What August means...an ode to football

The start of a new European club season always brings about a sense of renewal and excitement that is rarely rivialed in world sport. Fans forget the bickering over match fixing allegations, the wild and ridiculous transfer rumors, the long some time painful to watch overseas tours and just get down to watching their club for the next 9 months. The glitter than comes with watching the big new signing at your club shine on their debut, or finally seeing your club make the top flight is something that has always intrigued me. It's one of the few times that everyone has the small, if even slightly out to lunch hope that this is truly "Our year".

For the football junkies like myself this time of year means synchronizing watches and re-learning the different world time zones. It means no more sleeping in on the weekends, no quiet Saturday and Sundays, and no more "hey what you doing" calls during normal game time (Sorry ladies).  The weekends in August bring us the delights of French football, the pace and power from England, the beauty of the Spanish game and the tactical brilliant of Italy and Germany.At times it means that a football supporter has to make difficult decisions like which game to leave behind, which games to put your faith in and how much Arabic you know so you can watch your favorite match online if you can't get it on T.V where you are.

From a North American perspective, August is football dream land. Not only are the European Leagues getting started, but MLS is going into the playoff stretch drive. All the games in April and May no one though important, now become huge as team scrap for every last point to get themselves a shot at a league championship. At any given time one can watch football on a Saturday from 7:30 am -10 pm at night. And that does not include if you want to watch a west coast game which could be done at 1am the next morning!

To Man U, Arsenal and hell even Man City too. Lazio, Parma, Roma and Inter. From Wolfsburg to Bayern, PSG to Barca, from the 85,000 at the Santiago Bernabeu to the 2,500 in Frisco, Texas who watch FC Dallas. Enjoy, revel the best football months are back! and not a moment too soon.

Cheers,
Mike

A True upset.... with a possibility of more

"I take full responsibility; "If the squad went out with fear in their legs and hearts it means the coach didn't prepare the match well tactically or psychologically."- Italy manager Marcello Lippi after being knocked out of World Cup 2010.

Today we saw the biggest team of this year's world cup bow out of the tournament as the reigning, defending world champions Italy were defeated 3-2 by Slovakia. The result left Italy with the dubious record of not having won a single game in a world cup for the first time in its history. Although the ending of the game was very exciting from a neutral point of view, it also exposed a lot of when went wrong for the Azzuri in the group stages. Coach Marcello Lippi picked a veteran team for this tournament excluding younger starts like Giuseppe Rossi and Mario Balotelli. Also Lippi was leaning on injured midfielder Andrea Pirlo to create the majority of the offensive chances for Italy. With Pirlo out for the first two games against Paraguay and New Zealand the Italian attack looked pedestrian at times, lacking in any real creativity. It also did help that creative players like Fabio Quagliarella and Antonio Di Natale only saw limited action in the tournament.

However what might be more shocking was the defensive display from the team. The Italian back four when put under serious strain buckled much easier than one would expect from the Azzuri. Although much of the focus for this defensive failure has been placed on aging captain and 2006 world player of the year Fabio Cannavaro, the entire squad as a whole seemed to lack the essential discipline required. An example would be a third Slovak goal in which the team as a whole fell asleep on the throw in allowing the Slovak player to run onto the ball untouched to flick it over a diving Federico Marchetti.

The combination of the two plus the poor team selection and tactics of Lippi has lead to this disaster for the Italians, and looking forward things may get a bit worse before getting better for the Azzuri. The majority of this squad will retire from international competition in the next four years, many will retire this summer leaving a void in talent on the national side. The above mentioned Mario Balotelli is a potential world star for Italy if he can get his head screwed in straight and actually chooses to play for Italy at the senior level (Balotelli was born in Ghana and may still play for them). Aside from Balotelli there is a sense that Italy is lacking in young talent to take over on the senior national team. This is not exactly true, however they will need time to become comfortable with the jump to world cup level football. Regardless Italy will have little time to feel sorry for itself as European Championship qualifying begins in August, we'll see if new manager Cesare Prandelli can bring in some new blood to help ease the already deep wound of World Cup 2010.

Joe Ross of thescore.com has a great breakdown of what happened and why, Ross is one of the better Canadian football bloggers out there right now. Click here to see his take on things.

On a side note I might have to be writing the same type of upset analysis for Spain tomorrow if they don't win against Chile. if this were to be the case Spain would become one of the biggest upset squads in World Cup history given its high odds of winning the entire tournament. 2010 South Africa is proving to be one of the most intriguing tournaments in years.

Cheers,
Mike