New at Reason

David Weigel | July 6, 2006

Michael Young takes a pre-emptive look back at the 2006 World Cup.

Comments

|7.6.06 @ 4:14PM|#

Really the US should be happy to even be in the World Cup. When you remember that countries with long established fanatical soccer traditions like Hungary, Uruguay, Colombia, Turkey and Russia didn't even qualify, the US actually has it pretty good. And the US didn't embarass themselves either, not like the Saudis or the Iranians who really did not deserve to be at the Cup in the first place.

|7.6.06 @ 4:16PM|#

Both Italy and France will prominently feature short ugly guys who play wonderfully (Gattuso and Ribery). That that is even a possibility is one of the reasons why I love soccer.

|7.6.06 @ 4:19PM|#

the rise of african soccer should really be on display in south africa in 2010. that's four more years for their players and clubs to develop and have a home field advantage of sorts for the first time ever.

i think france takes this one. zidane is a great story too.

if arena must go, does american soccer take a run at germany's coach? i've heard rumors about it.

|7.6.06 @ 4:21PM|#

The U.S. is close to having the talent to get to the final--maybe one good striker would do it. But one big problem is not having the great coach. Bora might've been it if we'd had the sense to keep him. He merely gets results, after all. Not that it's all Arena's fault, but I just don't think he's the guy.

I agree that at least we were in the mix. If the U.S. hadn't come out so flat against the Czechs, they might have advanced.

Warren|7.6.06 @ 4:38PM|#

Bah! Americans don't give a flying flaming fuck or a rolling doughnut about soccer and they never will. Americans love football. It's over for another year, so please - shut the fuck up already.

|7.6.06 @ 4:42PM|#

"Watched" three matches. Big Yawn. Didn't something like 57 of 60 matches go the team that scored first? Might as well play them as "sudden victory" matches.

|7.6.06 @ 4:42PM|#

Would whoever keeps holding a gun to Warren's head and forcing him to read these soccer threads please stop?

I've never really been much of a fan until I started watching the matches on Univision. While I prefer the Premiership matches on Fox Soccer Channel, I just love the way the Univision announcer calls a goal.

|7.6.06 @ 4:47PM|#

I nominate Warren for grumpiest comment of the year.

|7.6.06 @ 4:47PM|#

You're wrong, Warren. It's over for another four years.

Huzzah!

|7.6.06 @ 4:49PM|#

does american soccer take a run at germany's coach? i've heard rumors about it.

He lives here in LA anyway...that would be interesting!

|7.6.06 @ 4:55PM|#

Warren is a typical representative of the annoying anti-soccer people as well as the annoying soccer fan - they both share the bizarre idea that soccer and American football can only exist in opposition to each other. Maybe there was some rationale to this attitude in 1905 but the two games have diverged so much that today, other than the name "football", the two sports have nothing in common. Why can't I love both? Why do people never say "soccer will never catch on in the US, Americans love NASCAR!", that makes about as much sense. Likewise far too many pretentious American soccer fans seem to think that the whole point of soccer is that it is somehow morally superior to American football. A pox on both your houses. If I can love baseball and football I can certainly love a completely different sport like soccer.

|7.6.06 @ 5:03PM|#

Warren,

We don't like watching soccer, either; especially not with that moron Lavolpe as coach.

We also think it's pretty damn funny that we can beat the US at baseball but we have not defeated the US at sea level since 1999.

|7.6.06 @ 5:05PM|#

Michael Young is wrong. I predict ITA-FRA 0:1. You heard it here first (unless you hang out at Grylliade).

Gimme Back My Dog|7.6.06 @ 5:12PM|#

I don't think it is any coincidence that the European powers put the offsides rule in this sport. Without it, the African teams would run right by the Europeans.

Gimme Back My Dog|7.6.06 @ 5:16PM|#

MY and Solo,

Put your money where your mouth is. 1-0 France gets you 5-1 odds. 2-1 Italy gets you 8-1 odds.

|7.6.06 @ 5:18PM|#

I agree with Michael Young -- Italy 2-1 France as Italy has one last hurrah before half the squad are sent to jail to being cheats.

Glad to see Michael Young's Libyan-owned favourites are rightfully relegated to the third division along with three other Italian clubs for match fixing and being bastards who play boring boring football and court neo-fascist fans...

And yes, Jurgen Klinnsman, the German coach and former World Cup winner (as a player) should be the next coach of the US. He already resides in Orange County, So-Cali, rightfully refusing to live in the wretched country he currently coaches...

Considering the US has only made serious attempts to qualify for the World Cup since 1990, we are doing quite well, thank you very much.

And the english may not be able to win, but they will have to settle for the best club football in the world by a longshot.

|7.6.06 @ 5:21PM|#

my apologies for using the word 'rightfully' twice in a post...my bad.

|7.6.06 @ 5:25PM|#

Just the opposite, Dog.

With the Offside rule, there would be 2 clumps of 11 players each parked in front of each goal.

