Argentina 6 Serbia Montenegro 0; Holland 2 Ivory Coast 1; Mexico 0 Angola 0

My fam,

I just want to take this time and place to declare that I did not have a beer today. Since the world cup has started, I was a situational alcoholic as beer was pumped into my stomach on a nightly as well as matinee basis. Why would one subject oneself (I’m being PC here) to such cruel and unusual punishment, I don’t know, but I have to say that I feel slightly jitterly, fingers unsettled, and my thoughts are in disarray. My flatmate Charlie is eating banana custard for dinner. Great, I’m fucking hallucinating now.

Slightly significant, but not life threatening developments of the day, in no specific order of significance: Kate is in tears after reading last night’s blog. I watched two matches at home. Anna is going back to Romania. Charlie is still eating banana custard for dinner. Adam reads my blog religiously. Ben hasn’t written to me yet. Philippe M is in London.

At some point in this blog, the above events would have had a major yet colonel importance in my day. My day would never be the same without the above events and I could use a beer right about now.

Group C
Argentina 6
Serbia Montenegro 0

Yes, you have read it correctly. As I woke up from my tender sleep in my recently souped up room which can magically redirect lights out of my eyes, I was blessed by the football gods to witness a virtuoso performance by the Argie Bargies. That was a big word, huh?

Passing and moving, Possession, Finding space and occupying space, Balance, Confidence, Relaxed, and to top it off 24 passes for a goal.

Let’s say you’re Albert. I know, you may not want to, but for argument’s sake, please do so. Albert is an avid sports fan and after claiming for years that he is the MTBA’s top bongo for all fantasy sports, this year has brought him his first ever MTBA fantasy basketball league title. Congratulations. I still owe you money for it. Anyhoo, he’s now thinking that in 2010, we will have the MTBA fantasy world cup and him and his millions will win him a title, a la Steinbrenner/Abramovich. Albert has seen couple of matches, but he is still unsure what makes a team good, bad, great, and terrible. I have got no idea how to show him the good, bad, and the terrible, but what I can give him on his birthday is a “back-up” dvd of this match to show “great”.

A “great” team, actually a “modern great” team must play possession football. That’s easy, right? You just keep possession of the ball. This same team also needs to pass and move. That’s also quite a cinch, as all you do is to move after you pass. You must then also find a space left by the man who passed the ball and occupy it, aka finding a space. This is where it gets slightly more complicated.

We’ll go to simple math now and I can already hear Howard saying “Yee-sup-chat”. Divide the field into threes. No DJ, not treys, but threes. If the field is lying horizontally in front of you, cut it vertically into threes. If you’re bautz and can cut things in straight lines (no drug reference here, ms. Moss), you have an area with one goal and an area with no goal (midfield) and you have another area with the other goal. This is the football version of the “fields of thirds”. I just made that up, but if you’re in the states, tell your peers that Bruce Arena came up with this idea (alongside the “hockey style penalty shoot out”).

Thanks for the beer Charlie.

You must as a player make sure that if you are in any third of the field, you are supported by other players on your team. Why? So you’ve got options to pass to the other player and go forward, go backwards, or go sideways. If this sense of finding space and occupying space comes natural to all the players, all you need to do is confidence to know when to go for the goal.

The final third of the field, is where the goal scoring happens and I guess in an american football term, it can be called the red zone. I personally think they should incorporate statistics in football for “red zone offence”, but Budweiser only makes beer.

You’re in the red zone and the goal is in sight. You have taken your time to pass the ball around and like Kobe in Colorado, you pounce when you deem the timing is right and you don’t look back.

The epitome of this is the 2nd goal for Argentina. There were total of 24 passes before the ball was struck rather cheaply by Cambiasso. But the build up to this goal, players passing and moving and waiting for the opportunity to go for the jugular, was simply artistic. This is perhaps an antithesis to “joga bonito”, as there is no canary flair to the sky blue’s performance. This is also different to England’s “kick it to Crouch and see what happens”. But this clockwork efficiency and the killer instinct that Diego’s boys possess is something no other team have and at this moment they are the team to beat. I would like to go through all the goals, but the 2nd goal of the day was the epitome of what they are capable of doing and all other goals are bonuses.

On a jolly note, Barca’s wonder boy Messi shrug of some niggles and came in to claim an assist as well as a goal in the dying minutes. Teves also bitch slapped and gauged the tonsils of his monkey.

Argentina to win it all? From Diego’s reaction to the “24 pass” goal, that’s a “si”.

Almost forgot. They qualify for the sweet 16.

Group C
Holland 2
Ivory Coast 1

Total football is back in vogue.

Johan Cruyff and co. revolutionized the world of football with a style so dissimilar to the rest of the kick and rush idiots of that time.

Wikipedia has got to say something like this:

“Total Football is a system where a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining their intended organisational structure. In this fluid system no footballer is fixed in his or her intended outfield role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender. Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed. Many believe the foundations of Total Football originally stem from the Push and run style of play”

You must be screaming at the top of your lungs in the office and that hottie totti sitting diagonally across from your desk is frowning. “Ryu, you playa’ hata’! That’s the same shit that came out of your shit crusted mouth when your sorry 1/8th German ass was raving about the Argentinians!” Well, not really. Although Argentina has got a “fluid” system, their each player’s assigned position does not change, ie right full back will not move to centre midfield.

