I've seen of him in MLS, Brad Davis looks like he can bring something to the table. It'd be good, too, to give Benny Feilhaber the keys to the offense and see if he can carry the team, albeit against a second-string Honduras team.
* This last U.S. camp probably meant the most to Sacha Kljestan. Nobody in the U.S. fold saw their stock drop as rapidly and precipitously as the Chivas USA-man. At least he'll always have the cover of 'FIFA 10.'
* Does anyone out there have faith in Kyle Beckerman, Robbie Rogers and Eddie Gaven. They all show flashes, but do you really want to take them to battle in South Africa?
* Too bad Marcus Tracy had to leave the camp with an ankle injury. I saw him play many times in high school and was the best scholastic athlete I've ever seen.
* Curious to see if Robbie Findley might be able to fill the speedy forward role with Davies on the shelf? And can we judge a player like Jeff Cunningham on a game like Saturday's? Aren't he and Casey two guys that form is the key for?
* Maybe we'll see some nice work from set pieces. Those are the key in international tournaments.
* Nobody other than Bradley the Elder can tell us if he's putting more stock in the previous three weeks of training or the 90 minute match. At this point, I've given up trying to figure out what Bradley is looking for in the first place. (Hence, there is not even an attempt by me to guess the lineup.)
Miscellany:
* Dear ESPN, please bury the term "Team USA" in regard to the U.S. national team.
* If and it's a big if considering the vagueness from Fulham's official medical statement, but if Dempsey is near 100 percent fit the best U.S. lineup probably is some variation of a 4-5-1. Slot Bradley the Younger and likely Rico Clark in the defensive spots with Donovan, Dempsey and Stuart Holden (who looks to officially have signed with Bolton Friday) -- if he's settled at a club -- in the attacking spots. This formation would work wonders if the U.S. had a world class caliber central forward that could both win the ball, hold it up and also provide an attacking threat. On speed alone Davies could have filled this role. Can Altidore do it? With his playing time looking to get more inconsistent with the addition of Amr Zaki at Hull City it seems unlikely to bank the U.S. fortunes on the 20-year-old. Then again, the other side of the argument is that he'll have fresh legs. We'll see. The other pool of candidates -- Conor Casey, Eddie Johnson, Jeff Cunningham, Kenny Cooper, Brian Ching -- are just too one-dimensional and or inconsistent. Of course, if we could ever get enough of a grassroots campaign to coax Brian McBride to pull a Henrik Larsson, it just might work. (Assuming McBride hasn't totally calcified over the last two years.)
* What are the Vegas money-line odds that a) two out three (Dempsey, Davies or Onyewu) play a roll at the World Cup or b) a wild card player (Adu, E. Johnson, Twellman, etc.) emerge with the team?
* Since I didn't feel like writing an entire depth chart, which are the biggest position battles going forward to June? Jonathan Spector vs. Steve Cherundolo at right back? Bornstein vs. the field at left back? As it stands the forward spot is a total merry-go-round. Riding the hot hand might not be the craziest idea, unless Altidore emerges in the final third of the Premier League season.
* First U.S. game on FSC post-Max Bretos. He'll be missed, but if it's Christian Miles taking over, that's not the worst thing in the world. He seems affable enough. (I realize some people do loathe him.)
Final thought:
Will Saturday's game be much of an indicator for what's in store for the U.S. fortunes this year? Absolutely not.
If anything, let's hope that since he was hired in 2007 Bradley has finally found an identity, or some sort of ethos for the U.S. team.
Before digging into the D & D boys, Bradley the Elder (and Younger) and the rest of the wacky old Gulati Gang, an aside, which I half-promise will make sense when it's over. Maybe.
One of the weird pet peeves I've always had about sports media is the reliance on the past. Sure, the past is a pretty good indicator in certain areas. When a guy is batting over .500 against a certain pitcher, yeah, it means he owns him. Or if a guy like Shane Battier can consistently hold Kobe Bryant to under his average, lightbulb! it might mean something.
On the other hand, should we care what the lifetime record the Cincinnati Reds have playing against the Cubs in nearly 100 years of Wrigley Field means? Is Brandon Phillips walking into the batter's box wondering how Ernie Lombardi or Johnny Bench fared in the "Friendly Confines"?
It's sort of like an old algebra equation. If X = A does Y = A? In theory, shouldn't they be independent of each other?
Where this gets tricky is the World Cup, which as we know, only happens every four years.
Should the consistent track records accrued by Das Germans mean something? Or how about the tempermentally inconsistent play of nations like England and the Netherlands? Do African nations -- collectively seeking a World Cup breakthrough -- get a home continent boost even though the African land mass is enormous and disparate?
And what of the U.S.?
If you're a fan of weighting track records, we only really have three World Cups to go by. Throw anything pre-1990 completely out of the equation, though be ready to hear about the famous 1950 match against England in Brazil plenty in the build up to the match in Rustenberg on June 12. (In fact, this proves the theory. The U.S. is 1-0 all time vs. England in the World Cup, which means absolutely next to nothing in actuality. If Frank Lampard is lining up a free kick outside the box on June 12, I severely doubt that the names "Joey Gaetjens" and "Stan Mortensen" are cursing through his mind.)
Does, or should, it mean anything that the U.S. reached the semifinals of the first World Cup in 1930? It's like comparing an old Thomas Edison crafted phonograph that played music recorded on beeswax cylinders to an 80 gig iPod touch. We can probably extend that comparison all the way to the 1990 Cup, too, which is a lot like Sony Walkman again compared against the almighty iPod. It's different animals. Same thing with 1994, where the U.S. made it as hosts. (If there's a comparable from that 1994 Cup team it might be the current South African team hosting the upcoming tournament.)
So all we really have to stand on are three Cups. Two disasters and one an almost still hard to believe success. What we need to examine, or at least learn from these three Cups is what was the pre-tournament gameplan.
Take 1998 in France. Steve Sampson had a plan, at least on paper. Except his ill-fated 3-6-1 formation coupled with jettisoning John Harkes on the eve of the tournament led to a last-place finish. Suffice to say, trying a formation that has never been used or proven successful in a century of the modern game isn't exactly the savviest idea of all time. Call it the "attacking the Russian front during winter" of soccer tactics.
Would the U.S. have finished better than 32nd if Sampson went a more conventional route? Impossible to figure out, but perhaps the embarrassing lose to Iran would have been avoided. Either way, getting past Germany and Yugoslavia in its then-still-united swan song would have been tricky whatever Sampson cooked up. (Fun fact, Yugoslavia featured a then 19-year-old Dejan Stanković, or about 45,000 packs of cigarettes earlier Dejan Stanković.)
So let's look at 2002, where the U.S. made it to the quarterfinals in South Korea before being undone by Ze Germans and Torsten Frings hand. How you want to look at this depends on perspective. It can't be discounted the U.S. got some very fortunate breaks and got through its group with just a 1-1-1 mark. On top of that, they drew Mexico in the knockout round, a team it knew it could beat.
If you want to take it another step further, the U.S. got a one-in-a-lifetime two week performance from John O'Brien, before he faded away to help Axl Rose put the finishing touches on 'Chinese Democracy.'
Yet that does dismiss a little of the pre-tournament planning by Bruce Arena, who most importantly unleashed two players from the then still nascent MLS -- Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley. Arena used players the world didn't know and certainly caught a Portuguese team overflowing with hubris in the tournament opener.
Granted four years later in Germany, using many of the same players that were heroes in Asia led to the U.S. crashing and burning and scoring just two goals -- one by an American in three games. Yes, a miserable draw that included the eventual winners -- Italy -- crushed the U.S. spirits, but it did seem like Arena figured what worked in 2002 would work again in 2006 and got burned by it.
If there was a game plan for 2006, it was probably that the U.S. players have evolved to the point where they could stand toe-to-toe with the world's best. Didn't quite work out. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
All that leads us to 2010, where the U.S. in theory should be flying high thanks to a manageable draw and recent success in South Africa during last summer's Confederations Cup. You'd think this tournament draw more parallels to the 2002 version, if only since it's not being held in a traditional FIFA hotbed. Logic would dictate, too, that with another four years of seasoning, American players are inching toward a threshold of the world's elite.
The million dollar question for the U.S. and its fans is this, can coach Bob Bradley pull off a Hannibal Smith and draw off a plan that comes together? Or at least gets the U.S. into the knockout rounds?
And what is that game plan?
Before theorizing on that, how would a opposing coaches' cursory scouting report about the U.S. read?
* Landon Donovan is the offensive force.
* Adept on the counter attack.
* Strong physically, especially in the defense.
* Erratic and prone to reckless cautions and red cards.
* In Tim Howard, a first-rate shot-stopper.
* Play up or down to the level of the opponent.
This isn't trying to be mean or critical. We've seen enough of the U.S. to draw these conclusions, so I'm sure the staff of Fabio Capello has done the same. You'd think. He does wear stylish glasses which science has proven makes anyone look about 33 percent more intelligent.
And to that point, using a 2002 strategy of un-earthing a couple undiscovered gems from MLS or guys plying their trade in the far reaches of Scandinavia might not exactly work either. Again, maybe it's the glasses thing, but I'd guess Capello is dispatching a scout of some form to Saturday night's U.S. friendly against Honduras at the Home Depot Center (9 p.m. Eastern, FSC) to watch some of these players and take notes -- hey, free California vacation, right?
This isn't a problem only for the U.S. Aside from the cryptically secretive North Korean team, every team should have a pretty thick scouting report written on at least it's three group-stage opponents. Other than Portsmouth defender Nadir Belhadj and Rangers' Madjid Bougherra most of Algeria's team is about as anonymous as a typical Division-III college basketball team. But I'm sure Bradley and his staff are getting as many looks at the Desert Foxes as possible.
In short, the world isn't as big as it was in 2002. Just think of all the streaming of live games and tube sites available to us fans. Think what coaches have at their disposal.
For all his warts, Bradley the Elder does take on a Princetonian, academic approach to the game. I'd hope he has the soccer acumen to figure out a way to break down and expose the three U.S. group stage opponents, especially since the book written on the U.S. is fairly simple and straight forward.
It's a shame that the two biggest X-factors, two players opposing defense would have to account for at almost all times besides Donovan -- Davies and Dempsey -- have their status in major doubt ahead of June. Dempsey, we are relieved will probably play, but counting on a guy with a knee injury is risky. (The news on Dempsey's knee earlier this week was good, but also very vague.)
And we've seen with those injuries, coupled with the loss of Oguchi Onyewu that for all the strides taken by the U.S., quality depth remains a major issue.
What's left is a strange roster, to say the least, saying nothing of the group of semi-unknowns Bradley called into came earlier this month ahead of Saturday's friendly. Of course, many other second-tier nations at the Cup find similar dilemmas with players split between a fledgling domestic leagues and disparate clubs across Europe. The whole MLS equation seems to raise the hackles more than it should, doesn't it?
In short, the U.S. has one truly dynamic player -- Donovan. A plethora of central midfield crunchers and a decent stable in central defense. At the other end, all the wide positions from midfield to back are inconsistent with a couple round pegs for square holes. See Exhibit A, Bornstein, Jonathan.
This leads to just another question. Should the U.S. simply toss out the best XI it can onto the field and shoehorn some player into positions that they aren't naturally adapted for? OR does Bradley figure out a system and find the best players for it? Remember, this second option could lead to the likes of Conor Casey starting a World Cup match.
With those two options, why not take Plan C and simply scout the hell out of England, Algeria and Slovakia. Use the resources at the disposal of the USSF to amass massive data on the players and tenancies. Figure out a way to boil it down and distill it to the players.
And since we figure your opponents are doing the same thing, run as much misdirection as possible between now and June 12. Or at least development some stuff to unleash at the Cup.
If we want to consider this the fourth real, modern World Cup for the U.S. program it'll probably need to draw on the experiences dating back from 1998. There's a lot to learn from.
The U.S. needs to study up and show that its learned from the sins of the past. The path to success has never been as simple or straightforward. There clearly isn't a magic bullet formula to propel the U.S. from the pretty-good teams to the greats, either.
Again, the two-fold question remains. Can the U.S. cook up a plan that will yield positive results in South Africa? And does the U.S. have the proverbial horses to pull it off?
If you say you know either answer, please call Bradley the Elder as soon as possible. Thanks.
About this actual game:
* Me? I'm not putting too much stock in the result. I'd have to wager that Bradley the Elder wants to try a few things the squad has worked on over the last month, more than going out and grinding a result.
* Revoke my blogging "credentials" if you want, but honestly until about three days ago I'd never heard of Alejandro Bedoya. Don't taze me, bro.
* Four keepers on the roster -- Kevin Hartman, Nick Rimando, Troy Perkins and Zach Thornton. If we're basing it on the last MLS season, Rimando probably gets tabbed to start, no?
* Glad to see that Jimmy Conrad is back in the mix. If he doesn't make it to South Africa, a network ought to hire him for some off-beat commentary. Oh wait, MLS is playing through the Cup.
* If Heath Pearce doesn't get serious minutes in this match, his chances don't look very good going forward.
* If you can figure out the midfield mix for the match, you're clairvoyant. From what I've seen of him in MLS, Brad Davis looks like he can bring something to the table. It'd be good, too, to give Benny Feilhaber the keys to the offense and see if he can carry the team, albeit against a second-string Honduras team.
* This last U.S. camp probably meant the most to Sacha Kljestan. Nobody in the U.S. fold saw their stock drop as rapidly and precipitously as the Chivas USA-man. At least he'll always have the cover of 'FIFA 10.'
* Does anyone out there have faith in Kyle Beckerman, Robbie Rogers and Eddie Gaven. They all show flashes, but do you really want to take them to battle in South Africa?
* Too bad Marcus Tracy had to leave the camp with an ankle injury. I saw him play many times in high school and was the best scholastic athlete I've ever seen.
* Curious to see if Robbie Findley might be able to fill the speedy forward role with Davies on the shelf? And can we judge a player like Jeff Cunningham on a game like Saturday's? Aren't he and Casey two guys that form is the key for?
