FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010
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With a great performance out of the way on Sunday football is on an all time high in New Zealand. Expectations for this team are starting to grow - and I'm as guilty as anyone else of this. I'm going to play devil's advocate here and show up some of the negative's in this squad and ironically the damage that performance against Serbia on Sunday morning may have caused.
First of all you can forget about the All Whites sneaking up and taking our group rivals by surprise now. Slovakia, Paraguay will certainly be spending plenty of time pouring over video footage of our previous two games. This scares me because I believe we have one big weakness in this team.
While our 3-4-3 formation has been proven to work (relax I'm not going to write yet another post on our formation) it has one glaring weakness which is a lack of bodies on the flanks. While our front 3 have shown a willingness to track back and help out defending on the wings if we lose possession in attack and the opposition counter quickly it could leave two poor defenders in Lochhead and Bertos having to mark the opposition wingers one on one. Our previous two good performances will have alerted Slovakia, Italy and Paraguay to this flaw.
Our two goals in our warm up matches came from long balls flicked on by one of our strikers for another to finish again I think defences will be more aware of this and perhaps leave an extra man back in defence to cover the on rushing striker (Smeltz vs Serbia, Killen vs Australia.)
They'll be able to do this because they know we have very little creativity coming out of midfield (I don't mean to bag Simon Elliott again he's played very well in our two warm up matches but is not likely to rip through a defence by himself). This is the midfield we have simple as that so we have to learn to work around it and so far we have. I'm just concerned we may have become a bit predictable and will get found out in a serious match.
Friendly matches also throw up crazy results all the time. While I do agree with Ricky Herbert that the Serbia result was the best in the history of New Zealand football they didn't have their top line up out and Australia probably aren't the same team as they were four years ago. So maybe those games aren't as promising as we'd all like to believe they are.
As you may have guessed I don't believe much of what I've just written, I've just taken comments I've seen in negative press in Australia and New Zealand. Spun either by Australian football journalists trying to build up the Australian team or in general rugby followers in New Zealand who are terrified of football getting a foothold with the New Zealand public. They only have to look across the ditch to see how quickly football can take hold and start making a serious impression in the sporting landscape.
Onto the glass half full side of these arguments. First of all the idea of us sneaking up on anyone at the world cup is ridiculous. This is the biggest sporting event in the world there is no way any manager (with the possible exception of Diego Maradonna) will not have watched all of their rivals matches before the tournament.
I am still nervous about getting caught on the flanks but it's a consequence of our formation that has worked well and every formation has it's weaknesses. Ours is a lack of defenders out wide so be it we're stronger defensively through the middle, our strikers all work incredibly hard in defence and our midfield sets up just in front of our back three so it's not as likely to be exposed.
While both our goals in the warm up matches have been created the same way with a long ball forward how exactly do you stop that? Our strikers are all big and as he proved while be marked by Nemanja Vidic on Sunday Rory Fallon is great in the air. Both Winston Reid and Tommy Smith can hit accurate long balls so there will be a steady supply of them for our strikers to get on the end of. Long ball football while not pretty is effective and unless you want to sit back and defend for the entire match they're aren't a lot of ways to stop it. Yes we don't have a lot of creativity in midfield but we've shown we can work around it.
Friendly matches do throw up crazy result and neither of the teams we played had their top sides out. This in itself is true, but it ignores that they were both still very strong sides particularly Serbia who went all out to win in the second half and simply couldn't do it. We also showed we have the ability to hit teams on the break when they try this and with better finishing we could have got another. The Australian squad still hadn't been trimmed to 23 when we played them so they certainly went all out to beat us which I don't think they would have achieved had we not made all those second half subs.
What has been shown through out the world cup warm up matches program is the Asian sides (I include New Zealand in this) are a lot better than we thought. England had Manchester United's second highest scorer this year Mr. Own Goal to thank for their 2-1 win over Japan. Saudi Arabia pushed a very lackadaisical Spain all the way for a 3-2 loss and over night Australia beat Denmark 1-0. So perhaps beating Bahrain was a bigger achievement than we thought.
On top of all this our side has great spirit, works for each other, and every man knows his role and limitations. These are the types of underdog sides that do well at world cups. My friend William wrote an excellent blog post about underdogs at the world cup and they all had these characteristics. The link is on the left.
Two other things most successful underdogs have are. One is a good defence, no point in entertaining people and scoring a few great goals if you're going to get ripped to shreds every time the opposition have the ball. This we certainly have with Ryan Nelsen, Winston Reid and Tommy Smith showing signs of becoming a formidable trio at the back, and their games all complement each other nicely.
The other is a relatively easy group. By no means is ours a walk in the park but it could have been so much worse. Forget about progressing if we'd been drawn where either Australia or North Korea are.
