Steven Rubio's World Cup

fever pitch

One thing I know for sure about being a fan is this: it is not a vicarious pleasure, despite all appearances to the contrary, and those who say that they would rather do than watch are missing the point.... When there is some kind of triumph, the pleasure does not radiate from the players outwards until it reaches the likes of us at the back of the terraces in a pale and diminished form; our fun is not a watery version of the team's fun ... The joy we feel on occasions like this is not a celebration of others' good fortune, but a celebration of our own; and when there is a disastrous defeat the sorrow that engulfs us is, in effect, self-pity, and anyone who wishes to understand how football is consumed must realise this above all things.

--Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch

“You are asking which is more important – Brazil or a U.S. invasion?,” one Haitian fan asked an American reporter in 1994. “We are hungry every day. We have problems every day. The Americans talk about invading every day. But we only have the World Cup every four years.”

-- Simon Kuper, Soccer Against the Enemy

the netherlands

Spain won all four of their knockout matches by scores of 1-0. First was Portugal, who played a strong defense but lacked offensive power even if they’d tried to play an attacking game. They lost, but for an hour it was close, and the Portuguese never embarrassed themselves.

Next was Paraguay, one of the most defensive teams in international soccer. You could say the same thing about them as I just did about Portugal, that they lost but held Spain close for 83 minutes. Paraguay was more boring than Portugal, but that’s the worst you can say about them (and yes, to me, boring is bad).

Then, the Germans. Again, a defensive approach, although this time, Germany always had the threat of a counterattack. A threat was all it turned out to be … Spain played excellent defense in this tournament … but the match didn’t seem inevitable the way the previous two did. Germany’s performance, along with their win in the third-place match, means they leave South Africa with their heads held high.

Which brings us to the Netherlands. They, too, had a strategy to defeat Spain. I can’t say it was more entertaining than the others, because it wasn’t … much of the match was dreadful, easily the worst of Spain’s four knockout matches. A month ago, I wrote:

The Netherlands gave us the still-beloved “Total Football” in the 1970s. Soccer today is in many ways a child of Total Football … every player is expected to be able to do a little of everything. Combined with the cultural stereotype of Holland as a fun-loving land of legal pot-smokers, and it’s easy to understand why soccer fans enjoy watching the team in orange. Except … sometimes, like Argentina, the Dutch erupt into the kind of brutal play that is anything but beautiful.

Guess which Netherlands showed up in the final?

There is something worse than a boring soccer team, and that is a soccer team that relies on thuggish play to achieve their goals. Sean hunted this down … check it out, you’ll see what I’m talking about:

http://www.mocksession.com/30fps//KUNGFUCOCCOR.gif

The Dutch played like this for 120 minutes. They committed 28 fouls. They picked up card after card after card, with one player picking up two yellows, leading to his dismissal … seven minutes later, Iniesta scored the winning goal.

Portugal played defense, and lost 1-0. Paraguay played even more defense, and lost 1-0. Germany played defense and tried to play offense, and they lost, 1-0.

The Netherlands acted like butchers for two hours, and whattya know? They lost, 1-0.

The Portuguese, the Paraguayans, the Germans, all of them go home frustrated but, I imagine, proud. The Dutch? They go home knowing they suck, and they lost. For all I know, they’re proud, too, but they don’t deserve to be.

spain

Back on June 16th, I posted the following on the Spain-Switzerland match:

Nine days ago I wrote, “If Spain wins the World Cup, they will be united, and underachievers no more. If they do not win it all, their old reputation will continue to haunt them.”

Say hello to your reputation.

Say goodbye to your reputation. Say hello to the new one: World Cup Champions.

