Brazil 0 - 0 Portugal
Ivory Coast 3 - 0 North Korea
Yaya Toure 14
Romaric 20
Kalou 82
Well that was just shit. After Japan and Slovakia show the world how it's done, two of the top teams had the chance to re-establish their credentials. Hey look at me they could have said, through the medium of flicks and shimmies. But no.
And I wasn't expecting anything else. Neither of them had anything to gain, you see. Brazil were through anyway and Portugal knew a point was enough. Top place didn't matter, or rather it wasn't clear whether first or second place was best because the Group H games hadn't been played, and under those circumstances why would they bother entertaining us?
Is that cynical of me? Only if you forget that all these players have been selected. Not just selected in the sporting sense, but selected in the Darwinian sense as well.
Actually that's a misrepresentation. Even in the case of footballing dynasties like the Redknapps or the Lampards, it's not as if footballing prowess is actually affecting their ability to reproduce as such. There is no natural selection at work here. But there is an application of the principle of the survival of the fittest.
It's straightforward enough, if you think about it. Within the niche environment of football, clubs rise or fall according to their ability to score goals, and stop their opponents scoring them. The ones that succeed are promoted, those that fail are relegated. The environment changes from time to time, rules are tweaked, new strategies emerge, and teams have to adapt or pay the price for their rigidity. Players also rise or fall individually, by getting transferred to better or worse teams.
The footballing equivalent of camouflage or sharp teeth, the things that get you selected, are fitness, positional sense, being tall and so on. The ability to control and direct a bouncing ball without using your hands is obviously an asset. As is the fine art of moral compromise.
In football, morals could for instance mean a distaste for cheating, or a desire to give something back to the public, even if you don't personally benefit. If you have morals in football, you aren't going to be prepared to fall over to win a penalty, demand a corner when you know it's a goal kick, pass the ball from side to side for ninety minutes and so on. In footballing terms, a strong sense of ethics is simply a form of poor ball control.
Ask any West Brom fan. West Brom are a team who spend half their time getting promoted from the Championship and the other half getting relegated from the Premiership. Their fans are intimately familiar with the difference between the two. They will tell you how much dirtier the Premiership is, just as they'll tell you how much better Premiership players are at all the other football skills. Championship players, on average, aren't quite as spectacularly good at shooting, crossing or moral abdication as players on the next level up.
At World Cup level, we're watching the cream of the cream. Anyone who fails at any football skill isn't going to make the cut, because there are always other players to come in and fill the gap. There are probably plenty of Brazilian and Portugese players looking at the crowded stadium and thinking well, they've come a long way and spent a lot of money, surely they're entitled to some kind of spectacle, but they're all watching on the telly like the rest of us because they've failed to master the skill of shamelessness.
It's just maths. If the rewards for a certain behaviour outweigh the risks, then that behaviour is going to emerge. Emerge in the technical sense, of simply following from the initial premise without any intent being required. To address the problem you have to change the maths, and to change the maths you have to tweak the rules. Take simulation, for instance.
Make simulation one of the most punishable offences in the game, make punishment retroactive and introduce a committe whose job is to review all games and apply it, and the maths changes. Even if individual players didn't change their behaviour, their selection fitness would fall because they were suspended so often, and in the end they'd find themselves playing at a lower level. Players who disdained simulation, on the other hand, would find empty places to step into in teams like Portugal or Real Madrid.
Not that it would have helped much yesterday. You can tweak the parameters around simulation, but I know of no rule change that would make teams come out and play.
In the other game, Ivory Coast scored about a third of the goals they would have needed if Brazil had made the necessary effort to beat Portugal, and like every African country except Ghana they're on their way home. North Korea, meanwhile, finish with zero points, one goal for and twelve against. Let's hope Kim Jong-Il isn't from the Saddam Hussein school of sports management.
Showing posts with label Ivory Coast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ivory Coast. Show all posts
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Outcomes - groups G and H
Group G
If Portugal beat Brazil, then Portugal top the group and Brazil finish second.
If Brazil and Portugal draw, then Brazil top the group and Portugal finish second.
If Brazil beat Portugal, then Brazil top the group and second place goes to Portugal or the Ivory Coast, depending on goal difference. The Ivory Coast would need to overturn a nine goal gap as things currently stand.