Our final 11 is almost completely settled there are probably only two positions still up for grabs. Tommy Smith will definitely be in the team. The question is where either he plays at left wing back or on the left of our back three so the decision is between Ivan Vicelich and Tony Lochhead. I certainly believe Vicelich is the better player of the two but I'd play Smith at the back as the key to our success in the tournament is being solid at the back and I'd like out best possible back three to play.
The final position up for grabs is Tim Brown's spot in central midfield. He could still make the cup but I'd be very surprised to see him fit for Slovakia. The options are Michael McGlinchey, Jeremy Christie and Ivan Vicelich. McGlinchey is the best attacker of the three but I'm not sure that's the type of player we need in there alongside Simon Elliott. Christie is solid enough in defence but more of his passes go to the opposition than another All White so I don't see him being the answer. I'd really like to see Vicelich get a run in there against Slovenia he's the best defensively of the three and can play a decent ball. he has lost a bit of pace since his prime though. If he can produce a good performance there the position is his. Hopefully none of this will matter and Brown will be fit but I'm not overly confident.
In the end I don't think we'll have quite enough quality to progress. That said I do believe we'll win a game, most likely against Slovakia. They're ranked 34 in the world and only have one top class player in Marek Hamsik who is brilliant but I think we have enough at the back to deal with him. This would be a dream come true for me as it would give us hope for the whole tournament with a bit of luck and other results in the group you never know what could happen against Paraguay on the day.
You can guarantee our boys will give everything they have and certainly won't be embarrassed at the tournament.
Slovenia are a well organised side who managed to beat Russia over two legs in a play off. They'll defend from the front and pressure us whenever we have the ball. Robert Koren an attacking midfielder who has just been released by West Bromich Albion - the same club Chris Wood plays for. is probably their best player. So this Slovenian side isn't exactly stacked with quality. But no bad teams qualify for the world cup from Europe or anywhere else for that matter and it'll be another stern challenge for the All Whites.
I think we'll start with our top 11 or pretty close to it but expect a lot of the fringe players in the squad to get a good run in the second half. It's time to give these guys a go any maybe we'll find something in a player we didn't know he had. Personally I'd really like to see Jeremy Brockie get a good run he showed quality when he came on against Serbia and hopefully we can also sort out the other midfield slot.
I expect a good first half from our boys with perhaps either a 1-0 lead onr 1-1 or 0-0 scoreline at halftime. I do think we'll lose the match in the second half though when we make a raft of changes to our team our back up players are just nowhere near the quality of our first 11. It's unfortunate but that's the situation we're in and these guys need to get a run now rather than in 12 days time at the world cup when we may need them due in suspension or injury.
As long as we take another step forward I'll be happy whatever the outcome of the match. Come on boys keep this up.
I'm not going to do an in depth preview of the entire world cup, there are so many online written by people who know more about each individual side than I do. However I'll give a couple of thoughts on the tournament.
Despite their result against us I still think Serbia are a very good side and have every chance of making the quarter finals at least and if they get there they can go all the way as their defence should be solid (although I imagine they're expecting an aerial bombardment after their performance against the All Whites.). England will lose on penalties in the quarter finals to France. The Netherlands will turn around their usual performances in the knock out stages to win their first ever world cup beating Italy in the final. I expect the USA to have a big world cup they're a lot better than everyone is giving them credit for and don't be shocked to see them in a quarter final. With out further ado here's my prediction as to how the world cup will go:
[B]Round of 16[/B]
Winner group A: France vs Runner up group B: Greece
Winner group C: England vs Runner up group D: Serbia
Winner group E: Netherlands vs Runner up Group F: Paraguay
Winner group G: Brazil vs Runner up Group H: Chile
Winner group B: Argentina vs Runner up Group A: South Africa
Winner group D: Germany vs Runner up Group C: USA
Winner group F: Italy vs Runner up Group E: Japan
Winner group H: Spain vs Runner up Group G: Ivory Coast
[B]Quarter Finals[/B]
France vs England
Netherlands vs Brazil
Argentina vs USA
Italy vs Spain
[B]Semi Finals[/B]
Netherlands vs France
Argentina vs Italy
[B]Final[/B]
Netherlands vs Italy
[B]Winner[/B]
Netherlands
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Now that complete waste of time is out of the way watch how wrong I am when the world cup gets going and there are upsets galore and teams we thought were dead certs to top their group missing out or just finishing second and underdogs ending up with easy runs to the quarters. That's why it's the world's best sporting event in the world by a mile - you just have no idea what is going to happen.
Anyway the next time I write one of these I'll be in South Africa I'll aim to have it up early next week when I'll try and fail to explain what the atmosphere in South Africa is like.
Fifa 2010 World cup Theme song download
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