Wednesday 25 June 2014

This and That World Cup: England out, Aussie’s proud, Suarez bites a lad and Brazil finally show up to their own party

England out, Aussie’s proud, Suarez bites a lad and Brazil finally show up to their own party


So yeah, England are out of the World Cup. Sadly they went out with a whimper as opposed to a bang. However, may I please present a dissenting opinion to the consensus here? In fact, I’d like to present a couple of them.

Firstly, I feel placing the blame on the defence is a bit rum considering that they were hopelessly exposed by the players in front of them. If Leighton Baines and Phil Jagielka played for a Sky 6 team, the level of complaints lodged against them would be nowhere near as vast as they have been. Now, I must declare an interest here. I am an Evertonian but even I would hold my hands up if I felt Baines and Jags had stunk the joint up, but they really didn’t.

At the end of the day, Wayne Rooney is not a left sided mid fielder. He’s a striker who refuses to actually play as a striker. If someone with some defensive nous had actually been in front of Baines giving him the protection he required, England wouldn’t have been so exposed on that side of the pitch.

As for Jags, well I suppose he is guilty of not having psychic powers to predict that Steven Gerrard would make a colossal fudge up to let Suarez clean through, but I’m not really going to hold that against him. Plus, Jagielka made that line saving header against the Italians and was probably England’s best defender in that contest.

Secondly, I dispute that this has been England’s worst World Cup performance. What actually happened in this World Cup? England went out there against two decent sides, did their level best and lost by an odd goal in each circumstance. I would argue that England did a bang average job and little else.

In 2010 in South Africa, England were abysmal and only got through thanks to a fine bit of luck against Slovenia and some last gasp defending. They were promptly routed by Germany in the knock outs. I’d happily argue that England did vastly worse in South Africa than they did in Brazil. England get back on a plane to come home but they so secure in the knowledge that they had a go. If England had been lucky enough to be drawn in place of France, Belgium or Argentina in their respective groups, I think they would have made the knock outs. As it was, they got a tough group and were forced to play their opening game in the Amazon Rainforest.

Yes, England need to drop some of the old guard and give youth a chance. And yes, Roy Hodgson perhaps isn’t the most adventurous or charismatic manager on offer. But, it should be pointed out that England have only lost 2 competitive games in 90 minutes under Hodgson. Personally, I’m not too bothered with him getting another chance. I’ll reserve judgment until the winter/spring on him.


G’Day Credibility

In comparison, Australia get on a plane to go home but they can do it with their heads held high. They were the designated “Easy Three Pointer” in what some were, wrongly, calling the Group of Death. In the end they did lose 3 games but I can assure you the act of winning for Chile and Holland was far from easy.

Australia played tirelessly and really went for it. They didn’t show up just to make the numbers. They showed up with designs of causing an upset, and goodness gracious did they almost do it against Holland. They were supremely unlucky to wind up losing 3-2 in a pulsating contest. Australia may go out of this World Cup without a victory to their name but they do so with their honour most firmly intact.


Luis from Montevideo Hall

Oh Dear. Luis Suarez. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe he has the wrong temperament to be a professional footballer. I get the same impression from Joey Barton actually. It just seems like playing football just brings out the worse parts of their character. Off the pitch, Suarez seems like a relatively calm and amiable fellow, but when he gets on that pitch he becomes a right little monster.

In comparison, Barton comes across as quite verbose and reflective off the pitch, but when he gets on it he becomes a whirling dervish of absolute anarchy (Have that as a twitter sub-headline if you want Joey, no extra charge!)

Suarez once again is in the news for possibly biting someone. This would be the third time he’s done it and he’s looking at a quite sizeable ban if it is proven. I should stress in the interest of fairness that nothing actually HAS been proven yet, but it doesn’t look good.

I’m still trying to work out why Suarez did this, if in fact he did, as it doesn’t look like the opposing Italian player had actually done anything to him prior to chow-down time. He DID elbow him, but that was after he’d been bitten. At least when Zinedene Zidane head-butted the tiramisu out of Marco Materazzi, it was a result of the Italian insulting him. Though it doesn’t condone what Zidane did, it does at least explain it. There was an action and then a consequent reaction that all fit into an understandable narrative strand.

Suarez just seemed to bite Giorgio Chiellinifor the Craic. In his post-match interview, he didn’t seem to suggest that Chiellini had insulted him. He did say correctly that Chiellini elbowed him, but this was a result of Suarez biting him. Suarez really did appear to be the aggressor in this situation and I can’t for the life of me think why. I don’t know what motivated him to do it.

With Maradonna punching a ball into a goal you can at least understand his motivation. His punching of the ball into the net was to put his team 1-0 up in the contest. It made sense, it had logic to it, and it was something you could understand whether you agreed with it or not. Once the game was over you knew why he’d done it. With Suarez I just don’t know why he did this other than him having some sort of an issue. There was no actual tactical advantage gained at that particular point from biting Chiellini. There was no reason to do it.

A defender crocking a player when he’s the last man makes sense. A player elbowing another to get to a header first makes sense. A player diving to win a penalty makes sense. All of these things are abhorrent and not in the spirit of the game, but you can at least UNDERSTAND why someone would do them. They are being done so that an advantage can be gained. Nibbling someone on the shoulder serves no purpose on the football pitch. It’s something you more associate with a steamy love scene in a movie rather than a sporting contest.

Maybe this is why such fascination abounds Suarez in this situation? We just don’t understand.


Brazil finally realises there’s a World Cup on

Better late than never eh? Brazil, the World Cup hosts, finally decided to show up on Monday, and boy did they ever. Poor Cameroon, a team in disarray, worried the hosts with an early goal but soon succumbed to the overwhelming pressure of a partisan crowd and the skilful styling’s of “Boy Wonder” Neymar.

Even Fred, the only Brazilian striker to work at a mil in Widnes on his days off, got on the score sheet as Brazil rampaged to a 4-1 victory. Does this now make Brazil the favourites for the tournament? I’d certainly have them in the running but it may also still be too soon to say. I would still say Argentina would be the overall favourites, with Germany and Brazil behind them, while Holland, France and Colombia stand on the periphery after promising first round performances.

Uruguay were a team I expected to do well, but that now depends on whether Suarez is banned or not. Without Suarez, Uruguay look lost but with him in the side they seem like a genuine threat. Even when Suarez doesn’t score, his merely being there galvanises the team. He is a talisman for them in every sense of the word. Without him, I fear Uruguay will crash out ignominiously to the Colombians in the knock out stages. Should he indeed play, they might have a chance to advance onward.

And back to Suarez we go. I’ll freely admit that I thought this World Cup would be to Suarez what 1986 was to Maradonna or what 1962 would be to Garrincha. It would be HIS World Cup. Now sadly it probably will be, but for all the wrong reasons.

England crash out and must now rebuild. It’s a shame that the legacy left by England in this tournament, a tournament that may be the greatest World Cup ever, is that they went out early. But I’m not ashamed. They went out due to no lack of effort. At the end of the day, they just didn’t have what it took. It’s disappointing but it’s not insulting or shameful.

In some ways, I wish we’d gone down in glorious defeat like The Australians instead of just plain old defeat. But what can you do eh? We’ll just have to focus on Euro 2016 (Should we be lucky enough to qualify)

No comments:

Post a Comment