Group H
Another complicated one.
If Chile beat Spain and Switzerland win or draw against Honduras, Chile top the group and Switzerland are second.
If Chile beat Spain and Honduras beat Switzerland, Chile top the group and the team with the best goal difference from the other three are second.
If Spain beat Chile and Honduras win or draw against Switzerland, Spain top the group and Chile are second.
If Spain beat Chile and Switzerland beat Honduras, Honduras are eliminated and the other three nations are placed according to goal difference. Spain are guaranteed a place, while Switzerland get a place if they beat Honduras by two goals or more, or Chile lose by two goals or more.
If Spain and Chile draw, Chile top the group, while Spain are second unless Switzerland beat Honduras, in which case Switzerland are second.
If Portugal beat Brazil, then Portugal top the group and Brazil finish second.
If Brazil and Portugal draw, then Brazil top the group and Portugal finish second.
If Brazil beat Portugal, then Brazil top the group and second place goes to Portugal or the Ivory Coast, depending on goal difference. The Ivory Coast would need to overturn a nine goal gap as things currently stand.
Group H
Another complicated one.
If Chile beat Spain and Switzerland win or draw against Honduras, Chile top the group and Switzerland are second.
If Chile beat Spain and Honduras beat Switzerland, Chile top the group and the team with the best goal difference from the other three are second.
If Spain beat Chile and Honduras win or draw against Switzerland, Spain top the group and Chile are second.
If Spain beat Chile and Switzerland beat Honduras, Honduras are eliminated and the other three nations are placed according to goal difference. Spain are guaranteed a place, while Switzerland get a place if they beat Honduras by two goals or more, or Chile lose by two goals or more.
If Spain and Chile draw, Chile top the group, while Spain are second unless Switzerland beat Honduras, in which case Switzerland are second.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Brazil v Ivory Coast
Brazil 3 - 1 Ivory Coast
Fabiano 25, 50 Drogba 79
Elano 62
This was a funny one, a mixture of the brilliant, the tedious and the downright ugly. And that's without Ronaldo even playing.
It was a slow burner of a game. I've got more notes for the last ten minutes than I made for the entire first half. Brazil raised our hopes thirty seconds in, Fabiano bursting through and shooting just over virtually from the kick off, but the next 24 minutes had just the one decent chance - Roberto Silva's shot from a corner, slightly off target and deflected clear by Touré before it had a chance to bounce anywhere dangerous off the Brazilian knees behind him.
I cannot tell a lie, I didn't see which defender it deflected off. I chose Touré because there was two of them, so the odds were better. Kolo plays for Man City, Yaya for Barcelona, and they have 132 caps between them. Why do I think giving you facts makes it better somehow?
As so often happens, a period of quiet was followed by a goal. Fabiano used his strength to bustle through the Ivorian defence, but found himself at a difficult angle wide right. With a square inch of goal in the top right hand corner to aim at, he hit it perfectly for one nil.
It shocked the Ivory Coast, and they took a few minutes to compose themselves, but all the chances at the end of the first half were theirs. Dindane had two, but the first was blocked and the second, from distance, was easy enough for a keeper of Cesar's quality. For a country with a great tradition of crap keepers, Brazil seem be to doing all right at the moment - Cesar plays for the Champions League winners Inter Milan, the backup Gomes for Spurs and third choice Doni for Roma.
The last chance of the half fell to Eboue, but his shot was deflected wide. At the break, the Africans must have felt they were still in with a chance.
They had a rude awakening soon after the break. It was Fabiano again, lobbing one defender, dodging another and again lobbing a third before smashing the ball home seemingly through Boubacar's body. He plays for Lokeren, you know. The Belgian team? Yes they're in the top division, they finished fourteenth.
It was a brilliant individual goal by Fabiano, so it was a shame when the replay showed he'd used his arm to control the second lob. There's a dark side to the flamboyant geniuses of world football, of which more later.
This time there was no recovery period for the Ivory Coast. Almost immediately, Drogba had a great chance on a cross. He made space brilliantly, working the defender to get the three feet of space he needed, but his header went just wide. Soon after he played a one-two with Gervinho, who'd just come on for Dindane, but Gervinho just failed to get hold of the return.
