Our World Cup Runneth...Out
Well, Ghana beat us, 2-1, yesterday, and the United States soccer team now goes away for the next four years. A shame. The penalty kick that put Ghana ahead came on a terrible call—just as the red cards that gave Italy a one-man advantage came on bad calls.
But unlike the Italy game, when the U.S. played spirited, aggressive soccer, we just weren't very good against Ghana. The play on which Ghana scored its first goal, in which U.S. captain Claudio Reyna had the ball stolen from him just outside the box, was amateurish. Meanwhile, Ghana was tough; you have to give them credit.
Though they don't deserve to continue, I hate to see the U.S. go.
I love, however, to see that Brasil is starting to get its act together. It beat Japan yesterday, 4-1. But it wasn't just the goals that were fun to watch. The thing I love about Brasil is how well they do the little things in the game. No one traps the ball better, for example. Watch the way the Brazilians bring even bullet passes softly to the ground, how they catch the ball with their chests or the inside of a thigh and gently drop it to their feet. It's incredibly hard to do that; they make it look so easy that you take it for granted. Then their passes thread the needle or go to unexpected spaces, leaving the other team scurrying to catch up.
Ronaldinho is an excellent example. The ESPN announcers, who cannot say his name without prefacing it with the words "the great," have lamented the fact that he hasn't scored. Not me. Watching the game, you can see that Ronaldinho is the key to the Brazil midfield; his passing is so creative, he unsettles his opponents. They never know where he's going to put it, and he can put it anywhere—a chip into the penalty box, a blast to the opposite field, a push pass down to a sprinting wing. And his ballhandling is astounding; every time he touches the ball, it seems, three or four defenders surround him. But he never looks fazed, and he doesn't lose control. Then, generously, he's always pushing the ball to a player left open by the swarm of defenders he attracts.
There was a moment yesterday near the end of the game where Brasil was trying to kill time
and just began passing the ball around. I lost count, but I'm guessing they completed about 30 passes before Japan was able to take the ball away. It was breathtaking, beautiful soccer. (I love the geometry of the passing game, the way triangles and squares and parallelograms take shape on the field, then disappear and become something else.) To me, that was more embarrassing to Japan than the lopsided score; gently zipping the ball from one player to another, Brasil made the Japanese, desperately running around trying to follow the passes, look like a bunch of high schoolers.
Too bad about the Americans...but Round Two is going to be very exciting.