Let’s see if I can get this right:

• From the Catalan area: Gerard Piqué, Carles Puyol, Xavi, Joan Capdevila, Cesc Fàbregas, Sergio Busquets, Víctor Valdés.
• Andalusia: Sergio Ramos, Carlos Marchena, Jesús Navas.
• From the Madrid area: Iker Casillas, Fernando Torres, Pepe Reina.
• From Basque country: Xabi Alonso, Javi Martínez.
• Asturias: David Villa, Juan Manuel Mata.
• Tenerife: Pedro. Canary Islands: David Silva.
• Pamplona: Fernando Llorente.
• Albacete: Andrés Iniesta.
• Salamanca: Álvaro Arbeloa.
• Valencia: Raúl Albiol.

I guess they can play together, after all.

netherlands-spain

It was an awful match for too many of its 120 minutes. At halftime, I switched over to ABC to see what they were saying, and there was Ruud Gullit, an elegant player during his great career, saying Nigel De Jong’s vicious thuggery against Xabi Alonso was a turning point in the match, in favor of the Dutch. That sums up the influence of the Netherlands in this match. Even so, their strategy almost worked, with only a couple of saves by Casillas, Saint Iker, preventing a Dutch win.

The extra half hour was the best the match could give us. Neither team played for penalties … well, once the Dutch went down a man they did, but that’s understandable. It was never a great match, but given the tension and context, that last half hour was good enough.

It was appropriate that Iniesta scored the goal. He was the recipient of much of the early Dutch thuggery … they knew who needed to be shut down … and in the final fifteen minutes, it was Iniesta who kept beating Holland’s defense, forcing them into fouls (one of which, of course, led to the expulsion of Heitinga). They tried all day to kill off Iniesta, and he responded in the best way possible.

Referee Howard Webb had an impossible task, thanks largely to the Dutch. De Jong absolutely deserved a red card for his intentional demolition of Alonso, but I think Webb was trying to keep 22 men on the field. He almost made it. People will point to the large number of cards given, but the players need to look in the mirror if they want to see the reason behind those cards.

OK, I’m done being “objective.”

90 minutes

The match picked up around the 70th minute or so … Navas finally gave Spain some width. But the first 70 minutes were just crap. Neither team deserves to win … the Dutch are too thuggish, but without Iker Casillas, this match would be over and Spain would have lost. Hopefully the next half hour will be more like the end of the 90 and less like the beginning.

halftime

The Dutch are doing a good job of disrupting the Spanish short passing game. To my eye, the reasons are:

• They press quickly once the ball enters their half of the field.
• They are, shall we say, aggressive.
• The Spanish are not as precise with their passes as they have been in the past.
• The Spanish insist on going through the middle, which is extremely clogged up.

Howard Webb is doing a good job dealing with a dirty Netherlands side and a Spanish side that has been drawn into the dirt a few times, too. Webb’s biggest mistake was not giving a red card to De Jong for his Stephen Chow imitation.

There is almost nothing in the first half which the neutral fan would find appealing. I’m riveted, but I care who wins. I wouldn’t blame casual fans for changing the channel.

and so it comes to this

My first memory of soccer as a spectator sport is probably 1967, the year of the NPSL (precursor to the NASL), which had a contract with CBS. The color commentator was the legendary Danny Blanchflower (I had no idea then he was a legend), who was the best thing about the games:

The real star of the TV game was a retired soccer player who is regarded as the best produced in Ireland in a generation—Danny Blanchflower. Blanchflower was the color man for Jack Whitaker, a CBS sports announcer who struggled manfully, and, on the whole, successfully with the problem of presenting soccer intelligibly to an audience that must have known little or nothing about the nuances of the game. Blanchflower, speaking in a crisp, engaging accent, was refreshingly honest in his comments. It is quite evident he has a lot to learn before he becomes as reluctant as American announcers to criticize. His estimate of the action on the field was clear and biting.

My first live match was 1978, the only year of the Oakland Stompers in the NASL (their goalie was Shep Messing).

My first experience with the ways soccer captured the fans was 1984, when I was in Europe during the European Championships (Spain lost in the final).

My first international live match was later that same year, USA-Costa Rica in the Olympics. The U.S. won, 3-0, and Ricky Davis scored twice.