Even my lovely readers, despite your reluctance to obsess over the game to a halfway appropriate level, will be familiar with the Ivory Coast manager, one Sven Goran Erikssen. Many you will have had sex with him, and those of you that haven't will know someone who has.
Perhaps you can explain, then, why he's so reluctant to play Gervinho right from the start. He's clearly a brilliantly talented lad, and whilst there's nothing wrong with Dindane as such, he does have, shall we say, a certain aroma of Portsmouth hanging over him. He did OK today, but Gervinho was their best player by a country mile. Why are country miles longer, by the way? I'd have thought they were shorter, because there's less in the way.
It didn't matter today, as Brazil went three up soon after he came on. Kaka got the ball down by the corner flag and managed to get a cross in without having to pass any of the defenders. Elano came in faster and stronger than anyone else, got to it first and tucked it away.
Now that the football was decided, it gave everyone the chance to concentrate on pretending to be hurt. The Brazilians are past masters at this, and gave the Africans a lesson which at least one of them took to heart. Tiote got a yellow card for unclear reasons, and Keita got one for reasons of very clear faking by Bastos.
Mixed in with the pretending to be hurt was some actual hurting, and it was sometimes hard to distinguish the one from the other, but suddenly in the middle of it a goal broke out. Gervinho ran seventy country yards with the ball, right into the box. He was stymied by cool defending and had to lay it off, but as the ball was returned Drogba ran through the offside trap, timing his run perfectly, to find himself stood all alone with the ball falling delicately onto his head. Being Drogba, he put it where it needed to be for three one.
And the Ivory Coast had one last sucker punch to land. Keita walked up to Kaka and nudged him, Kaka nudged him back and Keita went down holding his face. It earned Kaka a second yellow, and off he went.
It was petulant, although you can understand him wanting to stick it to the Brazilians after all their diving and rolling around, but above all it was tactically stupid. Brazil's last game is against Portugal, the Ivory Coast desperately need Brazil to beat them, and now they'll be playing them without one of their top players. Idiotic.
The whistle went soon after, bringing the action to a close before anyone could pretend to hit anyone else with an imaginary rolling pin. Another African nation loses a game, what a terrible few days for them. By the end of the group phase, all six could well have been eliminated.
Fabiano 25, 50 Drogba 79
Elano 62
This was a funny one, a mixture of the brilliant, the tedious and the downright ugly. And that's without Ronaldo even playing.
It was a slow burner of a game. I've got more notes for the last ten minutes than I made for the entire first half. Brazil raised our hopes thirty seconds in, Fabiano bursting through and shooting just over virtually from the kick off, but the next 24 minutes had just the one decent chance - Roberto Silva's shot from a corner, slightly off target and deflected clear by Touré before it had a chance to bounce anywhere dangerous off the Brazilian knees behind him.
I cannot tell a lie, I didn't see which defender it deflected off. I chose Touré because there was two of them, so the odds were better. Kolo plays for Man City, Yaya for Barcelona, and they have 132 caps between them. Why do I think giving you facts makes it better somehow?
As so often happens, a period of quiet was followed by a goal. Fabiano used his strength to bustle through the Ivorian defence, but found himself at a difficult angle wide right. With a square inch of goal in the top right hand corner to aim at, he hit it perfectly for one nil.
It shocked the Ivory Coast, and they took a few minutes to compose themselves, but all the chances at the end of the first half were theirs. Dindane had two, but the first was blocked and the second, from distance, was easy enough for a keeper of Cesar's quality. For a country with a great tradition of crap keepers, Brazil seem be to doing all right at the moment - Cesar plays for the Champions League winners Inter Milan, the backup Gomes for Spurs and third choice Doni for Roma.
The last chance of the half fell to Eboue, but his shot was deflected wide. At the break, the Africans must have felt they were still in with a chance.
They had a rude awakening soon after the break. It was Fabiano again, lobbing one defender, dodging another and again lobbing a third before smashing the ball home seemingly through Boubacar's body. He plays for Lokeren, you know. The Belgian team? Yes they're in the top division, they finished fourteenth.
