The Haphazard Blog

The World Cup has gone on for 3 days and I think I’ll share some of my thoughts.

It seems to have started out pretty slowly. I don’t think we saw a truly good team until the last game today with Germany. They attack almost non-stop. That is why I had hoped that U.S. Soccer would be able to hire Jürgen Klinsmann to bring that style of play here.

Moving on to the U.S., they ended up with a draw. They got a somewhat lucky goal when the England keeper misjudged the ball and didn’t position himself right behind the ball. They had a real shot to go up 2-1 with the ball bouncing off the post and out.

So Sad. (For England)

Overall, their play seemed disjointed. There were a lot of good individual efforts, but they didn’t play as well as a team. At times the defense broke down and there did not seem to be much feeding the ball to the forwards. I want to see a lot more offsides calls on the U.S. Then at least you know they are pushing to score. Quick comparison: Germany had 9 shots on goal (18 total), 4 goals, 7 offsides and U.S. had 4 shots on goal (12 total), 1 goal and 2 offsides. Watching England handle the ball, they seemed to be able to pass it around at will around the U.S.’s 18M box. The U.S. would get near England’s and would be able to have a couple touches before they’d force a shot or just have it taken away.

I hope they are able to improve over that performance. They had a real opportunity to beat England by holding them to only 1 goal. As it stands now, Slovenia is in the driver’s seat with their win today. The U.S. definitely need a win, and most likely need a win, a tie and a Slovenia or England loss.

The next few days should give us some more good games with Italy, Spain, Brazil and Portugal still left to play their first games. I’m not sure if the games have really been slow, or if it’s the collection of announcers that ESPN has put together. They got rid of the really bad ones, but most of these guys don’t seem to get excited at all. I feel like a good set of announcers are knowledgeable and get excited at the right time. If you’re looking away from the TV, they should get you looking in time to see something happen. (It sure would make working and watching Soccer a lot easier.)

Finally, this isn’t much of a bold prediction, but I think Brazil wins it all. I’ll be rooting for them (unless they play the U.S.).