My first concentrated dose of Spanish-language televised soccer was the 1986 World Cup, with Tony Tirado doing play-by-play for SIN, the Spanish International Network, which later became Univision.

My first experience with a local team to call my own was 1996, when the San Jose Clash and MLS began (that ticket you can see at the top of this blog is from the very first MLS match, which I attended).

And now it comes to this: the first time either of the national teams I care most about is in the final. Maybe before I die I’ll get to see the U.S. make it this far. For now, Spain will have to do. It’s going to be excruciating for the next few hours.

spain and me

There was nothing special about us when we were growing up. There were a lot of ethnic families … I’m pretty sure Mexicans and Italians were the most common, at least the ones where it seemed like they had an “extra” identity. There was a tiny Spanish community, but not enough for most of us to notice. And, since it was the time of assimilation, we were raised as middle-class white kids.

Still, my maternal grandmother spoke with a thick accent, and she had a big painting of a bullfighter on the wall, and she made interesting foods we didn’t find anywhere else. I never thought of myself as Spanish, I was always an American, but there was a touch of something different.

This was pretty much my identity until I went to Spain for the first time, in 1984. Didn’t actually get down to the part of Spain my family is from … we stayed north amongst the Catalans … but I felt some weird romantic specialness when I heard the water outside our hostel that first night. Perhaps coincidentally, the European soccer championships were going on then, and Spain made the finals, where they lost to that great Platini-led French team. I paid some attention to the goings on, although to be honest my memories are less about the Spanish team and more about Platini.

Beginning in 2000, we started going to Spain fairly often: 2000, 2003, 2007, 2009. Each time we went to Andalucía, land of my father’s family. Robin noted from the start that I was able to relax there in ways I never relax anywhere else. Between those trips, and my improved command of the Spanish language, I guess I felt more Spanish than I ever did before.

Not that I was ever anything other than American. In 2009, I was in Spain when the Confederations Cup was being played. By that point, Spain hadn’t lost a match in three years. The United States met Spain in the semi-finals. Spain’s team that day was largely composed of the same people you’ve been watching the last month in the World Cup. The U.S. won the match, 2-0. I assure you, I was rooting for the USA.

That was the last time I rooted against Spain, a team that is now one match away from putting aside the final remnants of their reputation as underachievers. Somewhere over the years, I came to understand that perhaps the most Spanish thing about this American white boy was my own excellence at underachieving.

I think of these things, as I await tomorrow’s match between Spain and the Netherlands.

uruguay-germany

Hey, I told you there would be a lot of goals!

This is what happens when two teams packed with great players are not fully concerned with the outcome. Make sure you don’t get hurt, put on a good show, and if you win, all the better. That it came down to Forlan hitting the crossbar on the last play of the match is appropriate. Entertaining, and meaningless. Even if you like goals as much as I do, a glorified friendly will never be as good as one of your favorite teams playing in a World Cup final. That’s true even if the final score is Spain 1-0 over Netherlands, which is my prediction, by the way.

what to watch this weekend

Of course, you’re watching the final on Sunday. Maybe you haven’t decided if you are fanatic enough to watch the third-place match on Saturday. Or maybe you think Spain is boring and you don’t want to watch the final, after all.

In 2006, Germany won the third-place match, 3-1. The final was a 1-1 draw decided on penalties.

In 2002, the score of the third-place match was 3-2. The score of the final was 2-0.

In 1998, the third-place match was 2-1, the final was 3-0.

In 1994, the third-place match was 4-0, the final was 0-0.

1990? 2-1 for third, 1-0 in the final.

1986: 4-2 for third, 3-2 final.

1982: 3-2, 3-1.

You have to go back to 1978 to find a World Cup where the final match had more goals than the third-place match. In the seven tournaments since then, there have been 30 goals in the third-place match, 17 in the finals.

So if all you care about is goals, you should watch on Saturday, where you can find out what soccer looks like when the teams don’t really care who wins. Think “NBA All-Star Game.”