* Maybe we'll see some nice work from set pieces. Those are the key in international tournaments.
* Nobody other than Bradley the Elder can tell us if he's putting more stock in the previous three weeks of training or the 90 minute match. At this point, I've given up trying to figure out what Bradley is looking for in the first place. (Hence, there is not even an attempt by me to guess the lineup.)
Miscellany:
* Dear ESPN, please bury the term "Team USA" in regard to the U.S. national team.
* If and it's a big if considering the vagueness from Fulham's official medical statement, but if Dempsey is near 100 percent fit the best U.S. lineup probably is some variation of a 4-5-1. Slot Bradley the Younger and likely Rico Clark in the defensive spots with Donovan, Dempsey and Stuart Holden (who looks to officially have signed with Bolton Friday) -- if he's settled at a club -- in the attacking spots. This formation would work wonders if the U.S. had a world class caliber central forward that could both win the ball, hold it up and also provide an attacking threat. On speed alone Davies could have filled this role. Can Altidore do it? With his playing time looking to get more inconsistent with the addition of Amr Zaki at Hull City it seems unlikely to bank the U.S. fortunes on the 20-year-old. Then again, the other side of the argument is that he'll have fresh legs. We'll see. The other pool of candidates -- Conor Casey, Eddie Johnson, Jeff Cunningham, Kenny Cooper, Brian Ching -- are just too one-dimensional and or inconsistent. Of course, if we could ever get enough of a grassroots campaign to coax Brian McBride to pull a Henrik Larsson, it just might work. (Assuming McBride hasn't totally calcified over the last two years.)
* What are the Vegas money-line odds that a) two out three (Dempsey, Davies or Onyewu) play a roll at the World Cup or b) a wild card player (Adu, E. Johnson, Twellman, etc.) emerge with the team?
* Since I didn't feel like writing an entire depth chart, which are the biggest position battles going forward to June? Jonathan Spector vs. Steve Cherundolo at right back? Bornstein vs. the field at left back? As it stands the forward spot is a total merry-go-round. Riding the hot hand might not be the craziest idea, unless Altidore emerges in the final third of the Premier League season.
* First U.S. game on FSC post-Max Bretos. He'll be missed, but if it's Christian Miles taking over, that's not the worst thing in the world. He seems affable enough. (I realize some people do loathe him.)
Final thought:
Will Saturday's game be much of an indicator for what's in store for the U.S. fortunes this year? Absolutely not.
If anything, let's hope that since he was hired in 2007 Bradley has finally found an identity, or some sort of ethos for the U.S. team.
Labels: 2010 world cup, bob bradley, Landon Donovan, Soccer, USMNT
You may or may not know that one of my day jobs is working as a mild mannered, okay surly, newspaper reporter.
A lot of the stuff I cover is high school sports. Lately coaches have felt leery of talking to me, because they're afraid if I write anything positive their teams begin to lose. The term "mush" is used and we all laugh.
My standard response is that if I had that kind of power, I'd be sitting on a stool at a Sports Book in Las Vegas.
After this weekend's slate of Premier League games, maybe I'm not so sure. I write an ejaculatulatory post about Carlos Tevez' current form and lo and behold, he's limping around Goodison Park on Saturday in a 2-0 loss to Everton.
Lately I've been banging the drum and driving the Clint Dempsey bandwagon all at the same time, and Sunday he limps off the field at Ewood Park.
Weird, right?
More on Tevez and City below, but let's start fretting about Clint Dempsey, who had continued his amazing form, rattling the crossbar with an audacious bicycle kick earlier in the match.
After losing the "feed" of the game for a bit, I finally got it back and within a minute I heard the name Dempsey, only to see his walking off the field with an injury. Right now even the injury itself is vague. Most reports have it as a knee or specifically an ACL type thing. He'll get the dreaded "scan" and until then we just have to keep our fingers crossed. It could be a sprain. It could be a tear. I'm not a doctor, or importantly, I'm not down there.
Considering most people tend to think the worst, if it's something serious the U.S. is now possibly, stress possibly, facing a World Cup without Charlie Davies, Oguchi Onyewu and now Dempsey. Anyone want to hope a flight to Merseyside right now and wrap Landon Donovan in a mylar bag and ship him off to the facility that's storing Ted Williams' frozen head?
As of writing this Sunday afternoon, Doc Hodgson is claiming its a PCL injury. If that's the case, he is likely done-zo for South Africa. It's a terrible blow for the U.S., but not as bad as the Davies/Onyewu setbacks. We've seen Dempsey go from useless to starman all in the same match, so in a sense the U.S. has already played without him for stretches in the past.
And as I've long maintained that a lineup featuring Dempsey and Donovan isn't entirely balanced. The U.S. does have rising talent Stuart Holden in the mix, who could conceivably step into the right midfield role. Or, another possibility is Donovan shifts to the right, like he did at Everton Saturday, and perhaps Bob Bradley exhumes the corpse of DaMarcus Beasley from the Scottish highlands? Or, gulp, Freddy Adu, worms his way into the mix.
Tactically, the U.S. might be able to replace 99 percent of Dempsey's output. The other one-percent, like the volley vs. Stoke, well that's what so upsetting about this development.
If anything, this tempers the U.S. enthusiasm ahead of the Cup just a little bit, which isn't such a terrible thing. Let's not forget, this team plays considerably better when it's playing the "Nobody Believes in Us" card as opposed to as a favorite. It also put a much bigger onus on Donovan to perform, and more importantly, carry the offense on his shoulders.
For all the gains made by the U.S. national team in 2009, depth remains a major issue -- something I'll address Friday ahead of the friendly with Honduras on Saturday night.
Right now, we just have to hope that the "scan" on Dempsey's knee turns up to be nothing major -- a long shot, I know. Keep telling yourself that since he walked off the field he can't be that injured. If Doc Hodgson is right, well, don't hold your breath.
Me? I'll just wonder why it took until the 2008 NFL season for all the mean things I've written about Tom Brady for Bernard Pollard to snap his knee in half.
A day late:
A couple days ago I was trying to drive my brother insane by singing Eddie Murphy's 1980s hit, "Party All the Time." The result of this -- the Rick James-produced track ended up getting stuck in my head.
So scanning through some awful late-night television, I stumbled across the utter pile of dog crap that is, "Meet Dave."
Here's your premise, "A crew of miniature aliens operate a spaceship that has a human form. While trying to save their planet, the aliens encounter a new problem, as their ship becomes smitten with an Earth woman."
God bless you Hollywood. And bless you HBO for deciding to air this classic. (It's worse than it sounds, even with the usually trustworthy Elizabeth Banks playing said "Earth woman.")
Amazingly, a thought occured to me while watching "Meet Dave" long enough to get enough fuel to mock it through the Internets -- the current plight of Liverpool is a lot like the career of Eddie Murphy, well, without the midnight transsexual prostitute stuff.
Look at it this way, both were powers in the 1980s, coincidentally while wearing Red. (Think the iconic Eddie Murphy Delirious outfit.) In the 80s Liverpool were still winning league titles and European titles, while Murphy was banging out hit-after-hit at the box office in between pickup basketball games with Prince. Liverpool even had the 'Anfield Rap'.
Maybe both peaked in 1984, Murphy by putting bananas in tailpipes in "Beverly Hills Cop" and Liverpool by winning the 1984 European Cup. You would have bet serious money that Murphy could have been the biggest comedic actor of all time and Liverpool would keep winning title-after-title.
Five years later, both changed. In 1989 Murphy starred in the flop-tacular "Harlem Nights", while Liverpool won its last league title (1989-90) as well as the tragic Hillsborough Disaster.
As we know, it turned out, Axel Foley and Kenny Dalglish didn't walk back through the door. ('Beverly Hills Cop 3' doesn't count.)
Sure since then both Murphy and Liverpool have had their moments. Murphy with the voice of the Donkey in 'Shrek', while Liverpool have won a UEFA Cup and the 2005 Champions League. Yet both remain mere shadows of the forces they were in the 1980s.
Put it this way, would either Eddie Murphy or Liverpool rate in the book of an 8-year-old kid?
Where the sketchy comparison ends (assuming you even made it this far after I glossed over Liverpool's previous eight decades of success), is that Eddie Murphy is amazingly only 48 years old. He conceivably doesn't need to make another movie the rest of his life. He can continue to churn out crummy family comedies or dreck like "The Advenutres of Pluto Nash" (a utter disaster) and nobody beyond the critics in Hollywood would care all that much.
Liverpool, meanwhile, is a club that means so much of millions of fans that it must endure, or figure a way out of its malaise. However so long as the Three Stooges -- Rafa, Hicks & Gillett are pulling the strings, they'll never get back to the heights, instead teasing fans with glimmers, like Murphy putting in, what I'm told, was a solid performance in 'Dream Girls'.
And if you never thought I'd say anything nice about Liverpool, at least Rafa and Hicks & Gillett had nothing to do with "Norbit."
SALVO!
Sometimes the scoreboard says it all, Chelsea 7, Sunderland 2.
It's fairly simple to read into that one -- in any language, no less.
Without its African stars, Chelsea essentially extended its two middle fingers to the rest of the Premier League -- "We're still here, dammit."
Chelsea, for the first 25-odd minutes, looked lively and threatening. (Throw out the rest of the match when its 3-0, because Sunderland check out.)
It was a couple individual players, too, taking it upon themselves, namely Flourent Malouda and Ashley Cole, with a set of fine individually worked goals. Cole in particular stood out, collecting a chip on the touchline from John Terry, faking out the keeper and chipping over him from a sheer angle with his right foot.
Chelsea, at its best over the last half-decade, has won a lot of games before they even started at Stamford Bridge. This was a return to that swagger, which should scare the rest of the league.
That said, the way this season is going, there are no guarantees this swagger continues to Jan. 27 for the Blues next league match against Birmingham City.
More of the same Manchester United:
Sir Alex Ferguson wouldn't have been able to blame the refs for this one. United, at Old Trafford, could have been down either 1-0 or 2-0 had Steven Fletcher or David Nugent been able to finish for Burnley. But alas, both shots went wide and United eventually got goals from Dimitar Berbatov and Wayne Rooney and order was restored.
Naturally, you can't count out United but this team doesn't look to have the juice to keep pace with Chelsea, regardless of what the past and the table say.
Right now some fans seem more concerned with trying to drive the Glazers out, any wya.
A nice chunk of Toffee:
During Everton's fairly comprehensive 2-0 home win over Manchester City, I tweeted something along the lines of Landon Donovan bringing the club some energy, on par with Brendan Fraser's unfrozen caveman character from the early 1990s "gem", "Encino Man." Yeah, a stretch, at best. Believe me, it was better than my original idea that Donovan was playing the Whoopie Goldberg role from "Sister Act" and sassin' up a previously boring dull set of nuns, or the Everton squad as it were.
Doesn't matter which mediocre 90s comedy you want to use, Donovan has definitely injected a lot of life into Everton, as now the Toffees are finally in the top half of the table. In his second Premier League outing, Donovan didn't set the world afire, but he did bring positive play to the Everton midfield.
To use a comparison I've used before, Donovan took a Vince Offer Slap Chop and turned a boring Everton tuna into an exciting, lively tuna salad. He did make a bad decision, trying to lob a cross to teammate, instead of going for goal, but why split hairs?
Credit David Moyes for lining up a midfield quartet of "Little Billy", Steven "The Avatar" Pienaar, Maroune Fellaini and Donovan. Maybe it was a little unconventional or too offense-oriented, but it worked as Manchester City looked 100 percent lost.
Perhaps my anointment of City was a little, say, premature. Saturday's performance lends credence to the idea that City was a product of a soft schedule. Couple that was a anonymous game Carlos Tevez, who might have gotten hurt or at least tweaked something in his leg and City went from world-beaters to ordinary overnight. That's how it works, right?
And what of Robinho? On as a first-half sub for Roque Santa Cruz in the first half and then pulled shortly into the second? How to you say "toxic asset" in Portuguese?
It's clear the tricky Brazilian is surplus parts at Eastlands. He's not exactly a pure forward, nor a winger either. So where to play him? Roberto Mancini probably wants to sell him off, since Robinho seems to court controversy no matter where he goes.
Perhaps a club in Europe would want to snare him on the cheap, Spain maybe? But is he worth the trouble? Maybe the best move is Robinho goes back to Brazil for the rest of the season, trying to work his way into the Brazil World Cup mix and then sees where his stock rates after that.
But back to Everton. With more performances like this between now and March, David Moyes is going to have a tough time saying goodbye to Donovan when he flies back to Los Angeles. Sounds like both sides are thinking about extending the romance.
Ironically enough, Everton's win did a great favor to Liverpool, which remained just four points behind Spurs and Man City for fourth place.
Sad and sadder:
One of the better traits of exporting the Premier League is from a television perspective not too much time is wasted on crowd shots of mongo fans in the stands.
Saturday we caught two shots that would've been quite at home during an NFL broadcast, you know, since the NFL needs to fill a telecast that features 11 minutes of action. (Man, the Saturday night NFL playoff games, peeeeeee-ewwwwww.)
Around the same time we got a glimpse of a young Chelsea fan with a pathetically endearing homemade sign reading, "Plz Plz Frank Lampard give me your shirt." (No, he didn't have room for the small print: I assure you, I'm not crazy.)
A little later at Old Trafford we caught a shot of a father holding his infant son, who was wearing industrial grade metal ear muffs. Good parenting.
Guess it doesn't matter the country, mongos are mongos.
Sky is falling?
The take out of England is that the Premier League is on the verge of a major crisis. Me, like I've said, my brain can't count as high as some of the debts incurred by the clubs. David Conn does a pretty good job sounding the alarm in the Guardian. So read it.
Here's all I can contribute on the subject. It's well-known that: Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea (to a small degree), Portsmouth (to a major degree) and West Ham all have major fiance problems in terms of debt. These are just the clubs that are wide out in the open about it. That's a quarter of the league, with teams at both ends of the table.