It was a brilliant individual goal by Fabiano, so it was a shame when the replay showed he'd used his arm to control the second lob. There's a dark side to the flamboyant geniuses of world football, of which more later.
This time there was no recovery period for the Ivory Coast. Almost immediately, Drogba had a great chance on a cross. He made space brilliantly, working the defender to get the three feet of space he needed, but his header went just wide. Soon after he played a one-two with Gervinho, who'd just come on for Dindane, but Gervinho just failed to get hold of the return.
Even my lovely readers, despite your reluctance to obsess over the game to a halfway appropriate level, will be familiar with the Ivory Coast manager, one Sven Goran Erikssen. Many you will have had sex with him, and those of you that haven't will know someone who has.
Perhaps you can explain, then, why he's so reluctant to play Gervinho right from the start. He's clearly a brilliantly talented lad, and whilst there's nothing wrong with Dindane as such, he does have, shall we say, a certain aroma of Portsmouth hanging over him. He did OK today, but Gervinho was their best player by a country mile. Why are country miles longer, by the way? I'd have thought they were shorter, because there's less in the way.
It didn't matter today, as Brazil went three up soon after he came on. Kaka got the ball down by the corner flag and managed to get a cross in without having to pass any of the defenders. Elano came in faster and stronger than anyone else, got to it first and tucked it away.
Now that the football was decided, it gave everyone the chance to concentrate on pretending to be hurt. The Brazilians are past masters at this, and gave the Africans a lesson which at least one of them took to heart. Tiote got a yellow card for unclear reasons, and Keita got one for reasons of very clear faking by Bastos.
Mixed in with the pretending to be hurt was some actual hurting, and it was sometimes hard to distinguish the one from the other, but suddenly in the middle of it a goal broke out. Gervinho ran seventy country yards with the ball, right into the box. He was stymied by cool defending and had to lay it off, but as the ball was returned Drogba ran through the offside trap, timing his run perfectly, to find himself stood all alone with the ball falling delicately onto his head. Being Drogba, he put it where it needed to be for three one.
And the Ivory Coast had one last sucker punch to land. Keita walked up to Kaka and nudged him, Kaka nudged him back and Keita went down holding his face. It earned Kaka a second yellow, and off he went.
It was petulant, although you can understand him wanting to stick it to the Brazilians after all their diving and rolling around, but above all it was tactically stupid. Brazil's last game is against Portugal, the Ivory Coast desperately need Brazil to beat them, and now they'll be playing them without one of their top players. Idiotic.
The whistle went soon after, bringing the action to a close before anyone could pretend to hit anyone else with an imaginary rolling pin. Another African nation loses a game, what a terrible few days for them. By the end of the group phase, all six could well have been eliminated.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Portugal v Ivory Coast
Portugal 0 - 0 Ivory Coast
This one rather flattered to deceive. It was all Ronaldo for the first ten minutes, and a kind of masterclass in the diverse aspects of his character.
After five minutes, he got kicked for the first time. God I've missed this, I thought. Two minutes later, he blatantly dived, and got Zakora booked.
The free kick was his, of course. He blasted it from 45 yards, to no effect whatsoever. Twat.
And then two minutes later, with no warning, he had an opportunistic shot from 35 yards that twisted, yawed and smacked against the post, with the keeper nowhere.
The four sides to Cristiano Ronaldo. Victim, cheat, twat, genius. All in six minutes of play.
Soon after, he got himself booked after a lovely confrontation with Demel, with the cameras zooming adoringly in on him repeatedly shouting Fuck off in Demel's face. English, the first choice of swearers everywhere.
Opinion varies on off-colour footballing behaviour. Friends with kids worry that it sets a bad example. Some say it improves a bad match, but ruins a good one. I just enjoy writing about it. David O'Leary said he hoped we didn't get a petulant encounter, but I really couldn't agree. To be honest I think it's a shame Craig Bellamy is Welsh, and unlikely to ever get to a World Cup. If he was Ivorian, we could have watched him and Ronaldo shouting at each other in Swearglish.
