Let me guess....you are one of those people who says hitting the post is "unlucky". I call it a miss. I call it not being able to finish. I call it not being good enough at the highest level. It is also the fact that they were playing an extremely organized, physical defense. Barcelona has no aerial or ranged threat. They assumed they could tiki-taka it in. They vastly underestimated how effective an organized defense is at stopping that. Most likely due to playing horrendous defenses game after game in the Spanish league. It sounds like you are making the argument that we should all play like Spain and lose with honor. You use the tactics to beat the team you are playing. Chelsea beat Barcelona with solid defense and a great target man. They finished their chances and won it all. Italy did the same to Spain and always do it well against Spain. Spain/Barcelona does not play well against Italy. Italy is famous for great defense, great goalies and great target men. AC Milan did the same and almost took out Barcelona the same way. Ibrahimovic could not finish in either of those games. No matter what style you play there is always an effective counter. That is why I love this game so much. There is no I-Win button, as much as people try to make Barcelona the model for the I-Win. This game was a very interesting view of the 2 opposing ends of the spectrum. It was entertaining. I do believe America is more on the Italy side of things now with Klinns trying to pull us to the Spain side. I think you need to be flexible and balanced. You adjust tactics to the teams you are playing.
I learned that Germany can still beat a strong team while playing a man down for the entire match (yes, looking at you, Prinz Poldi, you useless Drecksack).
He was conspicuously absent on offense, but he put in his shift defensively which is again odd for him. If he had not I suspect Jogi would have pulled him instead of Mueller, Ozil, or Golmez.
There was an old NFL line : What's the worst thing you can say about a wide receiver? That he is an effective blocker. Podolski is an (alleged) striker, who can't dribble, can't cross, can't pass except backwards and can't (as of recently) even shoot. But he hustles his arschloch off. Whopee.
You forgot to mention he is notoriously the dumbest man to ever wear the mannschaft kit and this puts him in ahead of some legendary Lothar company. But to be fair, he shows up during big matches. Well, he used to. Let's find out.
I'm surprised Reus hasn't made the pitch. I thought he was the best player in the Bundesliga this season. He put a team on his back and carried them to the Champions League. Podolski put his team on his back and dragged them down to relegation. But this isn't typical for him. He's a good dribbler, decent passer, and really good shooter. I think he's just in a funk, especially after getting relegated. I'm not quite sure why he's first choice right now with all the alternatives on the bench.
Reus was voted Player of the Year in the Bundesliga by his peers. And, no, Podolski can't dribble. He used to have a great shot but he is rapidly becoming a soccer version of Dave Kingman or Rob Deer.
I rather think of him as a German soccer Confucius. "Soccer is like chess, but without dice." "That's soccer, sometimes the better team wins." There's some deep insight.
The simplest answer is there is no need to put Reus in. Wait for the break-out rounds, and the germans will as usual go into a different gear. Jogi knows he doesnt have to get out of second gear so far. People ask me who is going to win and I answer the same way every time: Only the Spanish or the Italians have a chance, slight chance of beating the Mannschaft. Here is what I find most interesting. If you asked any german, would you start Robben, Wesley, RVP, and even Afellay over their German counterparts, how many would choose the German player? Robben gets the call over Mueller, RVP over Golmez (I mean in a real unreal world), Wesley over Ozil, Afellay over Puggdolski.RVP had two chances, closed one, Golmez had two chances and finished both. Which leaves Schweinsteiger (pig climber...loose translation) and Sammy K, over Van Pummel and DeJong. And that is pretty much the difference. The two germans dominated the midfield.
It was more of the inclusion of Navas, who provided much more width, than Torres. But Torres did create more vertical depth to the attack. One thing to understand about Del Bosque, tactics are not his strong attributes. He is great at man management, tactics, not so much (Cesc said they had not tried the no striker formation at all in the practices and was only informed about it right before the game itself).
The wide players for the Dutch did not defend well at times pulling De Jong and Van Bommel wide which left Schweinsteiger unbelievably open in the center of the pitch just outside the 18. Wow. Not saying DeJong and Van Bommel played well, but there were other dynamics going on that allowed Khediera(sp) and Bastian to rule the middle. I think German supporters like the players that they believe mesh together the best with fighting spirit. So, not sure the question is as easily answered as Robben over Mueller, etc. Seems easy enough but for me, Robben can sometimes be a disruption to a team as a help. RVP tends to drop deep while Gomez is your prototypical in the box striker. Which do you want? Sneider is great but can be tempermental while Oezil is a player with tremendous vision and has been meshing well. The Dutch at times yesterday looked so uninspired, listless and unsure of where to move to at times that it was shocking. At least to me.
just thought it was an interesting discussion. And that space opening up for Schweiny was orchestrated as Ozil and winger pulled the extra man wide...they didnt do it often, but when they did, they made it count. Two passes from Schwein-Golmez, two assists for goals.
Spain is playing a kinda-sorta 4-3-3 the way JK wants to. He has 3 CM's in there, two what I can say are natural 'spanish' DM's in Xavi Alonso and Busquets and Xavi. He is no clear wing player, but he is slotted as a DM - right. Alba is providing the width as LB, the rest are camped out in the midfield having their way. However, if Ireland is to have any luck, they need to pin back those fullbacks and hope for the early cross.