To me, the debt situation almost seems like a fantasy. I can't get my head around how these clubs are so far in the red. I'm no CNBC talking head, but it does seem eerily similar to the financial meltdown with the global banking system, no?
Hopefully the powers that run the Premier League don't wait for a club (Portsmouth) to go belly up in the midst of a season before taking action.
Nobody wants NFL-style parity/revenue sharing, but some financial oversight might not be such a terrible idea, no?
Other stuff:
Tottenham is still Tottenham. A scoreless draw at home to Hull City? Fail. ... Blackburn Rovers looked like a League One team Monday vs. Manchester City, then pull out a 2-0 win at home vs. Fulham on Sunday. Go figure. ... Aston Villa is now just two points ahead of Liverpool. Looks like all of owner Randy Lerner's mojo went back across to the Atlantic to help the Cleveland Browns finish the season a little less pathetically. ... Jonathan Spector got his first start since 2009 for West Ham in the 0-0 draw with Aston Villa. As an American, we'll take the good news. ... Arsenal did a nice-and-tidy job vs. Bolton in Owen Coyle's first game. If you were lucky enough to be at the Reebook you can tell your kids you saw Fran Merida score a goal for Arsenal. ... Liverpool/Stoke City a proven cure for insomnia. Trust me from experience this weekend. ... Anyone stumble across Fox Soccer HD yet? ... Portsmouth can't catch a break. Fans help shovel the field clear of snow, then the Saturday match at Fratton Park is deemed unplayable.
Fantasy team o' the week:
* Give this an asterisk, for now, since we have three leftover matches to complete the week, but Shawn Donohue's West 29th St Chelsea put up 82 points with Lampard, Rooney and Cole leading the way. Also, we have a tie at the top on 1,255 points with Cantona Dojo and Beckham Priapism. This is like the EPL in fantasy form!
This week:
* Arsenal v. Bolton -- (Wednesday, FSC, 2:45 p.m.) Owen Coyle isn't playing. ... Arsenal 3, Bolton 0.
* Liverpool v. Tottenham -- (Wednesday, Setanta, delayed?) Part of me wants Liverpool to win this one to give Reds fans a false sense of hope. ... Liverpool 2, Spurs 1
* Manchester United v. Hull City -- (Saturday, 10 a.m., ???) The Red Devils aren't "good", but still good enough to dispatch Hull at home. ... United 2, Hull 0
Last week: 5-4
Season: 110-98
A lot of the stuff I cover is high school sports. Lately coaches have felt leery of talking to me, because they're afraid if I write anything positive their teams begin to lose. The term "mush" is used and we all laugh.
My standard response is that if I had that kind of power, I'd be sitting on a stool at a Sports Book in Las Vegas.
After this weekend's slate of Premier League games, maybe I'm not so sure. I write an ejaculatulatory post about Carlos Tevez' current form and lo and behold, he's limping around Goodison Park on Saturday in a 2-0 loss to Everton.
Lately I've been banging the drum and driving the Clint Dempsey bandwagon all at the same time, and Sunday he limps off the field at Ewood Park.
Weird, right?
More on Tevez and City below, but let's start fretting about Clint Dempsey, who had continued his amazing form, rattling the crossbar with an audacious bicycle kick earlier in the match.
After losing the "feed" of the game for a bit, I finally got it back and within a minute I heard the name Dempsey, only to see his walking off the field with an injury. Right now even the injury itself is vague. Most reports have it as a knee or specifically an ACL type thing. He'll get the dreaded "scan" and until then we just have to keep our fingers crossed. It could be a sprain. It could be a tear. I'm not a doctor, or importantly, I'm not down there.
Considering most people tend to think the worst, if it's something serious the U.S. is now possibly, stress possibly, facing a World Cup without Charlie Davies, Oguchi Onyewu and now Dempsey. Anyone want to hope a flight to Merseyside right now and wrap Landon Donovan in a mylar bag and ship him off to the facility that's storing Ted Williams' frozen head?
As of writing this Sunday afternoon, Doc Hodgson is claiming its a PCL injury. If that's the case, he is likely done-zo for South Africa. It's a terrible blow for the U.S., but not as bad as the Davies/Onyewu setbacks. We've seen Dempsey go from useless to starman all in the same match, so in a sense the U.S. has already played without him for stretches in the past.
And as I've long maintained that a lineup featuring Dempsey and Donovan isn't entirely balanced. The U.S. does have rising talent Stuart Holden in the mix, who could conceivably step into the right midfield role. Or, another possibility is Donovan shifts to the right, like he did at Everton Saturday, and perhaps Bob Bradley exhumes the corpse of DaMarcus Beasley from the Scottish highlands? Or, gulp, Freddy Adu, worms his way into the mix.
Tactically, the U.S. might be able to replace 99 percent of Dempsey's output. The other one-percent, like the volley vs. Stoke, well that's what so upsetting about this development.
If anything, this tempers the U.S. enthusiasm ahead of the Cup just a little bit, which isn't such a terrible thing. Let's not forget, this team plays considerably better when it's playing the "Nobody Believes in Us" card as opposed to as a favorite. It also put a much bigger onus on Donovan to perform, and more importantly, carry the offense on his shoulders.
For all the gains made by the U.S. national team in 2009, depth remains a major issue -- something I'll address Friday ahead of the friendly with Honduras on Saturday night.
Right now, we just have to hope that the "scan" on Dempsey's knee turns up to be nothing major -- a long shot, I know. Keep telling yourself that since he walked off the field he can't be that injured. If Doc Hodgson is right, well, don't hold your breath.
Me? I'll just wonder why it took until the 2008 NFL season for all the mean things I've written about Tom Brady for Bernard Pollard to snap his knee in half.
A day late:
A couple days ago I was trying to drive my brother insane by singing Eddie Murphy's 1980s hit, "Party All the Time." The result of this -- the Rick James-produced track ended up getting stuck in my head.
So scanning through some awful late-night television, I stumbled across the utter pile of dog crap that is, "Meet Dave."
Here's your premise, "A crew of miniature aliens operate a spaceship that has a human form. While trying to save their planet, the aliens encounter a new problem, as their ship becomes smitten with an Earth woman."
God bless you Hollywood. And bless you HBO for deciding to air this classic. (It's worse than it sounds, even with the usually trustworthy Elizabeth Banks playing said "Earth woman.")
Amazingly, a thought occured to me while watching "Meet Dave" long enough to get enough fuel to mock it through the Internets -- the current plight of Liverpool is a lot like the career of Eddie Murphy, well, without the midnight transsexual prostitute stuff.
Look at it this way, both were powers in the 1980s, coincidentally while wearing Red. (Think the iconic Eddie Murphy Delirious outfit.) In the 80s Liverpool were still winning league titles and European titles, while Murphy was banging out hit-after-hit at the box office in between pickup basketball games with Prince. Liverpool even had the 'Anfield Rap'.
Maybe both peaked in 1984, Murphy by putting bananas in tailpipes in "Beverly Hills Cop" and Liverpool by winning the 1984 European Cup. You would have bet serious money that Murphy could have been the biggest comedic actor of all time and Liverpool would keep winning title-after-title.
Five years later, both changed. In 1989 Murphy starred in the flop-tacular "Harlem Nights", while Liverpool won its last league title (1989-90) as well as the tragic Hillsborough Disaster.
As we know, it turned out, Axel Foley and Kenny Dalglish didn't walk back through the door. ('Beverly Hills Cop 3' doesn't count.)
Sure since then both Murphy and Liverpool have had their moments. Murphy with the voice of the Donkey in 'Shrek', while Liverpool have won a UEFA Cup and the 2005 Champions League. Yet both remain mere shadows of the forces they were in the 1980s.
Put it this way, would either Eddie Murphy or Liverpool rate in the book of an 8-year-old kid?
Where the sketchy comparison ends (assuming you even made it this far after I glossed over Liverpool's previous eight decades of success), is that Eddie Murphy is amazingly only 48 years old. He conceivably doesn't need to make another movie the rest of his life. He can continue to churn out crummy family comedies or dreck like "The Advenutres of Pluto Nash" (a utter disaster) and nobody beyond the critics in Hollywood would care all that much.
Liverpool, meanwhile, is a club that means so much of millions of fans that it must endure, or figure a way out of its malaise. However so long as the Three Stooges -- Rafa, Hicks & Gillett are pulling the strings, they'll never get back to the heights, instead teasing fans with glimmers, like Murphy putting in, what I'm told, was a solid performance in 'Dream Girls'.
And if you never thought I'd say anything nice about Liverpool, at least Rafa and Hicks & Gillett had nothing to do with "Norbit."
SALVO!
Sometimes the scoreboard says it all, Chelsea 7, Sunderland 2.
It's fairly simple to read into that one -- in any language, no less.
Without its African stars, Chelsea essentially extended its two middle fingers to the rest of the Premier League -- "We're still here, dammit."
Chelsea, for the first 25-odd minutes, looked lively and threatening. (Throw out the rest of the match when its 3-0, because Sunderland check out.)
It was a couple individual players, too, taking it upon themselves, namely Flourent Malouda and Ashley Cole, with a set of fine individually worked goals. Cole in particular stood out, collecting a chip on the touchline from John Terry, faking out the keeper and chipping over him from a sheer angle with his right foot.
Chelsea, at its best over the last half-decade, has won a lot of games before they even started at Stamford Bridge. This was a return to that swagger, which should scare the rest of the league.
That said, the way this season is going, there are no guarantees this swagger continues to Jan. 27 for the Blues next league match against Birmingham City.
More of the same Manchester United:
Sir Alex Ferguson wouldn't have been able to blame the refs for this one. United, at Old Trafford, could have been down either 1-0 or 2-0 had Steven Fletcher or David Nugent been able to finish for Burnley. But alas, both shots went wide and United eventually got goals from Dimitar Berbatov and Wayne Rooney and order was restored.
Naturally, you can't count out United but this team doesn't look to have the juice to keep pace with Chelsea, regardless of what the past and the table say.
Right now some fans seem more concerned with trying to drive the Glazers out, any wya.
A nice chunk of Toffee:
During Everton's fairly comprehensive 2-0 home win over Manchester City, I tweeted something along the lines of Landon Donovan bringing the club some energy, on par with Brendan Fraser's unfrozen caveman character from the early 1990s "gem", "Encino Man." Yeah, a stretch, at best. Believe me, it was better than my original idea that Donovan was playing the Whoopie Goldberg role from "Sister Act" and sassin' up a previously boring dull set of nuns, or the Everton squad as it were.
Doesn't matter which mediocre 90s comedy you want to use, Donovan has definitely injected a lot of life into Everton, as now the Toffees are finally in the top half of the table. In his second Premier League outing, Donovan didn't set the world afire, but he did bring positive play to the Everton midfield.
To use a comparison I've used before, Donovan took a Vince Offer Slap Chop and turned a boring Everton tuna into an exciting, lively tuna salad. He did make a bad decision, trying to lob a cross to teammate, instead of going for goal, but why split hairs?
Credit David Moyes for lining up a midfield quartet of "Little Billy", Steven "The Avatar" Pienaar, Maroune Fellaini and Donovan. Maybe it was a little unconventional or too offense-oriented, but it worked as Manchester City looked 100 percent lost.
Perhaps my anointment of City was a little, say, premature. Saturday's performance lends credence to the idea that City was a product of a soft schedule. Couple that was a anonymous game Carlos Tevez, who might have gotten hurt or at least tweaked something in his leg and City went from world-beaters to ordinary overnight. That's how it works, right?
And what of Robinho? On as a first-half sub for Roque Santa Cruz in the first half and then pulled shortly into the second? How to you say "toxic asset" in Portuguese?
It's clear the tricky Brazilian is surplus parts at Eastlands. He's not exactly a pure forward, nor a winger either. So where to play him? Roberto Mancini probably wants to sell him off, since Robinho seems to court controversy no matter where he goes.
Perhaps a club in Europe would want to snare him on the cheap, Spain maybe? But is he worth the trouble? Maybe the best move is Robinho goes back to Brazil for the rest of the season, trying to work his way into the Brazil World Cup mix and then sees where his stock rates after that.
But back to Everton. With more performances like this between now and March, David Moyes is going to have a tough time saying goodbye to Donovan when he flies back to Los Angeles. Sounds like both sides are thinking about extending the romance.
Ironically enough, Everton's win did a great favor to Liverpool, which remained just four points behind Spurs and Man City for fourth place.
Sad and sadder:
One of the better traits of exporting the Premier League is from a television perspective not too much time is wasted on crowd shots of mongo fans in the stands.
Saturday we caught two shots that would've been quite at home during an NFL broadcast, you know, since the NFL needs to fill a telecast that features 11 minutes of action. (Man, the Saturday night NFL playoff games, peeeeeee-ewwwwww.)
Around the same time we got a glimpse of a young Chelsea fan with a pathetically endearing homemade sign reading, "Plz Plz Frank Lampard give me your shirt." (No, he didn't have room for the small print: I assure you, I'm not crazy.)
A little later at Old Trafford we caught a shot of a father holding his infant son, who was wearing industrial grade metal ear muffs. Good parenting.
Guess it doesn't matter the country, mongos are mongos.
Sky is falling?
The take out of England is that the Premier League is on the verge of a major crisis. Me, like I've said, my brain can't count as high as some of the debts incurred by the clubs. David Conn does a pretty good job sounding the alarm in the Guardian. So read it.
Here's all I can contribute on the subject. It's well-known that: Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea (to a small degree), Portsmouth (to a major degree) and West Ham all have major fiance problems in terms of debt. These are just the clubs that are wide out in the open about it. That's a quarter of the league, with teams at both ends of the table.
To me, the debt situation almost seems like a fantasy. I can't get my head around how these clubs are so far in the red. I'm no CNBC talking head, but it does seem eerily similar to the financial meltdown with the global banking system, no?
Hopefully the powers that run the Premier League don't wait for a club (Portsmouth) to go belly up in the midst of a season before taking action.
