Down and Kraut!

Everybody Say 'World Cup'!

The World Cup proper has now begun and thankfully this seems to have coincided with an increase in the quality of the games. The group stage was a disappointment, but as the tournament has progressed teams appear to be playing better, more fluid football. Maybe this is because they have been together for a while and are beginning to intuit the movement of their teammates, making everything that little bit less regimented. If this is the case it would be brilliant, a sort of Germany 2006 in reverse - bad group stage with a good knockout rounds rather than theother way round.

Spain seem to be starting to click into gear, Germany looked fantastic against England and the Dutch surely have to kick-on and start playing some total-football sooner or later. The South American teams are looking very good too, Uruguay and Argentina have played to their strengths and beaten teams who could have been stumbling blocks for them. Also, Brazil vs. Chile ought to be a fantastic game, if Chile have any players free from suspension

This is where the World Cup really starts to matter and it is really positive that the standard of the matches seems to be increasing by the day.

On to England, that team appeared doomed to failure from the moment we saw that they had lined up as a 4-4-2. Against Germany, a team who have three players in Podolski, Ozil and Muller who all play behind the opposition midfield but in front of the defence, you cannot play such a outmoded system which absolutely does not account for the strengths of the opposition. We do not have players in that England squad who are capable of following the intelligent movement of players like those listed above.

John Terry and Matthew Upson were pulled all over the place by these guys plus Klose. For almost every goal scored both our centre-backs had been sucked across to one side of the pitch, following decoy runners (or re. the first, getting ludicrously caught underneath a ball that has travelled 70yds.) The goals came from a German wide players being able to overlap the play on the outside, leaving the full back absolutely isolated.

Though this is clearly in part a personal failing on the part of both centre-backs, I believe it is also a product of the system we played yesterday. Had we have played 4-2-3-1, this would have allowed for the '2' to cover many of the runs made by the German forwards, leaving the basic structural integrity of the defence intact. But we insisted on playing only 1 defensive centre-mid, and not one who could ever be regarded as being genuinely defensive. Barry has been supported in defence by De Jong at City and by Petrov at Villa before that.

Basically, it looked like it wouldn't work and it didn't.

Looking at the weather we have had for the past week, how good would it have been if they had gone ahead with the plans to out big-screens in Regents Park? What a good day out that would be - beers, sun, football! http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23806325-world-cup-football-screens-in-regents-park-will-disrupt-open-air-theatre-managers-warn.do Bloody Open-Air Theatre goers, with all their culture and whatnot!

Talking with a friend about the nature of advertising around the World Cup got me to thinking, is anyone actually affected by the hoardings around the pitches? Until I looked to find out, I could not remember whether it was Mastercard or Visa who were the 'Official Credit Card of the FIFA World Cup' - and they will have spent Millions upon Millions getting that prominent position. Maybe that sort of thing does stick in your mind somewhere, but I can honestly state that I feel no more inclined to use one than the other.

Having said this, I do know that Leyland Steel advertise(d?) around Premier League grounds and I have always wondered why they would do this. Do they think someone is in the crowd or watching the tele thinking 'I really need an industrial quantity of steel, but I am damned if I know who to get it from'. Who knows?

There is a nice summary of the various World Cup 2010 ads here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jun/23/world-cup-food-drink-advertising

Hopefully the Knockout Rounds continue to be as enthralling and filled in equal parts by sublime skill, goalkeeping errors and officiating disasters. This seems to be the perfect recipe.

Oh yeah, finally - YES it was over the line - YES we should have some form of goal line technology - but NO it probably would not have made any difference.