Ah. On checking Craig Bellamy's profile on Wikipedia, I couldn't help but notice he played some of his youth career at Bristol Rovers. And to think I'd been instinctively persecuting him all this time without even knowing why. I wonder if the difference between City and Rovers is a genetic thing? It certainly feels profound. Perhaps I was just reacting to a pheromone, or the precise contours of his cheekbone, or personality.
In the second half Ronaldo was rather anonymous, and the Ivorians dominated. O'Leary, making an unexpected foray into the world of genuine footballing insight, pointed out that it was hardly surprising they'd started cautiously after what happened in 2006. You may recall (actually, when I think about my usual readership you almost certainly won't) that they were drawn in the hardest group that year, with Argentina, Holland and Serbia. They played well but lost 2-1 against both Argentina and Holland, which made their victory over Serbia in the last game irrelevant.
This time their first two games are against Portugal and Brazil, and they were probably determined to go into their last game with a chance of progress this time. In the second half, they realised they had a good chance to win it and went for it a bit more.
Portugal also had some good attacking play, without carving out too many clear chances. For a while, it was end to end stuff, actually entertaining in the traditional sense of evoking pathos through drama.
Drogba came on with twenty minutes left, to cheers all round the stadium. He's been injured, and hopefully will be fit to start the next two games. He did get one decent chance, in injury time, but fluffed it, stretching for the ball only to knock it a remarkable ninety degrees the wrong way.
So no goals in this one. Unless one of them drops points to North Korea or gets something out of Brazil, it's going to be decided on goal difference.
This one rather flattered to deceive. It was all Ronaldo for the first ten minutes, and a kind of masterclass in the diverse aspects of his character.
After five minutes, he got kicked for the first time. God I've missed this, I thought. Two minutes later, he blatantly dived, and got Zakora booked.
The free kick was his, of course. He blasted it from 45 yards, to no effect whatsoever. Twat.
And then two minutes later, with no warning, he had an opportunistic shot from 35 yards that twisted, yawed and smacked against the post, with the keeper nowhere.
The four sides to Cristiano Ronaldo. Victim, cheat, twat, genius. All in six minutes of play.
Soon after, he got himself booked after a lovely confrontation with Demel, with the cameras zooming adoringly in on him repeatedly shouting Fuck off in Demel's face. English, the first choice of swearers everywhere.
Opinion varies on off-colour footballing behaviour. Friends with kids worry that it sets a bad example. Some say it improves a bad match, but ruins a good one. I just enjoy writing about it. David O'Leary said he hoped we didn't get a petulant encounter, but I really couldn't agree. To be honest I think it's a shame Craig Bellamy is Welsh, and unlikely to ever get to a World Cup. If he was Ivorian, we could have watched him and Ronaldo shouting at each other in Swearglish.
Ah. On checking Craig Bellamy's profile on Wikipedia, I couldn't help but notice he played some of his youth career at Bristol Rovers. And to think I'd been instinctively persecuting him all this time without even knowing why. I wonder if the difference between City and Rovers is a genetic thing? It certainly feels profound. Perhaps I was just reacting to a pheromone, or the precise contours of his cheekbone, or personality.
In the second half Ronaldo was rather anonymous, and the Ivorians dominated. O'Leary, making an unexpected foray into the world of genuine footballing insight, pointed out that it was hardly surprising they'd started cautiously after what happened in 2006. You may recall (actually, when I think about my usual readership you almost certainly won't) that they were drawn in the hardest group that year, with Argentina, Holland and Serbia. They played well but lost 2-1 against both Argentina and Holland, which made their victory over Serbia in the last game irrelevant.
This time their first two games are against Portugal and Brazil, and they were probably determined to go into their last game with a chance of progress this time. In the second half, they realised they had a good chance to win it and went for it a bit more.
Portugal also had some good attacking play, without carving out too many clear chances. For a while, it was end to end stuff, actually entertaining in the traditional sense of evoking pathos through drama.
Drogba came on with twenty minutes left, to cheers all round the stadium. He's been injured, and hopefully will be fit to start the next two games. He did get one decent chance, in injury time, but fluffed it, stretching for the ball only to knock it a remarkable ninety degrees the wrong way.
So no goals in this one. Unless one of them drops points to North Korea or gets something out of Brazil, it's going to be decided on goal difference.
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