Nobody wants NFL-style parity/revenue sharing, but some financial oversight might not be such a terrible idea, no?
Other stuff:
Tottenham is still Tottenham. A scoreless draw at home to Hull City? Fail. ... Blackburn Rovers looked like a League One team Monday vs. Manchester City, then pull out a 2-0 win at home vs. Fulham on Sunday. Go figure. ... Aston Villa is now just two points ahead of Liverpool. Looks like all of owner Randy Lerner's mojo went back across to the Atlantic to help the Cleveland Browns finish the season a little less pathetically. ... Jonathan Spector got his first start since 2009 for West Ham in the 0-0 draw with Aston Villa. As an American, we'll take the good news. ... Arsenal did a nice-and-tidy job vs. Bolton in Owen Coyle's first game. If you were lucky enough to be at the Reebook you can tell your kids you saw Fran Merida score a goal for Arsenal. ... Liverpool/Stoke City a proven cure for insomnia. Trust me from experience this weekend. ... Anyone stumble across Fox Soccer HD yet? ... Portsmouth can't catch a break. Fans help shovel the field clear of snow, then the Saturday match at Fratton Park is deemed unplayable.
Fantasy team o' the week:
* Give this an asterisk, for now, since we have three leftover matches to complete the week, but Shawn Donohue's West 29th St Chelsea put up 82 points with Lampard, Rooney and Cole leading the way. Also, we have a tie at the top on 1,255 points with Cantona Dojo and Beckham Priapism. This is like the EPL in fantasy form!
This week:
* Arsenal v. Bolton -- (Wednesday, FSC, 2:45 p.m.) Owen Coyle isn't playing. ... Arsenal 3, Bolton 0.
* Liverpool v. Tottenham -- (Wednesday, Setanta, delayed?) Part of me wants Liverpool to win this one to give Reds fans a false sense of hope. ... Liverpool 2, Spurs 1
* Manchester United v. Hull City -- (Saturday, 10 a.m., ???) The Red Devils aren't "good", but still good enough to dispatch Hull at home. ... United 2, Hull 0
Last week: 5-4
Season: 110-98
Labels: clint dempsey, English Premier League, Monday recaps, Premier League, Soccer
I will not take cheap shots at Liverpool. I will not take cheap shots at Liverpool. I will not take cheap shots at Liverpool. I will not take cheap shots at Liverpool.
Sorry, the Ludovico Technique didn't take.
I need a taste of the old ultra-violence, err, Anfield bashing.
What a week it's been. Mericifully this weekend's game against Stoke isn't at Anfield. If it were, I'd expect major, angry, boozy protests before, during and after it. And could you blame them?
Where in the world should I start?
How about Tom Hicks' son telling a Liverpool supporter in an email to, "blow me, fuck face"? You don't even need a punchline for this one, though somehow it reminds me of the episode of "Seinfeld" where George had sex with the cleaning lady, leading to his termination from Pendant Publishing. My brain tells me, though, Tom Hicks Jr. didn't use the "Was that wrong?" defense upon being terminated from the Liverpool board.
Let's see what next? The Maxi Rodriguez signing? Sure, why not?
Admittedly, I'm not watching Atletico Madrid on a week-in, week-out basis, but to me this is a backward signing. Sure Maxi-Rod has a nice resume and an all-time highlight worthy goal from the 2006 World Cup.
But is he what Liverpool needed? Granted, due to the triple-hit of injuries of Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Yossi Benayoun, Rodriguez is now needed to play, and more importantly perform instead of simply giving Javier Mascherano a buddy to go eat steaks with.
Look at it this way. With Dirk Kuyt and Benayoun, who've only been the most consistent performers at the club this season, where was Rodriguez going to play?
It reminds me of a baseball or basketball team with money to burn signing free agents -- think the Minnesota Timberwolves throwing cash at Ramon Sessions last summer -- for no point, although in fairness Rodriguez didn't cost anything to sign from Spain which is a bit of red flag, no?
On the other hand, signing Marouane Chamakh from Bordeaux seems like a solid move, that's all the more important now that Torres is hurt for at least six weeks. At 26 years old and coming off a Ligue 1 championship, this at least seems like a savvy buy, even more so when it came by fending off Arsenal and others. Then again, look at the other forwards that Benitiz has purchased over the years -- Morientes, Keane, Voronin, Babel, El Zhar, Crouch, Bellamy, Ngog etc. Not a lot of home runs there, Torres aside. Not even any singles.
Whatever. At this point what's the point heaping on the club, which is doing a fine job alienating its fans on its own, most notably with the idea of selling naming rights to their fabled new stadium -- still a taboo in England -- coupled with a crushing FA Cup defeat at Anfield to Reading.
Is there some sort of sick game going on, like in "Trading Places" where two rich guys are playing an elaborate prank that only they're in on. Otherwise, to call Liverpool anything short of a disaster right now, isn't fair.
What is, however, unfair is the way Hicks and Gillett have taken this club and driven it square into the ground. At any other club in the world, Rafa would have been sent packing months or years ago. Isn't the old logic, you can't fire the owners, so fire the manager? But to continue to let him make moves and shape the club is setting the team further and further behind the pack.
Sadly, until the Yankee carpetbagger owners make enough profit can selling to some Arab oilmen materializing out from an oasis or finally get clearance for the new stadium, Liverpool will continue to sink down the drain.
This is something that pisses me off across all sports. The fans are what make the owners and players rich, but we have next to no rights, outside of the member-based clubs of certain clubs in Spain and Germany. Any sane court of law would rule that Hicks and Gillett have committed acts so heinous at Anfield, they should be stripped of the team (possibly tarred and feathered) and sent back to America, where they've done a good job running the Texas Rangers and Montreal Canadiens into the ground, too. Of course, the new owners will probably be just as bad -- go as Portsmouth.
Alas, thoughtless, greedy owners are as much a sport of sports as stadium hot dogs.
As a person that isn't exactly a Liverpool fan, per say, but does get chills during refrains of "You'll Never Walk Alone" this is a sad, sad disgrace of tradition.
Me? I'm about the least sentimental person on this planet, but for whatever the reason, traditions matter to me sports. It really doesn't give me any great pleasure to see what two clueless buffoons from the States have done to a classic English club.
At least Tom Hicks has never walked to the center line of Anfield at half time, dropped trow and pinched out a brown, Texas-sized loaf. The way it's going, we're not too far away from that, if it hasn't metaphorically already happened.
Other stuff:
* Doesn't it seem like forever since the Premier League played? And all of a sudden we have a three, if not four, team race for the title with Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City. Doesn't it seem more realistic to see City and Arsenal push Chelsea, as opposed to United, especially in light of Sir Alex's ref-whining wearing thin on everybody?
* Speaking of Manchester United, there financial situation is dicey, I think. I've read a few things here-and-there about what the Glazers are doing, and frankly, it makes my head hurt. Whatever happens, as much as the Glazers are hated, the team has won three-straight Premier League titles and a Champions League. Not too shabby, no?
* Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell back in the Premier League? What's next, Dennis Bergkamp dusting off the boots and suiting up for Birmingham City?
* Oh right, Setanta is still in play until Fox opens up Fox Soccer Plus, which will probably cost you some money. (If anyone is getting FSC-HD, let me know.)
Saturday:
* Stoke City v. Livepool -- (Live, ESPN2, 7:45 a.m.) Weird transfer, Stoke grabbing David James from Portsmouth. Was Tomas Sorensam that poor? Was Tony Pulis steamed by the Maynor Figeuroa goal from beyond the halfway line? If I'm a Danish fan, I'm not happy about it. (Update, as of Friday morning this loan might not happen.) Should be fun to see what kind of lineup Benitez throws out there, no? Dirk Kuyt, get ready to run. ... Stoke City 1, Liverpool 1
* Tottenham v. Hull City -- Prayers go out to Jozy Altidore, who likely won't feature in this one because of the crisis in Haiti. Back to the game, with Man City chugging up the table, Spurs can't afford to drop points, especially at home, to teams like Hull at White Hart Lane. With Benoit Assou-Ekotto with Cameroon in Angola, Spurs might finally need to get something -- anything -- from Gareth Bale. Now would be a good time. It would probably also be a good time for Harry Redknapp to pay his taxes. Suffice to say, whenever he pens his autobiography, I'm queuing up to purchase it. ... Spurs 3, Hull City 0
* Chelsea v. Sunderland -- (Live, FSC, 10 a.m.) Nice weekend for Chelsea, last time, without even kicking the ball as the Blues watched Arsenal and Manchester United stumble to draws. The Blues, as we know, haven't played all that well lately, stubbing their toes, too. Chelsea hasn't played in two weeks and needs to get its swagger back, which could be tough without Didier Drogba in the mix. Still, Stamford Bridge is Stamford Bridge. ... Chelsea 2, Sunderland 1
* Wolves v. Wigan -- Not a good year to be a Premier League club with a name that starts with "W", as Wolves, Wigan and West Ham are a combined 14-31-14 (w-l-d). Maybe they can all trade rosters and see if nobody notices. ... Wolves 1, Wigan 0
* Manchester United v. Burnley -- (Live, Setanta, 10 a.m.) Remember those heady days when Owen Coyle led the Clarets to an upset over the champions at Turf Moor? Well Burnley fans, you'll always have Paris. ... Manchester United 3, Burnley 0
* Portsmouth v. Birmingham -- Poor, poor Pompey. For a loyal fan base, they deserve better, especially as local rivals Southampton have also fallen from grace. Where are they going to find players to even fill out the uniforms by the end of the season? Or pay these players? What a shame. Birmingham loses Lee Carsley for a couple weeks, but should be able to keep the goodwill going. ... Portsmouth 0, Birmingham 1
* Everton v. Manchester City -- (Live, FSC, 12:30 p.m.) Genuinely excited for this match. As you read earlier, I'm kind of, a little unabashedly in love with the play of Carlos Tevez lately. City, with all its attacking players, is playing a nice brand of football. After a solid debut, Landon Donovan will have his work cut out for him against an in-form Slyvinho. Also, Lucas Neill to Galatasaray? He must be have one of the unlikeable locker room personalities in the game today. Is he sleeping with other players girlfriends or something? Pulling an Arenas? ... Everton 1, Man City 2
Sunday:
* Aston Villa v. West Ham United -- (Live, Setanta, 8:30 a.m.) Aston Villa were like Krispy Kreme at the start of the 2000s, hot hot hot. Then, overnight, they went to not not not. Villa did field essentially a first-choice team on Thursday in the Carling Cup semifinals, except for Brad Guzan over Brad Freidel in nets. Maybe that reinvigorates the campaign, however with what Mancini is doing at City, fourth place might still remain out of reach. ... Villa 2, West Ham 0
* Blackburn v. Fulham -- Maybe a game for the old-time English football diehards? Perhaps only if Blackburn shows up, which they haven't done all that often. ... Blackburn 1, Fulham 0
* Bolton v. Arsenal -- (Live, FSC, 11 a.m.) Let's say this, the Reebok Stadium might actually have some life this week now that Coyle is in charge. It certainly adds to the unpredictability factor of this match. Sometimes Premier League games go to a certain script, and this one would be Bolton getting a result in Coyle's return to his former club. Doubt Arsene Wenger is reading these scripts. If Cesc Fabregas plays, it's hard to see Bolton holding Arsenal off the scoreboard, although some of the big bruisers that the Trotters have -- Kevin Davies, Johan Ellmander, Ivan Klasnic -- are the type of players that trouble the Arsenal defense. ... Bolton 1, Arsenal 2
Don't forget, I'll be on the Twitter-wire during the games.
Last round: 2-1
Season: 105-94
Sorry, the Ludovico Technique didn't take.
I need a taste of the old ultra-violence, err, Anfield bashing.
What a week it's been. Mericifully this weekend's game against Stoke isn't at Anfield. If it were, I'd expect major, angry, boozy protests before, during and after it. And could you blame them?
Where in the world should I start?
How about Tom Hicks' son telling a Liverpool supporter in an email to, "blow me, fuck face"? You don't even need a punchline for this one, though somehow it reminds me of the episode of "Seinfeld" where George had sex with the cleaning lady, leading to his termination from Pendant Publishing. My brain tells me, though, Tom Hicks Jr. didn't use the "Was that wrong?" defense upon being terminated from the Liverpool board.
Let's see what next? The Maxi Rodriguez signing? Sure, why not?
Admittedly, I'm not watching Atletico Madrid on a week-in, week-out basis, but to me this is a backward signing. Sure Maxi-Rod has a nice resume and an all-time highlight worthy goal from the 2006 World Cup.
But is he what Liverpool needed? Granted, due to the triple-hit of injuries of Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Yossi Benayoun, Rodriguez is now needed to play, and more importantly perform instead of simply giving Javier Mascherano a buddy to go eat steaks with.
Look at it this way. With Dirk Kuyt and Benayoun, who've only been the most consistent performers at the club this season, where was Rodriguez going to play?
It reminds me of a baseball or basketball team with money to burn signing free agents -- think the Minnesota Timberwolves throwing cash at Ramon Sessions last summer -- for no point, although in fairness Rodriguez didn't cost anything to sign from Spain which is a bit of red flag, no?
On the other hand, signing Marouane Chamakh from Bordeaux seems like a solid move, that's all the more important now that Torres is hurt for at least six weeks. At 26 years old and coming off a Ligue 1 championship, this at least seems like a savvy buy, even more so when it came by fending off Arsenal and others. Then again, look at the other forwards that Benitiz has purchased over the years -- Morientes, Keane, Voronin, Babel, El Zhar, Crouch, Bellamy, Ngog etc. Not a lot of home runs there, Torres aside. Not even any singles.
Whatever. At this point what's the point heaping on the club, which is doing a fine job alienating its fans on its own, most notably with the idea of selling naming rights to their fabled new stadium -- still a taboo in England -- coupled with a crushing FA Cup defeat at Anfield to Reading.
Is there some sort of sick game going on, like in "Trading Places" where two rich guys are playing an elaborate prank that only they're in on. Otherwise, to call Liverpool anything short of a disaster right now, isn't fair.
