As USA was spending their final hours before facing England Ocean City was on yet another trip, this one to West Virginia. The Nor’Easters were looking to add their second win of the season and they did just that in a spirited physical battle with the Chaos. The challenges led to a red card issued to Chaos defender Jamie Davies for a two-footed tackle on Kevin Curran (18). The Nor’Easters hit the back of the net with Max Hamilton sticking in a Swetra corner (32) for the lead. The short-handed Chaos fought back to get level in the 52nd and four minutes later Carmichael completed a swift counter for the lead at 2-1. Despite playing 10 v 11 the Chaos fought back to level for the 2nd time in the 68th minute from a free kick that found the head of Mark Young whose looping header eluded Tunde. Every bit as determined as the Chaos Ocean City took the lead for good in the 75th when Terry Gibbs poked in the match winner. Another Swetra corner found Strunk who headed back across goal finding Gibbs to set the final scoreline in a spirited hard fought match for both sides.
As the tempo was building to the World Cup opener on Friday some of the news around the soccer world got buried in the fuss. While many Liverpool fans interest was divided by the new manager hunt Chelsea announced the loss of both Joe Cole and Ballack. Both are out of contract on July 1 and failed to agree on their wage demands. Rafa appears to have secured the job at Inter Milan.
On the World Cup, security was questioned as a result of crowd actions for a friendly with FIFA’s leadership pointing fingers elsewhere of course. FIFA never takes responsibility for anything of course.
The list of players that won’t be competing and those that are not match fit has been extended too. Portugal lost Nani (Man United) to injury and Arjen Robben won’t be available for Netherlands opening round match.
USA says Onyewu is ready to go. Is this good or bad? Expect him to be ineffective and more likely than not his lack of match fitness could become an issue. When the USA plays a high back line his lack of pace puts more pressure on his mates to cover for him too which gets them out of shape as they scramble in certain situations. When he’s not fully fit his presence on the pitch could become a burden, not a plus. Watch for this to cause trouble in the already shaky defense.
Jozy Altidore is back on the training pitch. But is he really a positive at this point? Missing a week of preparation and not playing his part in the warmup games whether him being back is a good thing or not is an open question. We’ll find out soon enough as Bradley has named him among the starting 11 to face England.
The first World Cup match on the African continent with South Africa facing Mexico ended in a 1-1 draw. With Mexico controlling play for much of it RSA’s Modise produced a wonderful ball putting striker Tshabalala in and his excellent finish became the first goal of the World Cup (55). Prior to that perfectly executed counter Mexico’s inaccurate finishing had kept the game scoreless. A floated cross found Marquez unmarked at the back post in the 79th and he scored the second WC goal of his career to set the final scoreline.
The second match of opening day pitted France against Uruguay and it too ended in a draw, this one scoreless. Despite the star studded lineup with over half of the first 11 playing in the EPL and La Liga France was again unable to score. The highlight of the match became Henri’s appearance (72) making him the first Frenchman to play in four World Cups. Uruguay was reduced to 10 men in the 81st for a wild and crazy tackle by Lodeiro but France could not exploit the opportunity. It was a dud of a match between two teams that only got to the finals via playoffs. The French by a Henri handball that led to victory over Ireland and Uruguay was victorious over CONCACAF’s Costa Rica to earn the 5th spot in the finals from South America. FIFA says they’d like to expand the field for the World Cup finals. This match was a good example of why they should forget about it.
In Group B’s opener South Korea faced Greece in the early game on Saturday and the match produced yet another win for the Koreans in a 2-0 victory. In their 7th consecutive finals appearance the Koreans were easily the better side on the day winning their 3rd straight WC opener. The Greeks on the other hand making only their 2nd finals appearance (1994 was the other) still haven’t scored a WC goal. Their best chance came in the 81st minute but was pushed over the bar by the keeper with a terrific save to preserve the clean sheet.
What may be the team to beat, the 2nd choice to win it behind Brazil for many fans around the world, Argentina faced one of Africa’s best sides, the talented squad from Nigeria. Some pundits say this Nigeria side isn’t the measure of those of their past but that remains to be seen. It will take a solid effort to defeat them. Argentina dominated the early going and some loose play in their own end by the Super Eagles led to a Veron corner that an unmarked Gabriel Heinze headed home from the spot (6). From that point several big stops by the Eagles keeper (Enyeama) kept them in the game but when they did create chances on goal the quality was lacking. That 6th minute goal would be all there was in a game that produced stretches of end-to-end action. The big saves kept Nigeria in the hunt for a point but they just couldn’t find the finishing touch to get on level terms.
From these opening games in Group B it seems likely that these are the two that will advance. The match that is likely to decide who is the second nation to advance will be the June 22 confrontation between Nigeria and South Korea.
For the big match with England Bradley again chose to play Dempsey in his least effective role for the USA (winger) and instead of the more creative and flamboyant Torres in central midfield he plays his son and Ricardo Clark. Instead of the more determined, dynamic and productive Herculez Gomez he puts Findley and the youthful and unprepared Jozy Altidore up front taking the sting out of his offense with predictable results.
