What We Learned From Mexico vs France (2-0)


Suddenly Everything Matters

After the blatant tedium of the first Round, it’s clear that everyone has woken up. Hey, they say as they greet the morning, It’s the fucking World Cup and in some cases they appear actually quite interested in being there as opposed to fartarsing around on a beach (or in some alleged cases a variety of international class brothels). Not so the French. Shrugging their shoulders as only the truly French can, they take a spectacular puff on their Gitanes and mutter some gibberish about sardines and how they really need to propose to that good looking girl over there before some filthy Eenglish peeg gets to work. Given their total paucity of ambition, their spectacular lack of tactical nous and their awesome ambivalence, you kind of wonder why the French even wanted to be here and why Henry set himself up for such opprobrium by cheating his country into the World Cup. The Irish you sense would actually quite like to have been here, indeed you suspect they might actually have made an effort to, you know, attack, or score, or heaven help us actually win a match. You would have thought that the French, with the cultural memory of Japan 2002, where they played three, scored none and went home on the first available plane, might actually give a shit this time. You might have thought that on the 70th anniversary of Marshall Petan’s surrender to the Nazis, when the very existence of the French state was in doubt, Les Bleus might, you know, move themselves to play the beautiful game. But apparently not.

Apologies To The Mexicans

Now, previous posts like this and this might have led people to believe that I thought the Mexicans were a team of lightweight losers who pretty passed the ball around to no great effect and fell over a lot, who were led by a bunch of makeweight kids from Tottingham and Arsenal and who had no chance of ever getting out of the Group unless the French or the Uruguayans fucked the pooch. Thankfully for the Mexicans the French well and truly fucked the pooch, doing all the things I said prevented the Mexicans from beating South Africa. The French held a high line without the pace to defend it, allowing the lightweight Mexicans to skin them time and time again. Mexico, by contrast, kept a tight deep back line that prevented the French from running at them and then compounded this by dominating in midfield.

Who Wants Some?

Not apparently Ribery, the first of the ‘soccer stars’ to go home; not apparently Anelka, Malouda, Touloulan, or any of the other French players. And definitely not Domenech, who looks like he can’t wait to get home to the many lurid headlines that will greet him. One player who did look like he wanted some was Mexican Old Boy Cuauhtemoc Blanco, who is all of 37 million years old, came on as a sub, didn’t so much run as amble about before scoring the second goal from the penalty spot. Given his enthusiasm, as well as Mexico’s position in the ConCaf Group, which basically ensures qualification, there’s every chance that he’ll be at World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Which is more than can be said for any of this spastically useless French team. They truly lived up to the Rumsfeld description of them as Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys.

Not So Much Adios As Au Revoir

A bientot Frenchies. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

20 Down 44 To Go


What We Learned From South Africa vs Mexico (1 – 1)


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


What We Learned From Engerland v Mexico…


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.