What is, however, unfair is the way Hicks and Gillett have taken this club and driven it square into the ground. At any other club in the world, Rafa would have been sent packing months or years ago. Isn't the old logic, you can't fire the owners, so fire the manager? But to continue to let him make moves and shape the club is setting the team further and further behind the pack.
Sadly, until the Yankee carpetbagger owners make enough profit can selling to some Arab oilmen materializing out from an oasis or finally get clearance for the new stadium, Liverpool will continue to sink down the drain.
This is something that pisses me off across all sports. The fans are what make the owners and players rich, but we have next to no rights, outside of the member-based clubs of certain clubs in Spain and Germany. Any sane court of law would rule that Hicks and Gillett have committed acts so heinous at Anfield, they should be stripped of the team (possibly tarred and feathered) and sent back to America, where they've done a good job running the Texas Rangers and Montreal Canadiens into the ground, too. Of course, the new owners will probably be just as bad -- go as Portsmouth.
Alas, thoughtless, greedy owners are as much a sport of sports as stadium hot dogs.
As a person that isn't exactly a Liverpool fan, per say, but does get chills during refrains of "You'll Never Walk Alone" this is a sad, sad disgrace of tradition.
Me? I'm about the least sentimental person on this planet, but for whatever the reason, traditions matter to me sports. It really doesn't give me any great pleasure to see what two clueless buffoons from the States have done to a classic English club.
At least Tom Hicks has never walked to the center line of Anfield at half time, dropped trow and pinched out a brown, Texas-sized loaf. The way it's going, we're not too far away from that, if it hasn't metaphorically already happened.
Other stuff:
* Doesn't it seem like forever since the Premier League played? And all of a sudden we have a three, if not four, team race for the title with Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City. Doesn't it seem more realistic to see City and Arsenal push Chelsea, as opposed to United, especially in light of Sir Alex's ref-whining wearing thin on everybody?
* Speaking of Manchester United, there financial situation is dicey, I think. I've read a few things here-and-there about what the Glazers are doing, and frankly, it makes my head hurt. Whatever happens, as much as the Glazers are hated, the team has won three-straight Premier League titles and a Champions League. Not too shabby, no?
* Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell back in the Premier League? What's next, Dennis Bergkamp dusting off the boots and suiting up for Birmingham City?
* Oh right, Setanta is still in play until Fox opens up Fox Soccer Plus, which will probably cost you some money. (If anyone is getting FSC-HD, let me know.)
Saturday:
* Stoke City v. Livepool -- (Live, ESPN2, 7:45 a.m.) Weird transfer, Stoke grabbing David James from Portsmouth. Was Tomas Sorensam that poor? Was Tony Pulis steamed by the Maynor Figeuroa goal from beyond the halfway line? If I'm a Danish fan, I'm not happy about it. (Update, as of Friday morning this loan might not happen.) Should be fun to see what kind of lineup Benitez throws out there, no? Dirk Kuyt, get ready to run. ... Stoke City 1, Liverpool 1
* Tottenham v. Hull City -- Prayers go out to Jozy Altidore, who likely won't feature in this one because of the crisis in Haiti. Back to the game, with Man City chugging up the table, Spurs can't afford to drop points, especially at home, to teams like Hull at White Hart Lane. With Benoit Assou-Ekotto with Cameroon in Angola, Spurs might finally need to get something -- anything -- from Gareth Bale. Now would be a good time. It would probably also be a good time for Harry Redknapp to pay his taxes. Suffice to say, whenever he pens his autobiography, I'm queuing up to purchase it. ... Spurs 3, Hull City 0
* Chelsea v. Sunderland -- (Live, FSC, 10 a.m.) Nice weekend for Chelsea, last time, without even kicking the ball as the Blues watched Arsenal and Manchester United stumble to draws. The Blues, as we know, haven't played all that well lately, stubbing their toes, too. Chelsea hasn't played in two weeks and needs to get its swagger back, which could be tough without Didier Drogba in the mix. Still, Stamford Bridge is Stamford Bridge. ... Chelsea 2, Sunderland 1
* Wolves v. Wigan -- Not a good year to be a Premier League club with a name that starts with "W", as Wolves, Wigan and West Ham are a combined 14-31-14 (w-l-d). Maybe they can all trade rosters and see if nobody notices. ... Wolves 1, Wigan 0
* Manchester United v. Burnley -- (Live, Setanta, 10 a.m.) Remember those heady days when Owen Coyle led the Clarets to an upset over the champions at Turf Moor? Well Burnley fans, you'll always have Paris. ... Manchester United 3, Burnley 0
* Portsmouth v. Birmingham -- Poor, poor Pompey. For a loyal fan base, they deserve better, especially as local rivals Southampton have also fallen from grace. Where are they going to find players to even fill out the uniforms by the end of the season? Or pay these players? What a shame. Birmingham loses Lee Carsley for a couple weeks, but should be able to keep the goodwill going. ... Portsmouth 0, Birmingham 1
* Everton v. Manchester City -- (Live, FSC, 12:30 p.m.) Genuinely excited for this match. As you read earlier, I'm kind of, a little unabashedly in love with the play of Carlos Tevez lately. City, with all its attacking players, is playing a nice brand of football. After a solid debut, Landon Donovan will have his work cut out for him against an in-form Slyvinho. Also, Lucas Neill to Galatasaray? He must be have one of the unlikeable locker room personalities in the game today. Is he sleeping with other players girlfriends or something? Pulling an Arenas? ... Everton 1, Man City 2
Sunday:
* Aston Villa v. West Ham United -- (Live, Setanta, 8:30 a.m.) Aston Villa were like Krispy Kreme at the start of the 2000s, hot hot hot. Then, overnight, they went to not not not. Villa did field essentially a first-choice team on Thursday in the Carling Cup semifinals, except for Brad Guzan over Brad Freidel in nets. Maybe that reinvigorates the campaign, however with what Mancini is doing at City, fourth place might still remain out of reach. ... Villa 2, West Ham 0
* Blackburn v. Fulham -- Maybe a game for the old-time English football diehards? Perhaps only if Blackburn shows up, which they haven't done all that often. ... Blackburn 1, Fulham 0
* Bolton v. Arsenal -- (Live, FSC, 11 a.m.) Let's say this, the Reebok Stadium might actually have some life this week now that Coyle is in charge. It certainly adds to the unpredictability factor of this match. Sometimes Premier League games go to a certain script, and this one would be Bolton getting a result in Coyle's return to his former club. Doubt Arsene Wenger is reading these scripts. If Cesc Fabregas plays, it's hard to see Bolton holding Arsenal off the scoreboard, although some of the big bruisers that the Trotters have -- Kevin Davies, Johan Ellmander, Ivan Klasnic -- are the type of players that trouble the Arsenal defense. ... Bolton 1, Arsenal 2
Don't forget, I'll be on the Twitter-wire during the games.
Last round: 2-1
Season: 105-94
Labels: English Premier League, Liverpool, Prem Picks, Soccer
It wasn't all that long ago when the Internets were a simpler, kinder place. A place that was roughly 98 percent low-grade Czechslovakian porn with the remaining two percent left for usenet.alt.newsgroups of people worldwide bitching about the quality of the 'The Simpsons' on their 28.8 kbps modems. (Mo-dem?)
As a kid who was absolutely reared 'Round Springfield, as it were, I had some high hopes for Morgan Spurlocks's documentary about the 20 years of 'The Simpsons' on Sunday night. Sadly, the doc basically broke down as an excuse for Spurlock (you know, 'Super Size Me' guy) to travel around the world to places like England, Brazil and Argentina.
Oh and Scotland, that's semi-crucial to the rest of this post.
Something struck me during the broadcast, 'The Simpsons' have done plenty of sports-centric episodes and had athletes like -- Joe Namath, Magic Johnson, Rosey Grier, LeBron James, etc. on the show to do voices. Yet the only mention of sport during the Spurlock doc was a trip to Sir Alex Ferguson's old haunt -- Aberdeen -- where the football club's current manager Mark McGhee made a pitch that Groundskeeper Willie was from the city. (Go Aberdeen!)
A little odd, no? Not even a Drederick Tatum cameo? Hell, if I ever lost my mind and went on a seven-state killing spree, I'd ask to watch "Homer at the Bat" before they stuck the lethal injection needle in my arm.
It's not like writers of 'The Simpsons' exactly profile as soccer fans, either. Let's not forget the infamous "center holds it" game featuring Mexico v. Portugal, which lead to rioting in the streets of Springfield. (That episode, 'The Cartridge Family' get a full-time pass since it was penned by the peerless John Swartzwelder.)
As my brain works, perhaps stabbed by too many Q-Tips, a day later another thought dawned on me from the Simpsons doc. Spurlock featured two South American countries -- Brazil and Argentina. Famously, Brazil took major offense to the 2002 episode "Blame it on Lisa", what with the different colored rats and roving monkey gangs. Meanwhile, according to Spurlock, Argentina has the highest percentage of Simpsons fans as anywhere in the world.
A tad illuminating about each country, right? Kind of makes me want to root for Argentina a little more at the World Cup, Maradona or no Maradona.
And in light of his hat trick for Manchester City yesterday, it made me wonder if Carlos Tevez is a 'Simpsons' fan? somehow I don't see it, although Tevez did pull off the oddity as an Argentine playing club soccer in Brazil with Corinthians, which he did before moving to West Ham in 2006. Still, I don't see Tevez cooling off after the game with a Duff beer in one hand and a 'Simpsons' Season Six DVD set in the other. Hell, I can't even imagine Tevez watching television, or anything in street clothes for that matter. (Think Bart running into principal Skinner at the laundromat.)
Consider this a clumsy transition toward something I tweeted yesterday during Manchester City's 4-1 win over Blackburn. There is going to be an interesting alpha dog battle for Argentina at South Africa between Lionel Messi and Tevez.
The Messi v. Tevez argument is fairly compelling.
On the one hand, Messi plays like his feet taste like timber in a crackling fire, while Tevez's face looks like just got out of a fire. [Ed. note, I'm acutely aware that Tevez was scalded as a child. This wasn't a slight at him or a potshot, in fact he deserves massive credit for opting to keep the scars. Tough dude.]
When people write about Messi, they use words like "magician", "wizard" and other professions you may have found on a boat sailing away from Donovan's fabled "Atlantis." Tevez? How about "bulldog" or "rugged"?
Messi pulls off moves of grace and transcendence -- think the all-time run vs. Getafe -- while Tevez seems to score and create plays through his sheer force of will.
Or how about their nicknames? Messi is "El Pulga" (the Flea), while Tevez is "El Apache" or colloquially, 'The Hulk' both slightly more badass.
Suffice to say, there's at opposite ends of the spectrum. On a side note, we don't need to turn this into a standard sports talk argument, just arguing for the sake of itself. Both Messi and Tevez can and are great players, though which players' will influences Argentina will impact the World Cup in June.
Looking at the Argentina depth chart, yes, it's possible Tevez might not start. Messi would seem a lock, despite his lack of international impact. Then there's Maradona favorite Kun Aguero, followed by Real Madrid's Gonzalo Higuain.
It seems Tevez is playing with this knowledge in mind, trying to force himself into the equation with 10 goals in the last nine matches for Manchester City. Granted, this could bizarrely work against him since the way the drug-addled brain of Maradona works, be might penalize Tevez for playing in England and just pick whomever is starting at Boca Juniors. You never know.
And therein lies a weird little wrinkle in the current Argentina camp.
There seems to be a division between the Maradona line of thinking, where he wants to reward players that still play in Argentina, compared to a guy like Messi who shipped off to the warm shores of Barcelona as an 11-year-old. Doesn't Messi seem more like the kind of guy who's laughing on the couch at the exploits of Homer and the gang? That's no knock either, though many fans back home in Argentina look at Messi with a slightly jaded eye since he's never done anything of note for his country at the senior international level, even with 13 goals in 41 international games.
Tevez, too, is a bit of an Argentina outsider, but still seems to fall on the opposite end of the socioeconomic/cultural picture of Messi.
Let's file this dynamic away and see what happens in a couple months. It's probably a nice quandary to have, though we've seen international teams mainly fail when they try to shoehorn too many of the similar positioned players into the same lineup, just look at Brazil at the last World Cup. If Maradona can figure out a way to get both Messi and Tevez firing on all cylinders in South Africa, which defense is going to keep them off the score sheet?
In the meantime, will Tevez be able to continue his scoring barrage at Man City? He seems to have assumed the on-field leadership status at Eastlands. When you think of City, his Hulk-like visage immediately springs to mind.
Is Tevez the most talented player in the world? Probably not, though he's no slouch. If you lined him up with the consensus top 10 talents, he'd look more out of place than if you dressed him in a tuxedo and brought him to a five-star restaurant. If you were a scout and caught Tevez on an off-day, you might not remember anything else about him beyond his one-of-a-kind mug.
What Tevez is, though, is the rare type player that can take over a game through his work and determination. He makes things happen.
More than that, he's a cult hero at both major Manchester clubs no less. Only a few players have the type of game to pull off that nearly impossible trick, right?
Remember in the Spring of 2007 when he essentially saved West Ham United from relegation all by himself? Or how he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time during his sporadic appearances at Manchester United? (Think Sir Alex regrets letting him leave this summer? Dimitar Berbatov might be more technically gifted than Tevez, but which player would you want in the fox hole next to you?)
Now, fully established in England, it seems as if Roberto Mancini has given him the keys at City and let him drive the bus up the top of the table -- with the only requirement that he wear some sort of neck accoutrement. He seems to have hit that mythical realm of sports, in basketball it's the "zone" in soccer it's simply "in-form", where he's seeing and playing the game at a different level than everyone else on the field.
Right now Tevez is playing like he was writing for 'The Simpsons' from Seasons 3 through 6. The laughs, err, goals just keep, a-comin' with no end in sight.