The 2006 version of the Orange is a throwback to the 70’s. But to crown them as the challenger to the cup is slightly premature as they are only firing on half of their cylinders. Perhaps we will be talking about this team in the same breath as the great side of 74’, we can still marvel at the sight of the wings which will propel this team in the future: Enter Robben and van Persie.

If Robben did his shiznit to kill of the Serbians (and Montenegrians), van Persie showed why Wenger hopes he will replace the Dennis the Menace in the near future.

1st goal came from a van Persie drive to the edge of the box. He gets hacked to pretty orange pieces and gets himself a nice position to free his kick. With 7 men in the wall to create the first ever “Wall of Ivory Coast”, the stage is set for the grand finale. With the goalie not able to see over the wall (he’s generously listed as 6’0, but probably more like 5’9), number 17 blasts a lightning bolt into the top corner. The shit was so fast that you would have thought that the ball had houdinied into the net. Not really, but I’m sure it was on par with an Ivanisevic 1st serve, but not as quick as Kevin Lam’s 2nd serve.

There was a really dubious non-penalty call before this goal, but who cares.

2nd goal was also a peach. A little bit of total football at the centre edge of the box and Arjen releases an ill (in American, this means “good”) pass to the path of “the man who lost his position to Saha and stormed off because he’s a whinging piece of horse shit”. He blasts it passed the goalie and he looks as if his constipation just ended there and then. If you get hand of the replay of this goal, do watch out for horseman’s positioning. He is offside when Robben has the ball, but when Arjen releases it, he is onside. A deft move.

3rd goal was typical of this tournament and also typical of our times. As number “10” has gone out of fashion, number “9” is slowly making its exit out to stage left. The traditional centre forward of the good old days are slowly being phased out by the long /mid range bombers in the midfield. If you look at the formation on most teams in this world cup (but you must look at the formation on the pitch and not on the screen), they almost always employ a lone striker supported by 4 or 5 midfielders. Additionally, the air balloon balls that are being slapped around in this tournament adds mad amout of swirls, twirls, and twinkles to them and obviously have given the gatekeepers nightly ljunbergs on elm street. Kone wiggles to the right corner of the box and whips a delicious curler passed the outstretched hands of Van der Sar. Scorcher.

To be honest with you, I think IC had enough chances to tie this contest, but post there and swing and miss there, they had no luck and also no love from the ref. It’s a real pity because in my mind they are the best out of the 5 African nations in this cup. Let’s hope they will make an appearance 4 years from now on home continent soil.

Congratulations to Marco and co. You have survived the group of death and now it’s time for the sweet 16.

Group D
Mexico 0
Angola 0

Didn’t watch this. I decided that I needed to leave the house, so I called up my friend Anna from Romania and had a civilized coffee in Crouch End. Strange to think that the Nacho men and Angolans (seriously, I really don’t have anything witty to say about these fools) were battling thousands of kilometres away as we sipped cups of joes and talked about Timisoara. As we wrapped up our petite soiree, I couldn’t resist the temptation to pop my unkept head into the pub for the score. 0-0 in the 84th minute. I knew it.

Marlene’s flatmate isn’t so keen on me calling the Mexico (pronounced, “me-hiko”) “Taco Land”. I call my country “Sushi Land” and since no Japanese people have complained, I will continue to use “Taco Land”. Just so you are educated, “Taco” means octopus in Japanese . Shit, maybe he’s pissed off that I called Mexico “Octopus Land”. It’s so difficult to keep everyone happy, you know?

Right back at you with the football, but before that I want to make a short announcement. My dear friend Philippe (not my enigma, the half frog/jap combo, but a small Italian stallion from Brooklyn) has made his cameo performance of the week by appearing at Heathrow airport this morning. We shall be doing some football viewing tomorrow, but he told me something absolutely astonishing. He told me that Adam, is reading my blog religiously. Why is it that all the Adams and Bens I know are peculiar human beings? Don’t really know why and am not bothered to understand their DNA sequence, but I want to big it up for my favourite Jew (if you’re reading this Kresiberg, you’re my joint favourite) and thank him for coming out of the woodworks to give me praise. The numerous (only a handful), memorable (now a legendary night in Ixtapa) adventures that occurred at Philippe’s flat in New York and the untold wanking sessions I have conducted whilst watching that really awkward German porn brings tears of joy and shame to my eyes. By all means, Adam is a fantastic football player, who on occasion graced the beaches of Mexico (aka Burrito Peninsula) with the Italian dynamo and I. Oh the days of NYC...

I just stopped the BBC highlights at 2minutes and 36 seconds (out of 3 minutes and 24 seconds). I have seen enough. If you can’t put away a team of Angola’s calibre and if you can’t score with a 11 minute powerplay at the end of 2nd half, you don’t deserve to go that far in this tournament. I did find the entire match very strange because Salsa Lads did brush away the Khomeini boys in their first match.

Big ups and serious Ali-G for the Angolans. They have earned their first ever World Cup point. You’re laughing about their first ever point? Ask the Koreans how long it took them to earn one.

Strangely enough, Angola now has bought itself a sliver of hope to make it to the sweet 16.
Now, that’s exciting.

Ryu’s “TGIF” goal of the day: 24 passes. No contest.

Tomorrow we check out Porto wine duke it out with the Ayatollahs, followed by Jackie’s intended summer holiday and Pele’s (Abedi) boys, capped up by George’s donkeys taking on Kristen’s boy toys.

Watch it.