Why would we feel bad about Holland beating us at the World Cup?

 

Is there really anything to be upset about that the Netherlands beat the US in the second round of the World Cup by a 3–1 score?

First, off, let’s separate the winning-or-death mentality that dominates our sports landscape from reality: Soccer is a sport with a highly varied set of outcomes every time the whistle blows.

As all-time leading US World Cup scorer Landon Donovan put it when the United States got eliminated in the second round of the 2010 World Cup: “I’m proud of what we did here. Soccer’s a cruel sport.”

The U.S. finished ahead of a couple world powerhouses by making the second round and scored a goal against the Netherlands which isn’t easy to do. The squad was one of only five teams to have no losses through three world cup games. I know this glass-half-full approach doesn’t vibe with American sports fans but welcome to soccer. The upper echelons are already filled by established powers so your odds of making it late in the World Cup if you’re not Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal or Holland are never going to be that good.

If anything, it’s humbling and that’s what I love about Soccer. It’s the great equalizer among socio-economic powers: We are the most militarily powerful country in the world and we have been eliminated from the World Cup twice by a Sub-Saharan African country (Ghana in 2006 and 2010) that’s squarely in the third world. There’s nothing more humbling than losing to a country with a GDP per person (average yearly salary) of $2,445.30. And it’s hard to not appreciate such parity even when you’re on the losing end of it.

But even if we did win, so what? Unlike Ghana or the Netherlands, we don’t need World Cup victories to make us feel strong as a country and if we do, then we have some serious inferiority complex issues as the number one economy of the world and the harbinger of democracy for the last 100 years (yes, I know we’ve been slipping as leaders of the World since, ahem, 2016) BUT this American sports exceptionalism mentality has been going on long before that.

What’s more striking is that soccer isn’t even a sport we’re good at. If ticket sales for the Big 4 (Football, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball) are any indication, soccer is fifth in the batting order in a best-case scenario. So how arrogant do we have to expect to do well against other countries who prioritize this sport far higher? Why do we feel the need to win at everything?

I understand the idea of rooting for your country if it appears in a game, but I completely understand why Holland would be likely to beat us in most scenarios and I am nothing but happy for them.

My World Cup History, a quiz, and two articles of mine

The World Cup is here! I am not a year-round soccer watcher (sidenote: Does the AP style guide have any advice on soccer vs football if writing for an audience that is predominantly American?) but I have such a humongous history with this sporting event.

When I was in elementary school in 1994, my Nicaraguan housekeeper (a mother figure that I still keep in touch with to this day) first lived in our house when she came over because we sponsored her Visa. I used to go to her room to use her TV because I never had one and we would watch the World Cup on her bed. One of the first things I learned in Spanish was the names of the 24 countries that were playing that year as well as terms like "tierra de esquina" (corner kick). And of course, Andreas Cantor's famous "Gooooooooolll!."

In 1998, as I was approaching high school, my parents sent me down to live with my grandparents for the summer in the Florida Keys and we would watch the World Cup every day. There was a language barrier between us because my grandparents were born in Iran which was ironic because the US and Iran played that year. My grandparents also lived in Germany for several years and Germany was in the US-Iran group. I still remember nearly every score and group drawing of that year twenty years later.

In 2002 when the World Cup was in South Korea and Japan, I studied abroad in Mexico which took sports spectatorship to a new level. I would be awakened on days that Mexico played at either 2 or 5 AM with pots and pans clanking and bells ringing as well as people running down the street. The results of every game from the second round on went the exact opposite of the way I wanted them to go. When US upset Mexico to make the quarterfinals, what might have been nice if I was in the US at the time suddenly became tragic. I also hated South Korea, Turkey, England and Brazil and those were the teams that won everything.
In 2010, I was inspired by the World Cup to start playing pickup soccer which became a hobby of sorts for at least a couple years.

I recently wrote two articles previewing the World Cup for the Weekly Standard and have been invited to pitch at Slate and probably can pitch again for the Weekly Standard so let's see if I can write some more.

In the interim, enjoy this quiz I made of players who have scored four or more goals since 1998. It's a good way to catch up on recent World Cup history

World Cup Review Part I: Performances over the past World Cups

*Disclaimer: This post isn't timely, I know. I acknowledge nothing is particularly timely about my blog.

I wrote a couple pieces on the World Cup on my facebook notes section recently and wanted to share them here for posterity's sake.

One of them has little to do with this particular world cup. Rather, the last five World Cups. More to the point, I wanted to find some way to measure overall performance in the last five World Cups. I wanted to show how difficult it was to be consistently good from World Cup.

What inspired me to do this was this article.

In it, Donovan defends his team's World Cup performance saying:
"People assume that there's linear progression from World Cup to World Cup," Donovan said. "It couldn't be further from the truth. France and Italy were in the final four years ago and neither of them got out of their group.

"The fact that we've now qualified for six in a row, and that we've gotten out of our group two out of the last three, I think is a fantastic achievement for our country."


So I decided to try to measure it. I didn't look at World Cup 1990 but, rather 1994. That was the year I personally started watching the World Cup and I really can't imagine that soccer existed before 1994.