Now the question remains, come the World Cup will Tevez's play remind us of Homer piloting the ill-fated Springfield monorail (that's a good thing), or, will it be revealed that he and Messi were really secret elves that doubled as jockeys a.k.a. the worst 'Simpsons' episode ever.
(Hopefully somebody in Argentina, at least got those final references.)
As a kid who was absolutely reared 'Round Springfield, as it were, I had some high hopes for Morgan Spurlocks's documentary about the 20 years of 'The Simpsons' on Sunday night. Sadly, the doc basically broke down as an excuse for Spurlock (you know, 'Super Size Me' guy) to travel around the world to places like England, Brazil and Argentina.
Oh and Scotland, that's semi-crucial to the rest of this post.
Something struck me during the broadcast, 'The Simpsons' have done plenty of sports-centric episodes and had athletes like -- Joe Namath, Magic Johnson, Rosey Grier, LeBron James, etc. on the show to do voices. Yet the only mention of sport during the Spurlock doc was a trip to Sir Alex Ferguson's old haunt -- Aberdeen -- where the football club's current manager Mark McGhee made a pitch that Groundskeeper Willie was from the city. (Go Aberdeen!)
A little odd, no? Not even a Drederick Tatum cameo? Hell, if I ever lost my mind and went on a seven-state killing spree, I'd ask to watch "Homer at the Bat" before they stuck the lethal injection needle in my arm.
It's not like writers of 'The Simpsons' exactly profile as soccer fans, either. Let's not forget the infamous "center holds it" game featuring Mexico v. Portugal, which lead to rioting in the streets of Springfield. (That episode, 'The Cartridge Family' get a full-time pass since it was penned by the peerless John Swartzwelder.)
As my brain works, perhaps stabbed by too many Q-Tips, a day later another thought dawned on me from the Simpsons doc. Spurlock featured two South American countries -- Brazil and Argentina. Famously, Brazil took major offense to the 2002 episode "Blame it on Lisa", what with the different colored rats and roving monkey gangs. Meanwhile, according to Spurlock, Argentina has the highest percentage of Simpsons fans as anywhere in the world.
A tad illuminating about each country, right? Kind of makes me want to root for Argentina a little more at the World Cup, Maradona or no Maradona.
And in light of his hat trick for Manchester City yesterday, it made me wonder if Carlos Tevez is a 'Simpsons' fan? somehow I don't see it, although Tevez did pull off the oddity as an Argentine playing club soccer in Brazil with Corinthians, which he did before moving to West Ham in 2006. Still, I don't see Tevez cooling off after the game with a Duff beer in one hand and a 'Simpsons' Season Six DVD set in the other. Hell, I can't even imagine Tevez watching television, or anything in street clothes for that matter. (Think Bart running into principal Skinner at the laundromat.)
Consider this a clumsy transition toward something I tweeted yesterday during Manchester City's 4-1 win over Blackburn. There is going to be an interesting alpha dog battle for Argentina at South Africa between Lionel Messi and Tevez.
The Messi v. Tevez argument is fairly compelling.
On the one hand, Messi plays like his feet taste like timber in a crackling fire, while Tevez's face looks like just got out of a fire. [Ed. note, I'm acutely aware that Tevez was scalded as a child. This wasn't a slight at him or a potshot, in fact he deserves massive credit for opting to keep the scars. Tough dude.]
When people write about Messi, they use words like "magician", "wizard" and other professions you may have found on a boat sailing away from Donovan's fabled "Atlantis." Tevez? How about "bulldog" or "rugged"?
Messi pulls off moves of grace and transcendence -- think the all-time run vs. Getafe -- while Tevez seems to score and create plays through his sheer force of will.
Or how about their nicknames? Messi is "El Pulga" (the Flea), while Tevez is "El Apache" or colloquially, 'The Hulk' both slightly more badass.
Suffice to say, there's at opposite ends of the spectrum. On a side note, we don't need to turn this into a standard sports talk argument, just arguing for the sake of itself. Both Messi and Tevez can and are great players, though which players' will influences Argentina will impact the World Cup in June.
Looking at the Argentina depth chart, yes, it's possible Tevez might not start. Messi would seem a lock, despite his lack of international impact. Then there's Maradona favorite Kun Aguero, followed by Real Madrid's Gonzalo Higuain.
It seems Tevez is playing with this knowledge in mind, trying to force himself into the equation with 10 goals in the last nine matches for Manchester City. Granted, this could bizarrely work against him since the way the drug-addled brain of Maradona works, be might penalize Tevez for playing in England and just pick whomever is starting at Boca Juniors. You never know.
And therein lies a weird little wrinkle in the current Argentina camp.
There seems to be a division between the Maradona line of thinking, where he wants to reward players that still play in Argentina, compared to a guy like Messi who shipped off to the warm shores of Barcelona as an 11-year-old. Doesn't Messi seem more like the kind of guy who's laughing on the couch at the exploits of Homer and the gang? That's no knock either, though many fans back home in Argentina look at Messi with a slightly jaded eye since he's never done anything of note for his country at the senior international level, even with 13 goals in 41 international games.
Tevez, too, is a bit of an Argentina outsider, but still seems to fall on the opposite end of the socioeconomic/cultural picture of Messi.
Let's file this dynamic away and see what happens in a couple months. It's probably a nice quandary to have, though we've seen international teams mainly fail when they try to shoehorn too many of the similar positioned players into the same lineup, just look at Brazil at the last World Cup. If Maradona can figure out a way to get both Messi and Tevez firing on all cylinders in South Africa, which defense is going to keep them off the score sheet?
In the meantime, will Tevez be able to continue his scoring barrage at Man City? He seems to have assumed the on-field leadership status at Eastlands. When you think of City, his Hulk-like visage immediately springs to mind.
Is Tevez the most talented player in the world? Probably not, though he's no slouch. If you lined him up with the consensus top 10 talents, he'd look more out of place than if you dressed him in a tuxedo and brought him to a five-star restaurant. If you were a scout and caught Tevez on an off-day, you might not remember anything else about him beyond his one-of-a-kind mug.
What Tevez is, though, is the rare type player that can take over a game through his work and determination. He makes things happen.
More than that, he's a cult hero at both major Manchester clubs no less. Only a few players have the type of game to pull off that nearly impossible trick, right?
Remember in the Spring of 2007 when he essentially saved West Ham United from relegation all by himself? Or how he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time during his sporadic appearances at Manchester United? (Think Sir Alex regrets letting him leave this summer? Dimitar Berbatov might be more technically gifted than Tevez, but which player would you want in the fox hole next to you?)
Now, fully established in England, it seems as if Roberto Mancini has given him the keys at City and let him drive the bus up the top of the table -- with the only requirement that he wear some sort of neck accoutrement. He seems to have hit that mythical realm of sports, in basketball it's the "zone" in soccer it's simply "in-form", where he's seeing and playing the game at a different level than everyone else on the field.
Right now Tevez is playing like he was writing for 'The Simpsons' from Seasons 3 through 6. The laughs, err, goals just keep, a-comin' with no end in sight.
Now the question remains, come the World Cup will Tevez's play remind us of Homer piloting the ill-fated Springfield monorail (that's a good thing), or, will it be revealed that he and Messi were really secret elves that doubled as jockeys a.k.a. the worst 'Simpsons' episode ever.
(Hopefully somebody in Argentina, at least got those final references.)
Labels: 2010 world cup, Argentina, carlos tevez, Lionel Messi, Soccer, the simpsons
Slow weekend, at least in England.
Of course we were hardly devoid of soccer, should you have wanted it. A couple nice matches from Serie A, Barcelona live in HD on ESPN and, of course, the African Cup of Nations. (The empty seats at Italian grounds have a distinct MLS-feel to them, don't they? How did Italy host the World Cup in 1990 and in 20 years watch all the stadium's in the country go to pot?)
With a light schedule in the Premier League -- two games to be exact -- it made me remember something I'd scribbled on one of my many yellow legal pads I have lying around my condo to capture my golden brain nuggets. Admittedly, my handwriting isn't very easy to read so many times I spend a couple minutes trying to recall what I'd written.
This wasn't one of those times.
"Arsene Wenger is the easiest man on the planet for an American dude to make fun of."
Between his French accent that is so heavy you half expect him to cough up foie gras to his absolutely hideous 1980s tracksuit collection and his overall put-upon demeanor, Wenger is one step away from wearing a "Kick Me" sign.
Hell, I've had plenty of laughs at Wenger's expense. It's cheap and easy fun.
Yet as time goes on, Wenger sometimes seems like the only sane man in England.
This weekend, when seven of the 10 Premier League fixtures were cancelled because of snow and sub-zero temperatures, Wenger questioned why this was happening. Basically saying that the clubs were worried about the conditions around the stadium, not the grass and pitch and the things that mattered.
As an American, I say amen to that.
A couple weeks ago we saw a crippling snowstorm bury Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Thanks to volunteers and a couple scheduling tweaks, the games went on as scheduled.
Maybe this is an England/U.S. thing. In America we relish games in the snow, whereas England it seems to send them running for the hills. Perhaps they don't have plows or de-icer? I don't know.
I do know that the majority of the stadium's in the Premier League had heating systems for the field. Perhaps the the league wanted to watch out for the dreaded "prawn sandwich" brigade. Who knows? Denying fans the fun of watching a match in the snow is their loss.
Watching Arsenal's fun 2-2 draw with Everton in Landon Donovan's EPL debut at the snowy Emirates was nothing short of memorable. (For my full thoughts, here's my FanHouse write-up.)
Anyway, back to Wenger.
No need to go crazy praising a man who's gone a couple seasons without winning anything. It's just amazing that in the entire world of soccer he's one of the very few, sane, logical voices.
Training techiniques and proper nutruition? Blasphemy until he came over the England. Statistical analysis? The stuff of nerd and bean counters.
Everything we read about the sport seems very kneejerk and prone to hyperbole. Is this a product of the British media or its lack of any real access to the players themselves? Do people simply fear change?
As the book "Soccernomics" more than adequately points out, there are very few thinkers in the game. Instead it's more the case of watch, react, regurgitate. (I know I fall into that trap, too.)
Wenger is like a lone voice of sanity at times, even if he's the easist punchline since Mili Vanilli. (I'd like to write more, but honestly my hand is cramping up big time. Not a good thing, at all.)
* Arsenal/Everton leftovers -- Is it possible, even though he's from California, that Donovan was the most comfortable player with the cold Saturday? He's certainly played some chilly ones in Columbus. ... The biggest question, was Donovan that good or was Armand Traore that bad? ... Does Arsenal have any height on its team besides Abou Diaby?
* Birmingham City/Manchester United nuggets -- This is not your father's Manchester United. ... On Friday late night, I was playing from "FIFA 10" with my pal Jared, who's a big soccer guy. I asked him about this match, who he'd favor. He called it a pick 'em, but both agreed if it was a video game you'd go United every time, because despite all the good work by Alex McLeish's team, they'd not exactly all that dynamic. But hey, if Cameron Jerome keeps it up, you never know. Of course it's hard to trust a guy with two first names. ... Therein lies the trouble for Birmingham. They're at a level that's beyond what the club probably expects, but do they know how to move to the next echelon? They do have some money withDr. Zaius Carson Yeung, right? How do you bring in that "next" level talent, while not sacrificing what got you to where you haven't lost since October? Stoke City is linked to Ruud van Nistelrooy, if I'm McLeish, I'm making a call to Madrid. ... Manchester United? It's like when Rooney isn't runnin' wild they're just another team. ... Stephen Carr and Lee Carsley might not win any awards, so I'll create one for them. The two Premier League players that look the most like your average, English Premier League fan.
* A rant on Premier League fantasy -- The official game still a work in progress. Yes this weekend is a fluke with all the cancellations, but the powers that be need to figure out a better system, namely with their knockout cup. Which games count for it this week? Me? I'm still alive and shouldn't complain. The Aussie owner I was paired off with ended up with negative points because of all the transfers he made, so be it. Still, the game needs some tweaks to get it on par with the major, American fantasy sports options.
* One other thing -- In light of the Togo incident, I couldn't be less interested by the African Cup of Nations, and as you know I'm a big ACN fan. Of course, I couldn't help but check out the end of the Angola/Mali 4-4 draw Sunday. Guess I'll be parachuting in-and-out of the thing after all.
Enjoy Manchester City/Blackburn, weather permitting Monday. I'll prolly be tweeting during the match, assuming I get home in time from a doctor's appointment.
Of course we were hardly devoid of soccer, should you have wanted it. A couple nice matches from Serie A, Barcelona live in HD on ESPN and, of course, the African Cup of Nations. (The empty seats at Italian grounds have a distinct MLS-feel to them, don't they? How did Italy host the World Cup in 1990 and in 20 years watch all the stadium's in the country go to pot?)
With a light schedule in the Premier League -- two games to be exact -- it made me remember something I'd scribbled on one of my many yellow legal pads I have lying around my condo to capture my golden brain nuggets. Admittedly, my handwriting isn't very easy to read so many times I spend a couple minutes trying to recall what I'd written.
This wasn't one of those times.
"Arsene Wenger is the easiest man on the planet for an American dude to make fun of."
Between his French accent that is so heavy you half expect him to cough up foie gras to his absolutely hideous 1980s tracksuit collection and his overall put-upon demeanor, Wenger is one step away from wearing a "Kick Me" sign.
Hell, I've had plenty of laughs at Wenger's expense. It's cheap and easy fun.
Yet as time goes on, Wenger sometimes seems like the only sane man in England.
This weekend, when seven of the 10 Premier League fixtures were cancelled because of snow and sub-zero temperatures, Wenger questioned why this was happening. Basically saying that the clubs were worried about the conditions around the stadium, not the grass and pitch and the things that mattered.
As an American, I say amen to that.
A couple weeks ago we saw a crippling snowstorm bury Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Thanks to volunteers and a couple scheduling tweaks, the games went on as scheduled.
Maybe this is an England/U.S. thing. In America we relish games in the snow, whereas England it seems to send them running for the hills. Perhaps they don't have plows or de-icer? I don't know.