The late, great NASL experimented with an "offside line" ( a line about 35 yards from goal, and between that line and the half way line' there was no offside) and it did not increase scoring.

Gimme Back My Dog|7.6.06 @ 5:44PM|#

Roy,

I doubt it. Basketball is not played with clumps of players in front of each goal. I play roller hockey, which does not have an offsides rule and cherry picking is not an issue, completing rink-length passes are nearly impossible and you end up losing a guy on defense for zero offensive benefit.

I didn't say that eliminating offsides would increase scoring. It would, however, reward faster players that could play defense and break out on counter attacks.

|7.6.06 @ 5:52PM|#

there are tons of very fast and vert talented football players, Luca, Lennon, DMB, SWP, Henry to name a couple -- offsides just forces them to use more skills than speed alone...

|7.6.06 @ 5:56PM|#

Gimme Back My Dog,

There were no African teams when the offsides rule came into being. Indeed, its original incarnation was in the 19th century.

Gimme Back My Dog|7.6.06 @ 6:00PM|#

Eliminating offsides would not take away the need for skill players. There would be more odd man rushes and this would require fast, skilled players.

|7.6.06 @ 6:13PM|#

Gimme Back My Dog,

If you don't like the off-sides rule so watch MISL. I'll take bad refs and the off-sides rule anyday over that crap.

|7.6.06 @ 6:25PM|#

GMBMD, if you are a casual fan; you may not know that soccer does experiment with rule changes.

They do it in youth tournaments and lower divisions (minor leagues).

I used to watch a USL (3rd division) team in the US. Games featured 15 yard walls on free kicks and 5 substitutions. I liked the 15 yard wall rule.

I suspect that some minor league/lower division somewhere has experimented with no offside rule. And I suspect that it ended up with 2 big clumps of players kicking the ball to each other.

|7.6.06 @ 6:30PM|#

Be Nice To Dog,

No offsides ended up looking like Lazio v Juve -- two crap sides bunkered down waiting for Asian betting syndicates to decide who should win. USL is 2nd division btw.

|7.6.06 @ 8:08PM|#

Hank Scorpio: By the way, Homer, what's your least favorite country? Italy or France?
Homer: France.
[Scorpio adjusts a giant laser cannon pointing towards the sky]
Hank Scorpio: Heh heh heh. Nobody ever says Italy...

|7.6.06 @ 8:12PM|#

Simpsons jokes aside, I'd take France to win. Between the Brazil match and Zidane's heroics, the baguette-eaters just seem to have an aura about them this year.

Robert|7.6.06 @ 10:17PM|#

The lack of an offsides rule doesn't result in goal-hanging in basketball or team handball because possession of the ball is a lot easier to maintain when you can hug it in your hands and throw it to your teammates, while your opponents aren't allowed to tackle you. But look at Australian Rules football, which has almost no offside rule, and you see the kind of game it becomes -- series of 1-on-1 contests and booming punts.

The most popular type of football in the USA in the middle of the 19th Century, sometimes called New York ball, was soccer-like without an offside rule, and it did feature a goal-hanging "peanutter" similar to a forward position seen in Gaelic football (which is similar to Australian Rules).

|7.7.06 @ 12:58AM|#

I think our soccer team is the best thing going for the US in terms of foreign relations right now. We seem to be alienating a lot of the rest of the world with our condescending rhetoric and willy-nilly invasions. I would imagine it is rather heartening for the rest of the world to see the US get hosed at the World's Game.

Why do you think our relations with Canada are still so good? Two words: Olympic Curling

|7.7.06 @ 1:23AM|#

I don't understand all the Arena-bashing (though I continually see it on the hyperventilation-prone BigSoccer). True, it is time for him to move on. He's taken the program as far as one man can. An 8-year reign is extremely rare in international football.

The most disappointing thing was that he became the Anti-Bruce this time around. My guess is that, again, he's gotten as much as he can out of the program and in the last 6 months, he became afraid of losing, something completely out of character for him. He tightened up and made a series of curious decisions consistent with a guy who was hanging on too tight.

Back in '02 and when he first took over in the aftermath of Dipshit Sampson, Bruce's teams were all about high-pressure, workrate and lightning counterattacking. He instilled a confidence in the team to be able to pressure the best teams all over the field and force mistakes, and when they couldn't, to organize and defend efficiently, then break out with confidence and speed.

Bruce will still go down as the most successful national team manager in US Soccer history (and he actually compares very favorably to the best in the world period). I don't think anyone will really approach his number of wins, because I think the program has moved beyond a 2-3 cycle coach. But it's also a testament to his management abilities.

For replacements, if we could pry Klinsi away from ze Germans, it would be tremendous. Since the Training Center is literally down the road from him, it would be perfect. Otherwise, if we could outbid the Russians for Hiddink, or get Beenhakker to come aboard, we could really move forward again.

