Cruyff, NY Cosmos, 1978.
(Source: centrespot, via footballarchive)
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August 10, 2010
USA vs. Brazil
In its first game after the World Cup failure (and subsequent change of coach, from Dunga to Mano Menezes, the Seleção will face the USMNT this Tuesday night. When appointed in July, Menezes promised a deep change in the team, and apparently he meant it: for ten of the players he called, this is the first capping ever, and only four of the 23 men Dunga took to South Africa made it to New Meadowlands. Many of the newcomers are young enough to make the Olympic (under-23) team for London 2012, where Brazil is decided to win the only big trophy still missing: the Olympic gold.
Team USA is in a very different situation: both the coach and the core of the team are the same that surprised the world - and later fell victim of their own lack of high-profile experience - in South Africa. Coach Bradley is still in charge, and 15 out of 18 of the players he called played in the World Cup.
This also means that, while the U.S. XI will probably be full of well-known faces, playing the usual 4-2-2-2, Brazil will be filled with a lot of players still pretty much unknown to the general public outside their country; but make no mistake: some of them, like Ganso and Neymar, are young, reckless, and wildly talented. Tactically speaking, Menezes may go with the national favorite 4-4-2 with diamond midfield, but in the last practice session today he hinted at the possibility of a highly offensive 4-3-3, with only one defensive midfielder (Lucas) and Milan FC forward Pato entering for Hernanes. Everything is still completely experimental so far for him and his team, so it’s hard to say who will actually start. Anyway, let’s give it a try:
USA: Howard; Cherundolo, Spector, Bocanegra, Bornstein; Feilhaber, Edu, Bradley, Donovan; Altidore, Findley. (Coach: Bob Bradley)
BRASIL: Victor; Daniel Alves, David Luiz, Thiago Silva, André Santos; Lucas, Hernanes [or Pato], Ramires, Ganso; Robinho, Neymar. (Coach: Mano Menezes)
And so… I know, it’s just a summer friendly, not the World Cup or anything, but allow me nonetheless to honor this blog’s tradition by asking one more time:
WHO YA GOT?
June 7, 2010
Friendly matches: a quick final recap
With the official kickoff for the World Cup getting close, the friendly games bonanza is almost over; in today’s only game, Brazil will face an opponent as unimpressive as it gets, Tanzania (n° 108 in the FIFA ranking); tomorrow, the last two pre-WC matches will see Portugal facing Mozambique and Spain test its championship-favourite status against Poland.
Finally, a couple of words about some weekend matches that we didn’t mention yet: on Saturday, Serbia recovered some confidence by winning Cameroon 4-3; both teams should, however, be very worried about their defensive game. Also on Saturday, Honduras was once again defeated, this time by non-WC Romania, with a heavy 3-0. And yesterday, in a match unfortunately overshadowed by a stampede outside the stadium’s gates that sent at least a dozen people to the hospital, Nigeria beat North Korea with a convincing 3-1.
June 5, 2010
Switzerland - Italy 1-1
Two sides. Goals: one each. Ball possession: 50% each. Shots: 7 each. Shots on target: 2 each. Goalkeeper’s saves: 1 each. Bottom line: two equally mediocre teams.
Italian coach Marcello Lippi decided to give game time to his second lines - only 2 players from the ideal 11 started the match, full back Chiellini (who didn’t play against Mexico earlier this week due to an injury) and the usual suspect Zambrotta (this time employed as left-back, with Maggio on the right side of the defensive line). The fact that, all in all, Italy at least managed to avoid another shameful performance like the one against Mexico may either be taken as an encouraging sign, or leave Coach Lippi worried by the fact that the replacements made slightly better than the “first team”. Lippi, after the game, rejected any reference to this topic, and stated instead that the difference is just due to the gradual improving of his team’s physical condition. Maybe he’s at least partly right; but I’d like to add that, for what I could see, Switzerland was also a weaker opponent than Mexico, by far.
After the failed experiment with 4-2-3-1 last Thursday, Lippi went back to his classic playbook today: Italy sported his coach’s favourite “faux 4-3-3” - the “not exactly true” part being a midfielder (Cossu today, injured Camoranesi being the old-time resident in that position) playing as a fake right-forward. This was the tactic for the whole first half. And it didn’t work. Cossu is not a right-wing: he’s a traditional center-playmaker (that’s his position with his club, FC Cagliari), and performed poorly. Switzerland closed the first half with 59% ball possession, and looking a bit less evanescent than Italy.
Pepe replaced Cossu in the second half; he’s no wonder boy, but at least he’s a proper wing-forward, and Italy benefited quite visibly from this. While Zambrotta on the left stayed missing in action (action? what action?) the entire game, the right side showed Maggio looking pretty good, advancing to attack often and being the main source of assists (all wasted, alas) for the Azzurri. We know he’s good at that; we also know, unfortunately, that he’s much better as a winger than as a defender; sure, today there was not a Swiss forward at sight for him to take care of, but things won’t be that easy often. Oh well, still it’s a damn lot better than the fossil remains of Zambrotta.
Anyway, Italy managed to control the game in the second half - despite never actually posing any real threat to the Swiss goal. The last 15 minutes were marked by a number of substitution on both sides and the usual loss of a real tactical design; Zambrotta was at last mercifully replaced by Criscito after 81’. Old dog Gattuso showed his usual strong, almost possessed style of leading the team, like in his best (younger) days 4 years ago, and that’s good news; he’s notoriously Lippi’s man of trust, and he may even end up claiming back a spot in the starting lineup. Montolivo, alas, left us once again with mixed feelings: you can see he got skill, but he’s inconstant as hell, and delivers a lot less than he promises. If key playmaker Andrea Pirlo will recover from his injury, Montolivo will hardly be a viable option to replace him.