I do know that the majority of the stadium's in the Premier League had heating systems for the field. Perhaps the the league wanted to watch out for the dreaded "prawn sandwich" brigade. Who knows? Denying fans the fun of watching a match in the snow is their loss.
Watching Arsenal's fun 2-2 draw with Everton in Landon Donovan's EPL debut at the snowy Emirates was nothing short of memorable. (For my full thoughts, here's my FanHouse write-up.)
Anyway, back to Wenger.
No need to go crazy praising a man who's gone a couple seasons without winning anything. It's just amazing that in the entire world of soccer he's one of the very few, sane, logical voices.
Training techiniques and proper nutruition? Blasphemy until he came over the England. Statistical analysis? The stuff of nerd and bean counters.
Everything we read about the sport seems very kneejerk and prone to hyperbole. Is this a product of the British media or its lack of any real access to the players themselves? Do people simply fear change?
As the book "Soccernomics" more than adequately points out, there are very few thinkers in the game. Instead it's more the case of watch, react, regurgitate. (I know I fall into that trap, too.)
Wenger is like a lone voice of sanity at times, even if he's the easist punchline since Mili Vanilli. (I'd like to write more, but honestly my hand is cramping up big time. Not a good thing, at all.)
* Arsenal/Everton leftovers -- Is it possible, even though he's from California, that Donovan was the most comfortable player with the cold Saturday? He's certainly played some chilly ones in Columbus. ... The biggest question, was Donovan that good or was Armand Traore that bad? ... Does Arsenal have any height on its team besides Abou Diaby?
* Birmingham City/Manchester United nuggets -- This is not your father's Manchester United. ... On Friday late night, I was playing from "FIFA 10" with my pal Jared, who's a big soccer guy. I asked him about this match, who he'd favor. He called it a pick 'em, but both agreed if it was a video game you'd go United every time, because despite all the good work by Alex McLeish's team, they'd not exactly all that dynamic. But hey, if Cameron Jerome keeps it up, you never know. Of course it's hard to trust a guy with two first names. ... Therein lies the trouble for Birmingham. They're at a level that's beyond what the club probably expects, but do they know how to move to the next echelon? They do have some money with
* A rant on Premier League fantasy -- The official game still a work in progress. Yes this weekend is a fluke with all the cancellations, but the powers that be need to figure out a better system, namely with their knockout cup. Which games count for it this week? Me? I'm still alive and shouldn't complain. The Aussie owner I was paired off with ended up with negative points because of all the transfers he made, so be it. Still, the game needs some tweaks to get it on par with the major, American fantasy sports options.
* One other thing -- In light of the Togo incident, I couldn't be less interested by the African Cup of Nations, and as you know I'm a big ACN fan. Of course, I couldn't help but check out the end of the Angola/Mali 4-4 draw Sunday. Guess I'll be parachuting in-and-out of the thing after all.
Enjoy Manchester City/Blackburn, weather permitting Monday. I'll prolly be tweeting during the match, assuming I get home in time from a doctor's appointment.
Labels: Arsenal, English Premier League, everton, Landon Donovan, Premier League, Soccer
In the words of Aldo Raine, "Bon-jour-no."
Sorry for the delay in posts. I know you guys are craving it like a heroin junkie and the spike. Err. Bad example.
Apologies anyway. I was trying to sneak into Mexico to win the Mexican lottery.
Yes, the Landon Donovan Mexican ad is clearly the best soccer-related Internety thing of 2010. Bar none.
For one, he is no longer Lando, or Landycakes or what-have-you. He is officially "El Landito." (Which, if you peep my Twitter icon will make more sense.)
Secondly, lost in the absolute hilarity of the ad -- including production values which would make Telemundo Telenovellas blush -- how on earth is the best American soccer player on the planet (apologies to Clint Dempsey's recent purple patch, more on him later) able to film television ads in Mexico but no the States? Shouldn't this be at least a tad concerning that the U.S.'s all-time leading scorer is more iconic in Mexico -- a place where he once peed on the sidelines of a field during a amtch -- than in America? (At least Donovan is a cartoonish villain, instead of the All-American poster boy the USSF props him up as.)
Well, of course, this should be an issue, but we know better. So what's the point getting worked up about it? It is what it is.
For all the leaps and bounds of soccer in the States, we're still forced to see our best player film ads -- whilst wearing a buffo mustache no less -- in the country of our most hated rival. Maybe it'll change one day, but even as the game grows, media saturation remains a long way off.
That's why when I'm stumbling through the malaise of late-night basic cable in my bedroom, it's that Beckham fellow being interviewed on "Lopez Tonight" and not El Landito.
What's actually a little more outrageous is the fact that Clint Dempsey's absolute Gol-azo-azo-azo for Fulham vs. Stoke City on Tuesday was left out of the "Sportscenter" top 10 plays. Imagine if that goal came on Telemundo. Andres Cantor might have pulled a play out the Mick Shrimpton playbook.
You'd think, mind you think, the goal in-and-of itself would be worthy of inclusion -- the next day a play from Sevilla/Barca made the list. But since it was an American, it seemed a slam dunk -- no pun intended for the other clips on the list, especially since it's on the short-list of Premier League "Goals of the Year." (Maybe John Harkes, who won the award back in 1990 with Sheffield Wednesday blocked it.)
Alas, Dempsey's strike will live on in the Inter-tubes, which isn't all that bad.
Yet it holds to a bigger point, which I've made a million times in this space, so if you want to skip ahead no hard feelings.
In the year 2010, ESPN is sports in America. When it comes to soccer it continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth.
On the one hand it's acquired some Premier League rights, the World Cup, USMNT games (mostly), etc. At the same time the Worldwide doesn't have anchors that can get through a highlight with the correct names, or simply ignores the best goal by an American in Europe, perhaps, ever. (Obviously it wasn't better than a pedestrian NCAA basketball dunk.)
You'd think that John Skipper would realize that, hey, we own the rights to these events. Shouldn't we try to drum up interest through osmosis? Wouldn't Dempsey's great goal -- by an AMERICAN -- plant some seeds in the back of the casual fans minds for the World Cup in less than six months? Wouldn't it help familiarize people with perhaps America's most important or at least enigmatic player for the campaign in South Africa?
Look, the most ESPN I watch is on the machines at the gym. So do a lot of people, I'd assume. Wouldn't a glimpse of Dempsey's rainbowing volley subliminally help draw eyeballs to the set in June? Wouldn't it help dispel the notion that Americans can't play at a high level?
I won't even mention MLS's presence on ESPN. Sure it gets microscopic ratings, but wouldn't some casual talk about the league or, gasp, HIGHLIGHTS, help increase interest. Treating MLS like the Pro Bowling and Pro Billiards leagues is an embarrassment. (Of course, the league's rating are that, too.)
Maybe this is an overreaction. Maybe since the game was on Setanta in the midweek (more on that later) somebody missed it. It's possible. The game was 3-1 at the time in the 85th minute, after all.
Again it's goals like the one scored by Dempsey that capture the imagination and make people fall in love with the game. Nothing sends the imagination soaring more than a crack from distance. Half of YouTube and every other tube site is devoted to goal highlight compilations.
For the major sports force in the country to swing-and-miss on a the very definition of a highlight is part of the reason why the best American soccer player is filming ads for the Mexican lottery.
A Few Other things:
* Freddy Adu and Eddie Johnson sign with the same Greek club, Aris.
Doesn't this seem like the dreadful Season Three episodes of "Lost" with Kate and Sawyer locked away in the polar bear cages? In other words, irrelevant?
Johnson? That ship has sailed in terms of the USMNT.
Adu? For all his disappointments, nobody else in the U.S. pool brings his skill set to the table. Obviously Bob Bradley and he don't see eye-to-eye, but Adu could possibly, stress possibly, bring something to the table at the World Cup. Couldn't he be a useful 75+ minute sub to at least run at people and cause some chaos?
Put it this way, wouldn't you rather have Adu in the mix over guys like Sascha Kljestan or Kyle Beckerman?
* Big week for Fox Soccer Channel. It adds it's HD channel, which is nice. It loses Max Bretos to ESPN. Bretos was a buffoon, but he was our buffoon. So in his honor, one last time. My favorite call of the 2000s.
Here's to praying that Max doesn't succumb to the WWL like Allen Hopkins did.
* Oh right, Fox is about to buy Setanta according to EPL Talk.
Until it actually happens, it's hard to gauge what will happen. Right now there's speculation that Fox starts another soccer channel. Or it leases more rights to either ESPN or GolTV. Beats me.
One thing is for sure, in the interim we're two-less live EPL matches per weekend, which isn't good.
However, if Fox revives "Special 1 TV" then its all worth it.
I'll wait to see how this develops before passing judgment.
* Oh man, we have a new slate of Premier League matches. And the African Cup of Nations on the horizon. My bad. Let's get to it.
Saturday:
UPDATE -- As of Friday morning, three games: Fulham/Portsmouth; Burnley/Stoke and Sunderland/Bolton were canceled for weather. Liverpool/Spurs might be postponed too. Double Update, Liverpool/Spurs is off. So read what I wrote for these matches and file them away to when they're played. What it does to the television schedule? Good question. Another update, Hull/Chelsea off too, could help Chelsea depending when it is replayed.
ONE MORE UPDATE -- According to EPL Talk, Setanta is back for this week, so Arsenal/Everton will be on.
* Hull City v. Chelsea -- PPD. (Live, ESPN2, 7:45 a.m.) The good news for Jozy Altidore, Caleb Folan is out the door. The bad news, Hull is linked to Felipe Caciedo. Curious to see how Chelsea reacts without Didier Drogba's talismanic qualities. Maybe Joe Cole steps up a little. Goals, however, against Hull shouldn't be a problem but the Blues can't afford to sleepwalk through this one. Hull might have a little early afternoon spark. ... Hull City 1, Chelsea 2
* Arsenal v. Everton -- This first casualty of the Setanta/Fox impending takeover. This was supposed to be on Setanta. Now, lost to the ether. Or those (cough, cough) "streams." Or if you live in Canada. I'd doubt this the the first Premier League appearance for Landon Donovan, aside from a 70+ minute sub. Of course, Arsenal's borderline infamous 'game-in-hand' Wednesday vs. Bolton got snowed out. Maybe that's a break for the Gunners, who aren't exactly suited for the snow, even with Andrey Arshavin in the mix. Weather or not, the Gunners have too much speed in the midifeld for Everton to handle. The Toffees need to make weight on set pieces or get run over. ... Arsenal 3, Everton 1
* Burnley v. Stoke City (Ppd.) -- At first the Owen Coyle move from Burnley to Bolton seems odd. Why would he leave a club that he built up and got promoted? Especially when he had a chance for Celtic in the summer. Let me put it this way. Consider you live in Akron, Ohio and have the chance to move to Cleveland. It might be Cleveland, but it's still an upgrade. Celtic in this equation is, say, Hamilton, Ontario. Anyway, Burnley's early-season spark had started to skitter anyway. Will it become a full-on tailspin? Signs point to yes. ... Burnley 0, Stoke City 1
* Fulham v. Portsmouth (Ppd.) -- It's not exactly on the 'Twilight Zone' level of irony, but it's it perfect that the same week Eddie Johnson leaves Fulham, the club loses it's basically only healthy forward -- Bobby Zamora? Looks like Clint Dempsey, Danny Murphy and Damien Duff better be at their best. Do you see Erik Nevland and Diomansy Kamara getting the job done at Craven Cottage? As for Portsmouth? Are we so sure that the Arabs that bought the club aren't like the cousins of the fake sheik that duped Sven-Goran Eriksson a couple years ago? ... Fulham 1, Portsmouth 0
* Sunderland v. Bolton (Ppd.) -- I wouldn't be surprised if Sunderland went through a mini-shakeup during the transfer window. Steve Bruce is usually active. Bolton? It will be interesting to see if Coyle -- who might not be around to coach this weekend -- clicks with the players there, or brings in his own guys. There are some pieces at the Reebok Stadium, but the team lacks any sort of identity. First priority might be trying to find or develop a midfield general type. Whatever happens, a lot of the deadweight a Bolton should be out the door and headed to the scrapheap. ... Sunderland 2, Bolton 0
* Wigan Athletic v. Aston Villa -- (Live, 10 a.m.) Quick and simple. Aston Villa needs to get its mojo back, post haste. ... Wigan 0, Aston Villa 2
* Birmingham City v. Manchester United -- (Live, FSC, 12:30 p.m.) Would you actually favor Birmingham City in this match? Really? Shouldn't it be all things considered? Well, it doesn't work like that. Manchester United, even with its indifferent form, is still Manchester United. As long as Brum can continue to coax a couple goals here-and-there, it should be okay. Of course banking on Lee Bowyer to keep it up, and Camerone Jerome to do anything consistently isn't the soundest strategy in the world. Here's a free tip for Sir Alex. Why not try to pick up David Bentley off Spurs on the cheap? He's obviously surplus parts at White Hart Lane and as we've seen, Tottenham's M.O. is selling players for less than it bought them for. You're telling me Bentley, a proven Prem performer, couldn't help? He'd save Ryan Giggs legs on the outside of midfield, at the bare minimum. Maybe the only thing against this is it could block Gabriel Obertan long-term. If not United, somebody ought to try to pry Bentley off the Spurs' bench. Okay, back to this game. A lot of times I say these are guesses. Never more than this one. ... Birmingham City 1, Manchester United 1
Sunday:
* West Ham United v. Wolves -- Since I have nothing of interest for this one, I was pleasantly pleased to find out the band Slade was from Wolverhampton. Back around the summer of 1998, when mp3s were just getting into the consciousness I'd crack up the song "Run Runaway" on full blast on my parents shitty old computer to try to wake up my younger brother. Oh, that and Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'". You might be asking, what's the point of this story? Well, I like stories. ... West Ham 2, Wolves 1
* Liverpool v. Tottenham -- (Ppd.) Well lookie here, an important match become the two teams with the most schizophrenic teams in the league. Can we trust Liverpool, even after its season-saver at Villa Park two weeks ago? As usual, it comes down to the health of No. 8 and No. 9. Maybe a chance to recharge the batteries does help Liverpool, or it got players looking out the door. Spurs? They could win this 3-0 or lose it 3-0. With all their attacking players, and a returning to form Luka Modric you'd think they could pick apart the Liverpool defense. As we know, it's never easy with either of these clubs. ... Liverpool 1, Tottenham 1
Monday
* Manchester City v. Blackburn Rovers -- (Live?, ESPN2, 2:45 p.m.) Here's the short list on City thoughts: 1) Patrick Vieira? Really? I thought he was already in the Premier League wearing No. 2 at Arsenal. (If Dommenech takes Vieira over Diaby for the France team, I give up.) 2) Don't forget that under Roberto Mancini, Inter had a huge, borderline bloated squad of "name" players. 3) Where does Gareth Barry fit into this equation? 4) If Mancini is smart he could build the prototype 4-3-3/4-5-1 team with a couple crunching midfielder in the middle like Nigel de Jong doing the dirty work, allowing the attackers like Robinho, Carlito and Bellamy to run wild. It shouldn't be difficult. City have the pieces, that's why bringing in the lumbering corpse of Vieira doesn't make sense. It's like spending money for money's sake. Not to slang off Vieira and his great career, but at 33 years old and nearly 600 matches under his belt, how much tread is left on the tire? This is like a knee jerk move the Redskins would make under Daniel Synder. Oh wait, Vieira is available? Let's get him. Ironically, the last team to essentially "buy" a title, Blackburn in 1995 plays City this weekend. Oh how the times have changed. ... Manchester City 4, Blackburn 0
Last time: 7-3
Season: 103-93
Sorry for the delay in posts. I know you guys are craving it like a heroin junkie and the spike. Err. Bad example.
