The New Republic

As far as drama goes, the England-Sweden game was highly entertaining—in the way a fight between tottering drunks might be entertaining. Much of it looked like a Premiership relegation battle, complete with bad defending, bad passing, unnecessary fouling, etc., all performed with great devotion and in despir. The previously dampened ambition of the English is now nearly fully restored, as it turned out, to everyone’s great surprise, that they could attack, score and even win, if they only tried. Suddenly golden-hued projections are brightening up the previously grim picture. READ MORE >>

I hereby have the pleasure of saying: I knew it! The two holding midfielders—one of whom, Van Bommel, is just lazy these days, on top of being mean—did not work. Schweinsteiger and Khedira and Özil tore them apart in the first half. Schweinsteiger was great, but he had so much time and space that it was hard not to have a great game. De Jong and Van Bommel were always caught in the middle, between the three German midfielders and their own defense. If they pressed high, the Germans would have space behind them, and Khedira had a few forward runs to see if they’d track him. READ MORE >>

My first intense soccer experience was watching the 1974 World Cup, when I fell in love with the Dutch team and then rooted for them after Yugoslavia was eliminated. Rensenbrink, the left wing, was my hero. My mother sewed two parallel lines on the back of an orange shirt, so that I could pretend to be Rob Rensenbrink. (Rensenbrink missed only two penalties in his entire career.) The other side of that process of loyalty acquisition was hating the West German team. READ MORE >>

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Is there a more overrated player in the world than Mario Balotelli? He was awful today and constantly a liability. Could it be that I’ve missed all or any of the games when he was impressive or, at least, good? God knows that I form many of my football judgments by imagining: “What if I were on that team or in that situation? What would I do?” If I ever found myself on the same team with Balotelli, I would strive to injure him in training. READ MORE >>

And so it is now proven that you cannot win with two idea-free thugs in the midfield. Van Persie, besides being unusually clumsy, was isolated, few passes coming his way--and, predicably, only from Sneijder. Even when van Marwijk took out De Yong and put in van der Vaart it didn't work, because the Tottenham midfielder had to play in a much deeper position. And van Huntelaar made van Persie perfectly useless--which van Marwijk ought to have known, as that was exactly what happened in a warm up game against Bulgaria, which they lost 2:1. READ MORE >>

It is hard to think of the two more cynical and destructive players than the Netherlands’ Van Bommel and De Jong, who acquired dubious eternal fame for the karate kick into the chest of Xabi Alonso. Apart from their brutality, they’ve played as two holding midfielders, which slowed down transition and isolated Van Persie. That is why Sneijder was their top scorer in the World Cup. Both of them are playing today, which is to say that we can expect the same ugliness as in the World Cup. It will be interesting to see how Germany will respond to the Dutch bullying. READ MORE >>

 As I watch Poland-Greece, which is pretty good so far, it is time to make predictions for Euro 2012, thereby setting myself up for the undermining of my soccer authority  bound to occur toward the end. So: Winner: Germany In the final: Spain-Germany Semifinals: Spain-Holland; Germany: France Top scorers: Benzema (France), Lewandowski (who just scored for Poland) READ MORE >>

This should be a game for the ages, if for no other reason than because neither Spain nor the Netherlands has ever won the World Cup. We are going to have a new Champion and the constellation of world soccer is going to change. While the Netherlands narrowly missed it twice in the seventies, losing to the hosts (West Germany 1974, Argentina 1978), Spain has never reached the heights of the WC finals before. READ MORE >>

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