Oh, right, the two goals: after 10 minutes, midfielder Inler advanced with the ball, Montolivo showed he can’t freaking defend and let him proceed and take a shot at Marchetti’s goal; the goalkeeper looked a bit unprepared, and the ball went in. Four minutes later, Switzerland’s defense put up an improvised circus, both sides kept bouncing the ball up in the air like trained seals playing ball with their heads, and unlikely hero (yeah, right) Quagliarella came out as the winning seal to score with a bizarre header (Swiss goalie Benaglio looking, in that case, like the odd, untrained seal - no herring for him, that’s for sure). Both goals quite meh, as you can see; no wonder I almost forgot to tell you about them. You could have lived without it. And so could the seals, that’s for sure. No seal deserves to be compared to Philippe Senderos. That was just mean.
June 4, 2010
Italy 1 - Mexico 2, or Please Keep Grandpa Home
[Disclaimer: after the game, I went out for drinks with my fellow Italian expats down here, and since we’re on recess until Monday, I got seriously plastered. So, this game report may be a bit unprofessional. I blame Mr. Johnnie Walker.]
Let’s start from the end: Mexico defeated Italy 2-1. From my Italian point of view, honestly, it could have been a lot worse. They kicked our ass. Mexico doubled at 84 minutes and Italian defender Bonucci found a random goal at 89’; both goals were scored when the teams had already resorted to half a dozen players off the bench, and any possible tactical plan was long gone. So, if you ask me, the relevant part of the game ended after little more than an hour. And Italy was losing 1-0 and suffering like hell.
A bit of tactics: Mexico started with its usual (and well-set) 4-3-3, while Italy tried coach Lippi’s new fancy idea, 4-2-3-1. Not a new idea at all, but the team only tried this formation a couple of times before; am I the only one to think that, after playing for years (and the whole WC qualification round) with a 4-3-3 module, it is not a good idea to change tactics at the last minute?
Anyway, one thing’s for sure: it did not work. For the whole first half, Italy’s midfield was nowhere to be found. I suppose archeologists will look for it in the next centuries; good luck to them. With De Rossi left alone to protect the defensive line (we’ll talk about defense in a minute), Pirlo suffocated by the Mexican’s forcing, and Marchisio wandering pointlessly like a character in some Wim Wenders movie, the final result was an utter absence of any visible gameplan. In fact, it looked more like a 4-1-?-3, where the “?” stands for “where the fuck is our midfield?”, and the “3” means “there are 3 forwards down there, but no freaking way to get the ball their way”.
Meanwhile Mexico, unfettered by those semantic subtleties, took total control of the game and scored: Giovani dos Santos left Italian left-back Criscito meditating over the sense of life and passed to Vela right in front of Buffon’s goal - and the Mexican did not miss the easy chance. Fun fact: while this was happening, Italian full-back Cannavaro was nowhere to be found. No, wait, that’s not true: he was simply about 10 meters behind the action. Poor youngster Bonucci found himself alone against two Mexican forwards and could do nothing to stop Vela. Dear Mr. Lippi, we know Cannavaro was the Italian hero four years ago, but he’s 36 now, and he comes from a whole season with Juventus that showed clearly that he’s old, slow and unfit to play decently, and he’s therefore now - that’s unfortunate but that’s life - a fucking sitting duck; could you please at least consider sacking him, for Beckenbauer’s sake?
First half ends, second half starts, and Lippi tries another unlikely move: Di Natale out, Pepe in, and a tactical plan that looked like a misguided 4-4-1-1. Please notice that the supposed playmaker in this formation was Iaquinta. Yes, Iaquinta, the strong, physical, committed, talentless bull that Mr. Lippi loves so much. Do I really need to say that Mexico just kept kicking Italy’s ass? Hernandez missed an incredibly easy goal; Zambrotta (another guy that apparently just escaped from the Springfield Retirement Castle) fouled Vela in front of the goal and got away with it, avoiding what looked - to everybody but the referee - like a clear penalty for Mexico. Gilardino, more alone than ever in Italy’s attacking field, threw away the very few chances he had by living in such a permanent state of offside that I suspect it to be a philosophical statement.
In the last 30 minutes, both teams gave play time to the bench, and the game lost any recognizable tactics; and with that we’re back to the beginning, when we talked about the end. Mexico 2 vs Italy 1, and while I hope that with full-back Chiellini’s recovery the team will become a little more defensively consistent, I’m starting to suspect that Italy not only has little chance to go further than the quarter-finals, but may even end its World Cup run earlier than that.
June 1, 2010
Quick daily roundup: today’s friendly games
Four friendly games involving 7 World Cup teams were played today.
A very convincing Netherlands crushed Ghana 4-1, despite leaving ace player Robben at rest to heal a minor injury (sore hip). Portugal defeated Cameroon 3-1; a very nervous Samuel Eto’o, Cameroon’s undisputed star, collected two yellow cards early in the game and was sent off after just 33’. Australia surprised Denmark 1-0, while Switzerland suffered a shocking defeat to Costa Rica - a team that didn’t even manage to qualify for the World Cup.
Full resuslts with scorers:
Netherlands-Ghana 4-1 (30’ Kuyt, 72’ Van der Vaart, 78’ Gyan Asamoah, 81’ Sneijder, 87’ Van Persie).
Switzerland-Costa Rica 0-1 (57’ Parks).
Portugal-Cameroon 3-1 (32’ & 46’ Raul Meireles, 69’ Webo, 81’ Nani).
Australia-Denmark 1-0 (71’ Kennedy).
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