World Cup 2010 , yawnnnnn ...

I have seen World Cup tournaments since 1962. Including the latest, this is the twelveth World Cup I witnessed on TV. But never have I seen a boring world cup as this one in South Africa. Of the 6 African teams that take part, perhaps the only team that provided a semblance of class and skill to match the best teams in Europe and America, are the Ivory Coast.

Except for the build-up just before the Tshebalala goal, the soccer play from the other African nations was deadly dull. Even the Brazilians could not produce the scintillating displays that we used to see when they were on the field. I can only blame on the packed defense that seemed to be the type of game adopted by the football coaches. One could almost predict with accuracy the final outcome of the game when the team that scored first would win or at best obtain a draw. The team that score first can never lose. 16 games have been played. Let's see the next 32 games in the preliminaries.

Oh, by the way, Maicon's goal was a fluke. He wanted to cross the ball, miskicked it. The Jabulani ball, as usual, spun uncontrollably, and veered to the right into goal. Dunga, in a typical after-match bull, claimed that Maicon deliberately aimed for the small gap between the keeper and the near post. And, as for Kaka and Robinho, they were as lost as David Seaman of England's 2002 WC team.

Finally, the French team that did not deserve to be in the Finals, looked like to be unceremoniously kicked out in Group B. As for England, slow Heskey and confused Rooney were ineffective against a determined Algeria. The only outstanding team so far are Argentina.

Bad refereeing seemed to be the order in the World Cup. There was the black referee who disallowed a perfectly good goal scored by USA against Slovenia. When you look closely at the slow motion replay there was no way the referee could see that scorer was offside when he was behind the crowd of players in front of the goal and even when the linesman's flag stayed down. But the referee disallowed the goal. Another one was when an Australian defender was punished for "handling" the ball. Australia was already penalised by being awarded a penalty against them and be doubly punished by having the defender being sent off. The ball that struck the defender's chest and rolled to his upper arm was too fast (even in slow motion) for the defender not to move away his arm to prevent a "handball" . There was no deliberate handling on the part of the Australian defender. I thought the Italian referee was more influenced by a Ghanaian player who frivolously complained than when the referee actually saw the incident. I would have given the penalty and a yellow card rather than a red card. Another lapse was what had happened to the rule against high kicks ? Players who raised their boots to as high as their opponent's face got away without being as much as warned, let alone given a yellow card. These were some of the weaknesses in the refereeing.

Update 30/06/2010: The latest is that the black referee referred to above and the Uruguayan referees are given the boot by FIFA for making bad decisions.

So far, my theory that the team that scored first can never lose has stood firm. The exception is when Nigeria was leading one nil but lost the game. And this is because the Nigerian team played with 10 men for most of the game.

For all the media hypes on Portugal scoring 7 goals past Korea DPR, I believe that the Spanish team have been the one to show the great skill and confidence in defense, midfield and attack. Despite the lower score margin of 2 nil against Honduras, my reckoning is that Spain are much superior to Portugal who only won against a dispirited North Korea.

After all the group matches have been played, my theory, with the one exception, has stood firm. Now let's us whether the theory can still hold for the round of 16 matches.

Round of 16

South Korea should have at least earned a draw in the first game of this knock-out round against Uruguay. The first goal they gave was due to the 2 sleeping Korean defenders that didn't bother to pay attention to the Uruguayan striker coming from behind them. When behind 2-1, the Korean striker should have scored when he had only the goal keeper to beat. The ball that was struck without much force since he kicked it with his heel rather than the usual face of the boot. So Korea was out the World Cup. In this instance, Uruguay scored first and won 2-1. In the USA-Ghana game, Ghana scored first and eventually won 2-1 after extra time. Germany and Argentina scored first and eventually won their respective games. Holland and Brazil each scored first against Slovakia and Chile respectively and both of them won. Spain scored first the only goal against Portugal and of course they won. The same thing happened to Japan when Paraguay scored first in the shootout, but this didn't count. My theory is still good.

