Initial Prophecies Were Inaccurate

Thank fucking Christ we don’t spend all our time internet spread betting or we’d be double super poorer. The ITV commentary team didn’t even wait til the match started before they apologised for the sound of the vuvuzelas. It won’t be the first. As usual the in-house ITV team are craptastic.

I also said I’d watch every minute. However, some of the first half was so thoroughly tedious I was compelled to watch it through closed eyelids in a state of somewhat unconsciousness. When I was actually awake, it did reek of a classic Blackburn/Bolton confrontation where you simply lose the will to live and quality football seems like an optional extra. It says something that the BBC highlights of this game didn’t start until the 50th minute.

The Vuvuzela Is A Rubbish Instrument

It looks like a poor quality plumbing product and it sounds like a broken kazoo, but the real failing of the vuvuzela is that it doesn’t leave you with anywhere to go. And as Shakespeare says (admittedly in Shakespeare In Love and not in any of his real works), “Where are you going to go when you meet the love of your life?” In the case of the vuvuzela your only real option is to shut the fuck up.

South Africa Should Have Been Braver

In the one good move of the entire match (all of three passes), South Africa gutted the mexicans and scored a genuinely class, smashed straight into the back of the net type goal. If only they’d have spent a little more time being a bit more ambitious and actually attacking Mexico, they would surely have won. Drawing this game won’t help them get through the Group stages. It looks like grabbing the game is the only acceptable strategy.

Mexico Are Lightweights

Like most of their boxers, Mexico are small, nippy lightweights. To succeed in football, they have to move the ball fast and with great control. South Africa didn’t give them the space behind the back four to run into and Mexico simply ran out of ideas. If South Africa hadn’t totally slept out the Mexican’s corner, they’d never have got back into the game.

Neither Of These Two Are Going Through

I can’t see either of these two getting past France or Uruguay, unless those two really fuck the pootch (which isn’t totally inconceivable).

One Down 63 To Go

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Winning Is, Presumeably, Everything

A win is a win and all that, but that’s about it. Mainly because, with a shocking lack of skills, midfield influence, possession and tactical nous, it’s all that Engerland can realistically take away from this game.  A 3 – 1 win against another Top 20 FIFA World Rankings team and one that’s also going to the World Cup can’t be sniffed at, but performance-wise Engerland were stunningly poor. Two staggeringly badly defended set-piece corners and one, admittedly useful, bit of skill from Glen Johnson did more to expose Mexico’s defensive failings than to establish Engerland as anything other than bantamweights. If I was the USA, who beat Spain in last year’s Confederations Cup, I’d be really looking forward to meeting Engerland on the 12 June.

No One Played Themselves Into The Team

With Fabio having to cull another 7 inadequates from a squad already stuffed full of them, this wasn’t a good game to be playing in. Midfield wannabes Milner and Carrick did themselves no favours by consistently losing possession, failing to defend in any practical way and generally managing to cede the entire midfield area to the Mexicans with the result that Rooney and his strike partner were isolated for the entirity of the game. Never has the regularly misfiring and universally derided combination of Lampard and Gerrard looked so appealling. It was a great game for the likes of the Coles, Lampard, Terry and particularly Heskey to miss and, of the players on the pitch only goalkeepers Green and Hart along with Glen Johnson really did anything to improve their reputations.

Are Engerland Setting Up To Play Like Inter?

It seemed that the team and Fabio have become enamoured of Inter’s recent Champions League performances, where possession and control of the game are sacrified in favour of highly regulated defensive pressing and swift counterattack. But while Inter seem to know what they’re doing, Engerland looked like they only understood  half the game plan – being excellent at giving the ball away without ever looking secure at the back. You’d have to say that a plan that gives the visitors significantly more possession than the national team at home can’t be a positive thing even if you win the game and it’s symptomatic both of the lack of basic skills within the Engerland camp and of a larger footballing conflict. There does seem to be something of a philosopical clash going on within the game between the ‘Beautiful Game’ espoused by Gardiola, Wenger and Van Gaal and typified by Barcelona, Arsenal and Spain, and the ‘Defensive Counter’ pioneered by Sacchi and now realised by Mourinho and his Inter team. The latter have realised that the tippy-tappy, through the keyhole passing game starts to falter when faced with a well-managed 9 or ten man defensive thicket placed just outside the box, leaving the opposition vulnerable to a lightning-quick counterattack as demonstrated by Inter’s second goal in the Champions League final. This cerebral confrontation of styles is excellently dissected in this article by the Graun’s Jonathan Wilson. Engerland would do well to read it all the way to the end, because it became apparent that they’ve either only read the first half of the plan, or they embarked on the game in the spirit of Sacchi’s practice matches, immediately returning the ball to the Mexicans on the halfway line whenever they inconveniently managed to gain possession. Such was the regularity with which Engerland gave away the ball that you felt it had to be part of their game plan as they surely couldn’t be as routinely shit as this without trying. All of which raises the bizarre thought that Engerland were actually using the match as a training session to see how well they would cope with having to constantly defend for 9o minutes – a thought that requires so much faith in Fabio’s management and the team’s ability to work to a plan as to be frankly self-delusional.  Meanwhile, this is a battle of footballing philosophies that will be played out throughout the World Cup, the best team being the one that can combine the two near-contradictory impulses with real skill.

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