By the time the USA woke up and started to play England already had the lead via a 4th minute strike from Gerrard. Both central defenders, Onyewu and DeMerit were out of position (again) man marking as a throw-in went to Heskey who poked it to Gerrard. Gerrard turned Clark and waltzed into the wide open space vacated by the central defenders and made no mistake with his hard shot. It was too easy. Watch the replay carefully and you’ll see Onyewu up the pitch beyond the circle at the top of the area and Gerrard ten yards beyond him closing on Howard. The tactical positioning for the throw was apparently intended to draw those central defenders away from their normal area and it worked to perfection creating the space for Gerrard to exploit.
In the 40th minute the USA mounted a rare moment of pressure and Dempsey turned to take his shot because there was simply no other option. The low hard shot skipped off the pitch and handcuffed Green who bobbled it into goal. The second half was a bit better but for long stretches it was one-way traffic short pitch effort as England turned the screws tighter working for the goal. The closest to score though was Altidore who made a strong run to get past Carragher drilling his hard shot to the near post. Green pawed it away and high off the near post and it deflected nearly all the way across the face of goal with no one there to nudge it over the line. It was a terrific counter and run by Altidore and the one moment when the offense actually raised a credible threat to England in the entire second half. A good stop assisted by the post made up for Green’s moment of horror earlier.
At the other end Tim Howard was huge in goal for the USA making a number of quality saves to preserve the point and Steve Cherundolo was top shelf all match long. The defense continues to be a danger to itself with the poor clearances that instead of relieving the pressure only enable more of it. While the offense struggled to create pressure on England the defense was very nearly torn apart by intelligent long balls to front runners Rooney and target man Emille Heskey (Crouch too after he came on for Heskey). Aaron Lennon was very dangerous too. Howard had to be on top of his game in goal because of it, and he was as his top class saves on Heskey, Sean Wright-Phillips, Lampard and Ashley Cole stymied England’s efforts to produce the match winner.
The 1-1 draw, in large measure a gift, is a victory of sorts for the USA and surely a disappointment for England after the quick start and early goal. For the young man in goal for England, Robert Green, the sorry thing is that for the rest of his career he will be reminded of the howler that gifted USA the tying goal. They will quickly dismiss the fact that their star-studded lineup of world class players failed to produce the goal they needed to win the match in almost an hour of near total dominance. Instead they will heap the blame on Green. The pundits and derisive fans won’t remember his stellar save that preserved the point but they will remind him at every opportunity of the gaffe.
Speaking of gaffe’s Algeria’s keeper produced one of his own in the 79th minute gifting Slovenia the goal they needed to take the top spot in Group C with a 1-0 victory. Algeria had been reduced to ten men (73) when sub Ghezzal earned his second yellow.
In a ragged match Ghana prevailed over Serbia on a late penalty kick goal from Gyan (84) over ten man Serbia. The penalty had been awarded for handball in the area. Serbia’s run of roller-coaster performances continues; one day producing a top shelf performance, the next the dregs. In this one no Serbian striker generated a shot on goal. That was not all on Serbia, as this match produced the fewest shots on goal of the tournament so far (3).
That surely didn’t apply in the Germany-Australia match. Germany thrashed the Socceroos 4-0 in another master-class performance to begin their pursuit of the trophy. Germany scored two in each half as goals came from Podolski (8), Klose (26), Muller (67) and Cacu (70). Klose’s goal, his 7th in WC play have all come on headers, a means of scoring dominated by Germany who have 32 of them. Italy is a distant second with 18. In another interesting event Tim Cahill was shown a red card (56) for a very late tackle marking the first time in WC history where three reds were issued in a single day’s action.
The precise execution of Germany was evident in their completed pass rate (over 91%) the highest ever recorded in WC play since this stat has been tracked (1966). More evidence of their excellence was in generating 17 shots, over half of them (9) were on frame while in the other games thus far the teams have put less than 20% of their shots on goal. A popular target to explain away the lack of accuracy and the errors we’ve seen so far has been the ball (the new ball always gets blamed for such things in every World Cup). Germany didn’t seem to have a problem in that regard.
The keeper errors we’ve seen in the early going make you forget that this tournament is supposed to be the world’s best national teams made up of the top class of players. Yet in these opening games the best moment of excellence from the run of play was produced by the world’s #83 ranked team, the host side South Africa. In a match where they were being dominated by Mexico the brilliant ball that put Tshabalala in on goal was the best piece of action from the run of play in the tournament so far.
Consider too that Robert Green’s quick reaction save on Jozy Altidore’s great run and poweful shot has to be a highlight and what might have been a career changing moment for both players. Had Green’s touch not pushed the ball onto the post Altidore would have become a national hero in the United States and surely made him a hot property in the transfer window. Green’s career would have been all but over if the ball hadn’t hit off the post. Instead of being celebrated for his save the press in the UK has been on him like white on rice for his earlier error trying to turn him into the Yorkshire Ripper or worse.
When all is said and done it is these moments in time that are celebrated and remembered for decades, sometimes forever. Maradona’s “hand of God” goal is one of them and USA’s victory over England in 1950 that we’ve been reminded of endlessly of late is another. There will be moments like those to come in this World Cup 2010.
Reminding us all, that is of course, why they play the game in the first place and why we cheer them on.