Nonetheless, here's my system and I just let the math do the talking. Do comment if you're a soccer fan:
1. Not qualifying for a World Cup -0.5
2. Qualifying for a World Cup but not making it out of the first round +0.25
3. After this, each round you make it to is an added point: 2nd round: 1, Quarters: 2, Semis: 3, Runner-Up: 4, Champion: 5
There are also some stipulations:
4. Winning the 3rd place game is an extra 0.25
5. Winning all games in opening round and getting 9 points is an extra 0.25
6. Winning your group and being a top seed in the second round only to be upset in round 2 merits more credit than just losing in the 2nd round as a bottom seed so US in 2010, Spain and Switzerland in 2006, Mexico and Turkey in 2002 and Nigeria and Romania in 98 get 1.25 instead of 1
7. If your country is not in existence or was newly formed (i.e. anything east of the Iron Curtain in 1994) then you don't get a penalty for failing to qualify for a World Cup
8. Ireland doesn't get -.5 for missing 2010 because they were cheated out of a spot.

So here are the rankings (along with points earned in each of the last 5 Cups):
1. Brazil 18.5 (5 4 5.25 2.25 2)
2. Germany 14.75 (2 2 4 3.5 3.25)
3. Italy 12.75 (4 2 1 5 0.25)
4. Spain 11 (2 0.25 2.25 1.5 5)
5. Holland 9.75 (2 3 -.5 1 4.25)
6. France 9.25 (-.5 5.25 .25 4 .25)
7. Argentina 7.75 (1 2.25 0.25 2 2)
8. England 5.5 (-.5 1 2 2 1)
9. Mexico 5.25 (1 1 1.25 1 1)
10. US 4.75 (1 .25 2 .25 1.25)
South Korea 4.75 (.25 .25 3 .25 1)
12. Sweden 4.5 (3.25 -.5 1.25 1 -.5)
13. Paraguay 2.75 (-0.5 1 1 0.25 2)
14. Portugal 3.5 (-0.5 -0.5 .25 3.25 1)
15. Croatia 3.25 (X 3.25 .25 .25 -0.5)
16. Denmark 2.5 (-.5 2 1.25 -.5 .25)
17. Nigeria 2.25 (1 1.25 .25 -.5 .25)
Japan 2.25 (-.5 .25 1.25 .25 1)
19. Uruguay 1.75 (-.5 -.5 .25 -.5 3)
Bulgaria 1.75 (3 .25 -.5 -.5 -.5)
Romania 1.75 (2 1.25 -.5 -.5 -.5)
22. Ireland 1.5 (1 -.5 1 -.5 X)
Ghana 1.5 (-.5 -.5 -.5 1 2)
Switzerland 1.5 (1 -.5 -.5 1.25 0.25)
25. Saudi Arabia 1.25 (1 .25 .25 .25 -.5)
Turkey 1.25 (-.5 -.5 3.25 -.5 -.5)

Coming Up.............a post on the all-World Cup team.
(I've already written this one as well, but I need to write it up a little more typo-free and correctly punctuated)

Return from hiatus: World Cup Controversies and more

Hello, I'm back from hiatus.

I have a lot of material I will gradually put up.

This past month, I wrote approximately 12 articles for helium.

My best read is probably this one about the World Cup controversies:

The United States (where I come from) is currently full of a lot of irate part-time football fans who are upset at being denied a goal in the 85th minute of the Slovenia match by the referee. Goals do get disallowed quite often (see Holland vs Croatia, 98, Italy vs S. Korea 02) but in this case, the referee did not give an explanation and replays do not show much of a foul to begin with. It's speculated that the referee ignored the pleas of players on the field for an explanation because he did not speak English. With the immense pressure that the US holds, FIFA is currently doing a probe on that particular ref and in the meantime, he gets to be the most hated man in America's 24-hour news cycle, because he was unlucky enough to make a bad call against a country that has more people and more media clout than any other country in the World Cup this year.

The Yanks are also complaining of a yellow card being called on a U.S. player who wasn't able to get out of the way of hand ball in time, but it should be noted that Australia lost a man (to a red card) and a goal to Ghana because the same thing happened to him in the penalty area.

At the same time, Mexico got the short end of the stick when a goal was also disallowed on Carlos Vela for being offside and they had to take a tie to South Africa. Even worse, South Africa had to endure a red card to their goalie for making a fairly legitimate tackle dooming the host country to suffer a damning penalty kick with the the backup goalie rushed from the bench into the net without any warm-up in between. Luck has a habit of working both ways like that.
Even as I'm writing this, more news is surfacing that the Brazilian striker Lucio Fabiano admitted that he handballed the second goal in Brazil's 3-1 win over Ivory Coast.

The fact of the matter is that soccer's a sport that's difficult for referees to make the right calls and they mess up a lot. This has never been anything new and although there might be a legitimate reason to reform FIFA's policies with regard to refereeing to ensure more accuracy with calls, nothing will change in the present and the World Cup because that's the way football works.

At the very least, South Africans, Yanks, Mexicans and citizens of the Ivory Coast can take comfort in knowing that they're in the World Cup and don't have it as bad as Ireland. Ireland doesn't even have the opportunity to cheer for their own team at the World Cup. The do-or-die qualifying match which put France through to the World Cup and denied Ireland its spot was the result of a referee failing to call a handball on Thierry Henry as he scored a goal. FIFA said they wouldn't reverse that call even though they acknowledged it was wrong.

Article can be found here

Also:
Basketball Player Profiles on OJ Mayo, Gilbert Arenas, and Brandon Jennings.

NBA Draft and High School Players

And lastly, for examiner.com:
How an Oscar for Tom Cruise Could Have Changed it All

Many more posts coming soon