We're really not that far away from being CONSISTENT quarterfinalists. That says a lot, because there are several traditional powerhouses who struggle to say that (Argentina, France, and Holland in '02, England in '94, the Czechs in the last 20 years, Spain all the time, etc.). We need to develop honest-to-God strikers (Eddie Johnson, would you like to actually show up?) and cut back on the Donovan-like tweeners in favor of actual #10-type midfielders.

|7.7.06 @ 1:31AM|#

I don't know, Eric. The US National Team won a TON of hearts with that gutty performance vs. Italy and that scumbag ref Larrionda.

The press all over Europe except in Italy (but especially in England) were absolutely fawning over the way the guys battled and toughed it out and attacked in the first 25 minutes.

I've never seen that much praise for an American team in Europe. The neutral Germans were almost exclusively on our side. And not too many have mentioned this, but the sheer numbers of supporters that the US had (and I'm talking US citizens) was nearly as high as some of the close European countries, and possibly surpassing a few.

When they played the anthems, you could actually hear the words clearly as the crowd sang along, and the songs and chants throughout the games were as vocal or more vocal than the opponents'. US supporters took a backseat to no one, and that was unthinkable even 4 years ago. It seems the fan culture is really coming of age.

Football, even with this poor (and unlucky) result, has really made a shift here. The coverage at home was unprecedented, and record numbers have been watching. It's really encouraging.

|7.7.06 @ 7:05AM|#

I've heard talk of Erikson coming over as well. Which would be quite nice.

For all the talk of coaching, our biggest problem is that most of our players don't play against top competition in the Euro leagues. Donovan used to play in the Bundeslige and left because he was an average player there to play against inferior competition here. In basketball and baseball, top foreign playersregularly try to come to the US and play and it helps them immensely in international competition. We won't have an elite team until our players suck it up and start playing the best of the best as opposed to young raw South Americans and over the hill Europeans.

|7.7.06 @ 9:27AM|#

You would agree, though, that MLS has a very important place in developing National Team players, yes? (Think Dempsey, McBride, Beasley before PSV managed to throw him off-kilter, Convey, etc.)

|7.7.06 @ 10:24AM|#

Timon,
It's fine as a developmental league, but I have a couple problems with it. They don't suspend the season for the CONACACAF tourneys and a lot of players that should go overseas use it as a security blanket when they should be busting their chops against tougher players. Also, due to short-sightedness by Nike, there is no encouragement of players to go overseas. This is odd because being a top MLS player plaes in comparison to the value a player would have for being being a top global player and being dynamite in the World Cup. Quick, how many Americans know David Beckham vs. Claudio Reyna?

Even the second tier Euro leagues have good players, plus the chance they may move up due to the delightful rule that top teams move up and worst teams move down standard.

I see MLS as an equivalent to the Mexican Baseball League. Players would still be better off in the minors than they would be playing for a top Mexican league.

|7.7.06 @ 12:01PM|#

I think your comparison was extremely poorly chosen - Claudio Reyna never played a minute in MLS and his professional career has been spent 100% in England, Germany or Scotland.

That said, I fully agree that MLS is and is destined to be a selling league. I have absolutely no problem with that, either. Some people do, and I don't know why. Argentina, Brazil, Holland, France, Belgium, etc. all have various calibres of developmental leagues (for the big guys) as their top division. They aren't in any danger of falling off the face of the footballing earth.

Your comparison to the Mexican Baseball leagues is inapt, as well, mostly because you really can't compare the systems at all. If you liken MLS' ideal role to, say, the Belgian, Swedish, Dutch leagues, I'd say you're right on.

And don't get me started on that pussy Donovan. I've been cursing that bastard for being content with being a big fish in a little pond ever since he whined his way out of the rest of his Leverkusen contract. He missed Bianca and SoCal. What a fucking pussy.

Dempsey has 10 times the man-parts Donovan will ever think of having. I eagerly await his multi-million dollar transfer to England (probably suits his style of play best) and him succeeding Reyna as Captain America.

Bet on it.

|7.7.06 @ 1:08PM|#

Timon,
You're right. I'm still pissed about them not letting players leave mid-season for international competitions. The French, Belgian, Dutch and Scandanavian leagues do that.

Dempsey is 10 times the man of Donovan. I hope Nike throws the appropriate endorsement love on him as a result. I'm crossing my fingers that Freddy heads over to England and decides to wear Red, White and Blue in 2010 instead of a Black Star.

|7.7.06 @ 6:58PM|#

And the US didn't embarass themselves either, not like the Saudis or the Iranians who really did not deserve to be at the Cup in the first place.

The US, Saudi and Iran lost two games and draw one game, each ended up with one point. How exactly the Saudis and Iranians embarrassed themselves and the US didn't?

|7.8.06 @ 10:29AM|#

Neither of the two cited had nearly as tough a group as the US. The US drew Italy, fer Chrissakes, and did it 9v10 for 45 minutes.

And the US was royally FUCKED out of at least 1 point vs Ghana (the way the momentum was going, very likely 3 points).