Here's what I took away from the Croat-Italy and Spain-Ireland game, we seem to look more like Ireland than Croatia in terms of playing style the last few years. Ireland seem to be mentally defeated early, which I think the USMNT doesn't do very often. I figure we should/could look like a confident Croatian team in terms of playing style at this point (after 20 yrs of developing), but we don't consistently. It was like they had 5 fast McBrides out there winning all the headers at midfield, with good passing and vision. I realize how much we lack solid off the ball movement.
I was thinking the same thing as I was watching the latter part of the game.We play most like the Ireland's of the world.
Spain played the same 4-2-3-1 variant they played in WC2010 with Xavi Alonso and Busquets as dual DM with Xavi as a CAM in front of them.
You're all over the place here. The post I responded to said Chelsea "figured it out," and Barcelona and Spain are "easy to defend." You want to agree with that? Nobody ever thought of bunkering against by far the dominant club and country of the last 4 years? Or maybe we want to give Bob Bradley credit for Chelsea's CL. Sure, other clubs now know exactly what to do. Simply have Barcelona miss most of their chances, and make sure Messi misses his PK. Good luck with that formula.
You are making the assumption that they missed their chances because they had an off day. You don't think a dominant and physical defense had anything to do with those misses? When you make the opportunities hard and frustrate a team, they miss chances. But when you have only a few opportunities and those opportunities are incredibly challenging, your chance of scoring goes down fast. Yeah Chelsea did figure it out and I never said Barcelona was easy to defend. They are always incredibly challenging to defend against but it can be done. It is always helpful to have goalkeeping greats as well (Czeck and Buffon). Lets get back on topic shall we and please no topic titled: What we can learn from Spain vs Ireland!
That's why I 'kinda-sorta' said we want to play this. With Edu and Bradley tripping over each other, we had those 6's in there, but Jones was clearly told to get wide. Xavi, at least according to ESPN was slotted as a right mid and unfortunately I had to turn the match off after 15minutes or so, so didnt watch how he actually played. Did Silva go wide on the right to give them the width and passing lanes or was it all fullback overlapping?
The thing is all the teams you mention are trying to move in the opposite direction of what you say they've figured out. Italy and Chelsea are trying to become more like Spain and Barcelona, and rightly so. How do you not get influenced by far and away the most successful teams of the last 5 years. If Guardiola's philosophy has been figured out, why does every team on the planet want him to replace their current manager, including Chelsea? Notice that they can't get the players who are supposedly so impossible to duplicate. They want the philosophy implemented with their own players. This old hardcore Brit attitude about the defenses in Spain and the one dimensionality of possession are just going to suck us into the same retro soccer as the English national team.
I think we could learn a lot more from the way Netherlands have played to far. 4-2-3-1. They had 2 defensive mids in and a shaky defense. While we possess no where near the offensive arsenal they have, they suffered 2 embarrassing defeats because of a shaky defense. Even 2 d-mids could not plug those holes up. They lacked the speed in the link up play and did not get to many decent counters. On a side note, they also have a young, up and coming left back with pace who still has to work on his defense a bit. What I would not give to have an Alex Song on our UMNT. The #6 with great balls skills and vision who is a beast in the middle.
They also lacked any resemblance of team chemistry. The one thing we have up on them, cause we're not loaded up on hotheaded egotistical superstars. Yea, we have to solidify our backline, but I think the key is having our midfielders defend with more confidence. Jones has it, but he's kind of wreckless. Often times I think our midfield gives too much respect to other ppl's ability to dribble around them. Croatia smothered Italy in the midfield, and you started to see Italy's passes look Concacaf.
The defenses in Spain are bad. Their league's defenses are horrendous. Just look at the goal differential in the league table last year. It isn't just Barcelon/Real Madrid scoring all those goals. The Chelsea manager tried all last season to change the way they played to be like Spain. Their season was a disaster. They resorted back to the "old hardcore Brit attitude" and won the Champion's League. It has a place in the modern game. Abramovich has wanted to buy a Championship for years. The ironic thing is it completely back fired and doing what made Chelsea a world power for years won him his cherished Championship. I am not a hardcore proponent of one way or the other. But I grow very wearisome of this belief that Barcelona is the only style to play. The Barcelona fans after their defeat were very critical of their own one dimensional play and knew they needed an aerial threat or ranged threat. The problem you run into is a good target man usually can't do the short quick passes well. So you have to sacrifice your style a bit to get that which moves you away from the pure tiki-taka. What are big, tall, strong soccer players supposed to do? The Ibrahimovic/Carrol/Drogba's of the world have a place. That place is with Italian teams or old school Brit teams. Klinnsman does want us to be more like Spain and I think that is a good thing. But sometimes you just have to have a Brian McBride rising a foot over the smaller CONCACAF players and slamming it in.
To many chef's in the kitchen. Sad because they have so much talent. Who knows....they might get lucky and still go through.