Ted Hughes wrote:Lev Bronstein wrote:It's not been that bad. It's suffered from a couple of things. First, the "big names" haven't performed, either because of injury or lack of form. Secondly, most, if not all, of the better teams have shown feet of clay when under pressure. Generally though, it's been a WC for teamwork over individual brilliance - which I don't mind, not being a celebrity groupie.
Quite why Ted says that the football has been poor and also says the WC would have been better if England would have progressed is beyond me. The England performance was probably amongst the worst of any side in South Africa. Sad, but true.
Not mentioned anything about England mate. Their performance was the worst I've ever seen from an England team considering the players available. That squad should have reached the semi's imo but were lucky not to finish bottom of their group. Disgusting.
Irrespective of that, it was the worst World Cup I've ever seen ending with an apt final.
Ooops, getting you mixed up with someone else.
The first WC I remember was 1966, England win, N Korea v Portugal and all that. Yet Pele and Brazil were kicked out of the competition in the group stages in such a way that made the Dutch of 2010 like, er, well the Dutch of 1974. As for Argentina that year don't get me started.
I always say that I enjoyed the 1970 WC the best. Brazil were awesome, football as it should be played ... etc. Yet, the Italy v Uruguay game was one of the most tedious ever.
And so on.
When I take the rose tinted specs off all the WCs I remember had their dark side and all had their fair share of tedium.
Now, I will agree that we haven't had outstanding stars and the scintillating football that takes your breath away. But I would argue that not many WCs are like that anyway. As for the final - 2006 was decided on pens, 2002 was OK, 1998 Ronaldo's no show (strange game), 1994 worse than last night, 1990 even worse. Basically, we're going back to the 80s before we get final games that were remotely fitting to the occasion.
I'll go along with the criticism of the ball. Especially in the early stages, few teams seemed capable of putting in a decent cross and shots from distance went all over the place. Still, some players managed to adapt.
Tactics and organisation dominated. Well yes - it's called teamwork. One of the great things about football is how a group of players can be greater than the sum of its parts. A well organised, thinking team can beat their so called superiors finding weak points that might have gone previously unnoticed.
One of the problems of the modern game is how familiar we are with most of the players. If you have access to Sky and ESPN you can see games from all round the world. The best who play in the Champions League seem to meet each other year in year out. There are few surprises any more and that reduces the spectacle. But that's a general fault with football today and can't be laid solely at the door of this WC.
My greatest joy of the past few weeks has to be the performance of the pundits. Jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon as wheels dropped off each in turn. One "expert" opinion after another collapsing in the face of reality and then coming fresh faced with a new "expert" opinion with no recognition that they were wrong last time. Such fun. My standout memory is Andy Townsend, on the lead up to England v Germany "hardly any of these German players would get a place in a Premiership team". Punditry at its best, parochial, lazy, and made to look plain stupid by events on the pitch. Worth the licence fee on its own.