Apologies anyway. I was trying to sneak into Mexico to win the Mexican lottery.
Yes, the Landon Donovan Mexican ad is clearly the best soccer-related Internety thing of 2010. Bar none.
For one, he is no longer Lando, or Landycakes or what-have-you. He is officially "El Landito." (Which, if you peep my Twitter icon will make more sense.)
Secondly, lost in the absolute hilarity of the ad -- including production values which would make Telemundo Telenovellas blush -- how on earth is the best American soccer player on the planet (apologies to Clint Dempsey's recent purple patch, more on him later) able to film television ads in Mexico but no the States? Shouldn't this be at least a tad concerning that the U.S.'s all-time leading scorer is more iconic in Mexico -- a place where he once peed on the sidelines of a field during a amtch -- than in America? (At least Donovan is a cartoonish villain, instead of the All-American poster boy the USSF props him up as.)
Well, of course, this should be an issue, but we know better. So what's the point getting worked up about it? It is what it is.
For all the leaps and bounds of soccer in the States, we're still forced to see our best player film ads -- whilst wearing a buffo mustache no less -- in the country of our most hated rival. Maybe it'll change one day, but even as the game grows, media saturation remains a long way off.
That's why when I'm stumbling through the malaise of late-night basic cable in my bedroom, it's that Beckham fellow being interviewed on "Lopez Tonight" and not El Landito.
What's actually a little more outrageous is the fact that Clint Dempsey's absolute Gol-azo-azo-azo for Fulham vs. Stoke City on Tuesday was left out of the "Sportscenter" top 10 plays. Imagine if that goal came on Telemundo. Andres Cantor might have pulled a play out the Mick Shrimpton playbook.
You'd think, mind you think, the goal in-and-of itself would be worthy of inclusion -- the next day a play from Sevilla/Barca made the list. But since it was an American, it seemed a slam dunk -- no pun intended for the other clips on the list, especially since it's on the short-list of Premier League "Goals of the Year." (Maybe John Harkes, who won the award back in 1990 with Sheffield Wednesday blocked it.)
Alas, Dempsey's strike will live on in the Inter-tubes, which isn't all that bad.
Yet it holds to a bigger point, which I've made a million times in this space, so if you want to skip ahead no hard feelings.
In the year 2010, ESPN is sports in America. When it comes to soccer it continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth.
On the one hand it's acquired some Premier League rights, the World Cup, USMNT games (mostly), etc. At the same time the Worldwide doesn't have anchors that can get through a highlight with the correct names, or simply ignores the best goal by an American in Europe, perhaps, ever. (Obviously it wasn't better than a pedestrian NCAA basketball dunk.)
You'd think that John Skipper would realize that, hey, we own the rights to these events. Shouldn't we try to drum up interest through osmosis? Wouldn't Dempsey's great goal -- by an AMERICAN -- plant some seeds in the back of the casual fans minds for the World Cup in less than six months? Wouldn't it help familiarize people with perhaps America's most important or at least enigmatic player for the campaign in South Africa?
Look, the most ESPN I watch is on the machines at the gym. So do a lot of people, I'd assume. Wouldn't a glimpse of Dempsey's rainbowing volley subliminally help draw eyeballs to the set in June? Wouldn't it help dispel the notion that Americans can't play at a high level?
I won't even mention MLS's presence on ESPN. Sure it gets microscopic ratings, but wouldn't some casual talk about the league or, gasp, HIGHLIGHTS, help increase interest. Treating MLS like the Pro Bowling and Pro Billiards leagues is an embarrassment. (Of course, the league's rating are that, too.)
Maybe this is an overreaction. Maybe since the game was on Setanta in the midweek (more on that later) somebody missed it. It's possible. The game was 3-1 at the time in the 85th minute, after all.
Again it's goals like the one scored by Dempsey that capture the imagination and make people fall in love with the game. Nothing sends the imagination soaring more than a crack from distance. Half of YouTube and every other tube site is devoted to goal highlight compilations.
For the major sports force in the country to swing-and-miss on a the very definition of a highlight is part of the reason why the best American soccer player is filming ads for the Mexican lottery.
A Few Other things:
* Freddy Adu and Eddie Johnson sign with the same Greek club, Aris.
Doesn't this seem like the dreadful Season Three episodes of "Lost" with Kate and Sawyer locked away in the polar bear cages? In other words, irrelevant?
Johnson? That ship has sailed in terms of the USMNT.
Adu? For all his disappointments, nobody else in the U.S. pool brings his skill set to the table. Obviously Bob Bradley and he don't see eye-to-eye, but Adu could possibly, stress possibly, bring something to the table at the World Cup. Couldn't he be a useful 75+ minute sub to at least run at people and cause some chaos?
Put it this way, wouldn't you rather have Adu in the mix over guys like Sascha Kljestan or Kyle Beckerman?
* Big week for Fox Soccer Channel. It adds it's HD channel, which is nice. It loses Max Bretos to ESPN. Bretos was a buffoon, but he was our buffoon. So in his honor, one last time. My favorite call of the 2000s.
Here's to praying that Max doesn't succumb to the WWL like Allen Hopkins did.
* Oh right, Fox is about to buy Setanta according to EPL Talk.
Until it actually happens, it's hard to gauge what will happen. Right now there's speculation that Fox starts another soccer channel. Or it leases more rights to either ESPN or GolTV. Beats me.
One thing is for sure, in the interim we're two-less live EPL matches per weekend, which isn't good.
However, if Fox revives "Special 1 TV" then its all worth it.
I'll wait to see how this develops before passing judgment.
* Oh man, we have a new slate of Premier League matches. And the African Cup of Nations on the horizon. My bad. Let's get to it.
Saturday:
UPDATE -- As of Friday morning, three games: Fulham/Portsmouth; Burnley/Stoke and Sunderland/Bolton were canceled for weather. Liverpool/Spurs might be postponed too. Double Update, Liverpool/Spurs is off. So read what I wrote for these matches and file them away to when they're played. What it does to the television schedule? Good question. Another update, Hull/Chelsea off too, could help Chelsea depending when it is replayed.
ONE MORE UPDATE -- According to EPL Talk, Setanta is back for this week, so Arsenal/Everton will be on.
* Hull City v. Chelsea -- PPD. (
* Arsenal v. Everton -- This first casualty of the Setanta/Fox impending takeover. This was supposed to be on Setanta. Now, lost to the ether. Or those (cough, cough) "streams." Or if you live in Canada. I'd doubt this the the first Premier League appearance for Landon Donovan, aside from a 70+ minute sub. Of course, Arsenal's borderline infamous 'game-in-hand' Wednesday vs. Bolton got snowed out. Maybe that's a break for the Gunners, who aren't exactly suited for the snow, even with Andrey Arshavin in the mix. Weather or not, the Gunners have too much speed in the midifeld for Everton to handle. The Toffees need to make weight on set pieces or get run over. ... Arsenal 3, Everton 1
* Burnley v. Stoke City (Ppd.) -- At first the Owen Coyle move from Burnley to Bolton seems odd. Why would he leave a club that he built up and got promoted? Especially when he had a chance for Celtic in the summer. Let me put it this way. Consider you live in Akron, Ohio and have the chance to move to Cleveland. It might be Cleveland, but it's still an upgrade. Celtic in this equation is, say, Hamilton, Ontario. Anyway, Burnley's early-season spark had started to skitter anyway. Will it become a full-on tailspin? Signs point to yes. ... Burnley 0, Stoke City 1
* Fulham v. Portsmouth (Ppd.) -- It's not exactly on the 'Twilight Zone' level of irony, but it's it perfect that the same week Eddie Johnson leaves Fulham, the club loses it's basically only healthy forward -- Bobby Zamora? Looks like Clint Dempsey, Danny Murphy and Damien Duff better be at their best. Do you see Erik Nevland and Diomansy Kamara getting the job done at Craven Cottage? As for Portsmouth? Are we so sure that the Arabs that bought the club aren't like the cousins of the fake sheik that duped Sven-Goran Eriksson a couple years ago? ... Fulham 1, Portsmouth 0
* Sunderland v. Bolton (Ppd.) -- I wouldn't be surprised if Sunderland went through a mini-shakeup during the transfer window. Steve Bruce is usually active. Bolton? It will be interesting to see if Coyle -- who might not be around to coach this weekend -- clicks with the players there, or brings in his own guys. There are some pieces at the Reebok Stadium, but the team lacks any sort of identity. First priority might be trying to find or develop a midfield general type. Whatever happens, a lot of the deadweight a Bolton should be out the door and headed to the scrapheap. ... Sunderland 2, Bolton 0
* Wigan Athletic v. Aston Villa -- (Live, 10 a.m.) Quick and simple. Aston Villa needs to get its mojo back, post haste. ... Wigan 0, Aston Villa 2
* Birmingham City v. Manchester United -- (Live, FSC, 12:30 p.m.) Would you actually favor Birmingham City in this match? Really? Shouldn't it be all things considered? Well, it doesn't work like that. Manchester United, even with its indifferent form, is still Manchester United. As long as Brum can continue to coax a couple goals here-and-there, it should be okay. Of course banking on Lee Bowyer to keep it up, and Camerone Jerome to do anything consistently isn't the soundest strategy in the world. Here's a free tip for Sir Alex. Why not try to pick up David Bentley off Spurs on the cheap? He's obviously surplus parts at White Hart Lane and as we've seen, Tottenham's M.O. is selling players for less than it bought them for. You're telling me Bentley, a proven Prem performer, couldn't help? He'd save Ryan Giggs legs on the outside of midfield, at the bare minimum. Maybe the only thing against this is it could block Gabriel Obertan long-term. If not United, somebody ought to try to pry Bentley off the Spurs' bench. Okay, back to this game. A lot of times I say these are guesses. Never more than this one. ... Birmingham City 1, Manchester United 1
Sunday:
* West Ham United v. Wolves -- Since I have nothing of interest for this one, I was pleasantly pleased to find out the band Slade was from Wolverhampton. Back around the summer of 1998, when mp3s were just getting into the consciousness I'd crack up the song "Run Runaway" on full blast on my parents shitty old computer to try to wake up my younger brother. Oh, that and Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'". You might be asking, what's the point of this story? Well, I like stories. ... West Ham 2, Wolves 1
* Liverpool v. Tottenham -- (Ppd.) Well lookie here, an important match become the two teams with the most schizophrenic teams in the league. Can we trust Liverpool, even after its season-saver at Villa Park two weeks ago? As usual, it comes down to the health of No. 8 and No. 9. Maybe a chance to recharge the batteries does help Liverpool, or it got players looking out the door. Spurs? They could win this 3-0 or lose it 3-0. With all their attacking players, and a returning to form Luka Modric you'd think they could pick apart the Liverpool defense. As we know, it's never easy with either of these clubs. ... Liverpool 1, Tottenham 1
Monday
* Manchester City v. Blackburn Rovers -- (Live?, ESPN2, 2:45 p.m.) Here's the short list on City thoughts: 1) Patrick Vieira? Really? I thought he was already in the Premier League wearing No. 2 at Arsenal. (If Dommenech takes Vieira over Diaby for the France team, I give up.) 2) Don't forget that under Roberto Mancini, Inter had a huge, borderline bloated squad of "name" players. 3) Where does Gareth Barry fit into this equation? 4) If Mancini is smart he could build the prototype 4-3-3/4-5-1 team with a couple crunching midfielder in the middle like Nigel de Jong doing the dirty work, allowing the attackers like Robinho, Carlito and Bellamy to run wild. It shouldn't be difficult. City have the pieces, that's why bringing in the lumbering corpse of Vieira doesn't make sense. It's like spending money for money's sake. Not to slang off Vieira and his great career, but at 33 years old and nearly 600 matches under his belt, how much tread is left on the tire? This is like a knee jerk move the Redskins would make under Daniel Synder. Oh wait, Vieira is available? Let's get him. Ironically, the last team to essentially "buy" a title, Blackburn in 1995 plays City this weekend. Oh how the times have changed. ... Manchester City 4, Blackburn 0
Last time: 7-3
Season: 103-93
Labels: clint dempsey, English Premier League, fox soccer channel, Landon Donovan, Prem Picks, Soccer