African Nations

African footballers, past and current participants of World Cup, blame their failures to advance to the round of 16 on too much reliance on one or two stars playing in Europe who have insufficient time to synch with the domestic players. As for example, what can one person like Eto'o or Drogba do to uplift the standard of play when confronting other non-African countries. And because of this, they reckoned that no wonder their teams lost.

But if you watch repeatedly the games played by the Africans, there's actually nothing wrong with them. The players are as skilful and fit as the others except for three weaknesses. Firstly, they lack discipline and can never stay calm under pressure, always showing a tendency to kick the ball as far away from the gold mouth as possible. Secondly, they tend to be careless. Many a time you can see the African players failing to convert in front of an open goal, kicking without thinking, causing the ball to be kicked high or wide when not even under pressure or even kicking without any force. Even schoolboys can do better. Thirdly, dribbling through 2-3 opponents in their own halves of the field at the risk of losing the ball rather than in the opponents' halves when losing the ball is not so critical. The only African team that appear to have poise and cool under pressure are the Ivory Coast. Though they have Drogba, the other players are just as good and play with discipline.

Wayne Roonie and Cristiano Ronaldo

Wayne Roonie was helpless in all the games that he played. Defenders seemed to know his moves and after watching how he handled the ball, I believe, he's not in same class as Lionel Messi or David Villa or even Vladimir Weiss or Bastian Schweinsteiger or even Matsui. He could not outrun defenders and tended to fall when given a slight shove to any part of his body. The best England player was still Lampard. The sad truth is England has no world class striker and Roonie is overrated by the British media; he was the best striker in England, but certainly not at world class level. Even Cristiano Ronaldo performed just as bad as Roonie, tending to fall down when marked by defenders. It seemed to me that strikers who played in the English premier league tend to be overrated by the British media; so much so that the praises even got to their heads when they believed that they were among the best players in the world when in fact they were mediocre. Even though Lionel Messi of Argentina has yet to score, he has been a maker of goals, being responsible for the other Argentinian strikers to score.

The Round of 8 - Quarter Finals

Brazil and Holland were the firsts to play in the quarter finals. In my view, Brazil's loss was due to not being able to score a second goal after leading one nil when they had at least 2 clear opportunities by Kaka. Melo had the dubious distinction of laying an excellent pass to Robinho who scored easily, then scored an own goal in a melee with his own goalkeeper and finally being sent off for stomping on Robben's thigh unnecessarily when Robben was already down. After the Dutch equalised in the 2nd half through Melo's own goal, they played an inspired game stringing passes accurately leaving a panicky Brazil playing like a bunch of schoolboys. After that, it was all Holland's game and they scored the winning game through Sneidger's head. Brazil deserved to be booted out of the World Cup. So much for Dunga's tight defensive games, much disliked by the Brazilians of the old school. As for Ghana, their indisciplined approach to the game was their undoing. Imagine leading by one nil at half time, then allowed Uruguay to equalise through the brilliant free kick from Forlan who managed to kick the ball with a dip that beat Ghana' goalkeeper and the game went to extra time. Again with typical African indiscipline, Gyan missed a penalty kick when the ball kicked from the spot at the very end of extra time hit the cross bar and the game went to a penalty shoot out. Ghana then lost 4-2 and Uruguay went to the semifinals stage. Germany had completely exposed a major weakness in Maradona's team, in that they were really mediocre in defence. The four goals scored against Argentina were all due to the defenders not being able to contain the German attacking midfielders and strikers. Germany played a great game with Bastian Schweinsteiger having absolute control on the game. Poor Maradona, he would not be able to run naked in the streets of Bueno Aires as he swore he would do if Argentina won the World Cup. Spain beat Paraguay one nil and were through to the semi-finals. What happened was that when Iniesta got the ball, he kicked it only to hit the near post and the ball bounced to David Villa who kicked it and the ball hit the far post before it bounced back across the whole width of the goal to hit the near post again and then rolled in for goal. It was a comic incident meriting an upload on YouTube.

