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Neilster -> RE: "The Perfect Game" (6/17/2010 8:42:27 AM)
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I can take or leave soccer/football. I often enjoy watching a high quality game, mostly if there is a decent amount of scoring, especially from range. However, I think there's a fundamental problem with this type of tournament in that football's scoring works much better over a long season. There, the odd game where one team totally dominates but fails to score and loses to a lucky goal or something is rarely disastrous. In a World Cup it often is. Additionally, the defences seem to be ever more organised and efficient and the formally free-wheeling teams such as those from Africa now have European coaches and disciplined players, hardened by exposure to European and South American football, and don't seem to have the same scoring flair of yesteryear.
So perhaps the inevitable new ball will encourage scoring? Well, in this respect the Jubulani ball appears to be a bit ordinary. Every World Cup there is a new ball with fewer panels because that makes them swing more, supposedly leading to more scoring (especially from range and curling free kicks) but this one just seems to be extremely difficult to control in the air. I can hardly remember a long range goal in this tournament so far but there have definitely been a stack of wayward crosses and balls sailing high over the crossbar. Now, for the games played at altitude, there will be lower aerodynamic forces on the ball, reducing dip and curl but that also makes it travel faster, which you think would help scoring from range. Apparently the teams with experience of the Jubulani are keeping it on the ground more but whatever is the case, not all teams have had equal time to practise with this ball for a variety of reasons and it certainly doesn't seem to be promoting scoring.
Anyway, I'm glad I didn't have many expectations for Australia in this tournament. The whole thing just didn't feel right from the start. This wasn't the case last time when we had to beat Uruguay to qualify and it was held in a civilised country (Deutschland). We had a tough group then but under an excellent coach played extremely well to progress to the second round where we only lost 1-0 (through a slightly dodgy last minute penalty) to eventual winner Italy.
This time the team is older, it's not all that good, I don't like our coach, our group is one of the toughest and in our first game we came up against a Germany who has been practising with the tournament ball for months. It was a perfect storm and we got smashed. It's not all over yet but it probably will be after the Ghana game.
The vuvuzelas are terrible and their mindless cacophony makes the games pretty hard to watch. FIFA can say they're part of South African football all they like. I'll just switch off. They also appear to be injurious to one's hearing if attending the games so I hope they get a massive class action to wake them up. Incidently, I can remember Australia playing a game of cricket in my home city Devonport in Tasmania back in the late 80s before all the merchandise was so tightly controlled. Some canny local entrepreneur sold vuvuzelas and just about every d!ckhead bogan (redneck) there bought one and tunelessly blared them all day [:@] [8|]
Cheers, Neilster
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