My theory on the team that score first never lose doesn't apparently work in the quarter final stage. Both Brazil and Ghana scored first and yet they lost their games.

Semi Finals

I stayed during the wee hours of the morning to witness Holland beating Uruguay by 3 goals to 2. Holland were nearly taken to extra time by the hardworking Uruguayans. Scoring first, the Dutch won because they have more skillful players than Uruguay. The next semifinal game is between Germany and Spain. After watching the first half of the Germany-Spain semifinal, I knew that Germany could not play as well as they could against Argentina. Rather than attacking, the Germans played a reactionary game that suited the Spanish passing type of play. A goal scored just 15 minutes before the end was difficult to overcome in a game that was as tense as a World Cup final. Germany should have attacked in the first half and scored a goal instead of waiting for the Spanish to advance. No wonder, Schweinsteiger didn't believe that Germany had lost. However, due credit must be given to Spain for playing better than Germany and would have scored another goal from a pass across the German goal but the striker was just a wee bit too late to convert the pass.

Third Place Playoff

The third place was between Germany and Uruguay. In one of the most exciting games in the World Cup of 2010, Germany scored 3 against a reply of 2 by Uruguay. The winning goal was scored by Khedira who headed the ball in from a corner kick in a goal mouth melee.

Final: Spain and Netherlands

It seemed to me that the Dutch plan was to upset the Spaniards by hard tackling. They succeeded in making the final one the dullest and brutal games in the World Cup and also by accumulating 8 yellow cards and one red card. The patient Spaniards however also accumulated some yellow cards but not as many as the Dutch. A "red card" incident was not given to a Dutch player (De Jong) when clearly he booted at full force a Spaniard's chest. The game was taken to extra time and finally, the winning goal was scored by Iniesta with a grounder that beat the goalie. At about the end of the game, a second yellow was given to Dutch Hatienga who left the field without protesting. In a post match comment, the great Dutch footballer Johann Cruff condemned the Dutch players as a bunch of ruffians and were trying to destroy football. He was clearly ashamed of his countrymen for playing such bad football and that Holland deserved to lose.

An Overview of the World Cup

In my book, players that made the most impact during the tournament were the Uruguayans Forlan and Suarez, the Germans Ozil, Schweinsteiger and Mueller, the Spaniards Villa, Iniesta, Xavi, the Dutch Robben, the Japanese Honda, and the Argentinian Messi. Of course there are many more others like the goalkeepers particularly Casillas of Spain, Eneama of Ghana, and so on. Pre-tournament high profile players like England's Rooney, Portugal's Ronaldo and Brazil's Kaka were one big disappointment. They couldn't score goals and, except for Kaka, played like primary schoolboys. Among the worst teams to have played in South Africa were France, Italy, and England. Even North Korea, despite a 7-goal massacre by Portugal, played better football.

World Cup 2014 in Brazil

Being the host, Brazil naturally qualify for the 2014 Finals and, as usual, strong host teams were initial favourites to win the cup. All the others, including world champions Spain, would have to play the qualifying group matches in the next 4 years. Though sounding unfair to one's own country, when can Malaysia see its team in the Finals. Asian countries like Japan, North and South Korea, even China, have been there. Malaysia should take a tip from Japan's coach that to make up for height and physique, the Japanese players have to run faster and to last longer in order to outplay the South Americans, the Europeans, and the Africans, given all equally the same skill and training. Watching the Koreans and Japanese play in the World Cup, nowhere can I see Malaysians matching the tenacity of these players when on the field.

Update 16/07/2020:

The latest I read today was about a proposal for Malaysia, together with Indonesia, to host World Cup 2026. Please lah, to whoever made that proposal, don't you think to be among the best in Asia including the Middle East should be the target. But first, we must beat Timor Leste in the next round of football whenever that is.