Why A European Side Is Going To Win It This Year Or We'll Delete This Post

"Awww shit. Magic Spongers got it right again."

A lot is made about how European teams cannot win a World Cup on Latin American soil. Probably because they never have. So far, so fair enough. But as we’ve never let the problematic presence of ‘facts’ get in the way of our writing, we’re going to stick our necks out and say that this is the year it all changes and a European side will do just that. And this is a win-win situation for us because, if a European side does win it, we’ll just delete this very sentence, say "we told you so" and we’ll be the toast of the internet. And if a European side doesn’t win it, we just delete this entire piece. Or we keep it in and we look ‘meta’. There are plenty of ways to skin an onion.

Another Fine Messi

Overratedness and its bedfellow hype are everywhere in football. Their prevalence makes finding their antonym very satisfying. Whisper it, but Lionel Messi might just be a tad underrated. Bear with me.

We are bombarded by images, from billboards and Sky Sports to You Tube via Facebook and back. It is this infiltration of the everyday by the image, maximised by the omnipotent presence of the internet, that takes away the most romantic notion of mystery. What was once mystery then takes the form of myth. Cardiff City fans telling you Robin Friday was the best player they ever saw (and you never saw). The delicious and possibly apocryphal anecdote from Roker Park, May 9 1973, centring on Stan Bowles being egged on by his teammates to knock the FA Cup off a trestle table by the side of the pitch, triggering chaos on Wearside. Alfredo Di Stefano amusing his Real Madrid teammates by juggling a bar of soap in the changing room.

Lazy Bloggers Watch Football, Compile List

A German man watches football, yesterday

With the World Cup in full swing, there’s barely time to take a break from watching all the games to do any writing about them. So we haven’t bothered. Instead, we’ve argued a bit and made a list about some stuff that we’ve noticed in a so-far quite listless World Cup.

1. Slow starts should be expected

‘Right lads, let’s go out all guns blazing in our first group game’, is advice pouring from the mouths of precisely no international managers this week. The first few days of the tournament has widely been earmarked as fairly boring, but opening fixtures – tight, won by the odd goal mainly – were always going to seem tedious. This has happened for two reasons. The first of these is that no one wants to find themselves three points adrift of the top of a group with only two games – against teams that are all increasingly in with a shout – to catch up. That is uncomfortable.

The second is that not all 32 teams in the World Cup are that good. There’s absolutely no point expecting the World Cup to be even better in quality than the Champions League just because it is a step up to international rather than club sides. Most of the best players in the world are at the tournament, sure. But so are some of the more average. And when mostly average players play against each other, you get mostly average matches.

This foundation results in a sort of horrible football purgatory where, so paralysed are mediocre teams by the fear of losing to other mediocre teams, they totally fail to remember to try and win and we never find out if they were good enough to do so or not. Fear not though. This catatonic approach will give way to the whirling dervishes of desperation after round one. Hopefully.

2. Germany are better without professional fouler but highly-regarded international footballer Michael Ballack

We sort of knew this anyway, given that without Ballack, Chelsea actually manage to move forwards on something resembling a counter-attack and not a steamroller going up an icy hill. But Germany were still good in their opener. Very good. The emergence of Mesut Özil in Ballack’s place suggested he could have a significant influence on their midfield and Löw must have been delighted that all the strikers he could reasonably have expected to score (i.e. not Mario Gomez) duly delivered. That said, Germany were assisted by the least aggressive Australian performance since Harold Bishop in Neighbours.

It could be a good World Cup for German football in general as the Bundesliga looks to have provided some of the tournament’s potential stars. What with Cacau’s goalscoring appearance as a substitute, Özil’s star turn and Eljero Elia’s decent cameo for the Dutch, the German top flight’s status as one Europe’s most powerful leagues is enhanced further. Plus, just imagine how good Franck Ribery is going to have to be if the French are going to go anywhere.

3. Lionel Messi will be class whenever and wherever he plays

Messi is the only one so far who has really looked able to manipulate the ball as he would so desire (more on that below). Any worries that he might be a bit of a flop under the stewardship of Diego Maradona looked a bit wayward as he caused the Nigerians all sorts of problems. His finishing was not quite as lethal as we have come to expect, but he seemed to have got the hang of at least making shots look like they were going in, rather than ballooning them over the bar like most.

Argentina, though, were not perfect. Deploying Gutierrez at right back made them look extremely vulnerable and his relative lack of defensive nous had them on the back foot a few times, most notably when he faced the Nigerian substitute Peter Odemwingie. Veron was relatively effortless, but it was a shame Mikel wasn’t fit for Nigeria. You can’t help but feel Veron’s tournament will depend on how efficiently he can be protected by Javier Mascherano – I can’t see him enjoying being harried like the Italians were by Paraguay on Monday night. Up front, profligacy reigned supreme as none of Argentina’s cooks spared a single solitary thought for the broth.

4. There is nothing wrong with the ball

I’ve heard that this ball is, in some hi-tech capacity, the roundest ever. Why, then, is it expected to dip and swerve and behave like an aggravated parrot? Surely a perfect sphere should equal truer and more predictable flight? I have seen no particularly late dips or awkward swerves; in fact if there really is a problem with the ball it is that it seems very hard and very light. It bounces very high and almost everyone is over-hitting free kicks, corners, crosses, shots and so on. Bad ball? No. Careless players.

The only problems goalkeepers are having are those age-old ones. Flapping at corners and crosses (Justo Villar, Paraguay), ludicrous own goals (Simon Poulsen and Daniel Agger, Denmark) or just not being very good at football (Faouzi Chaouchi, Algeria; Rob Green, England). We can’t really analyse the ball until the first 30-yarder screams in having horribly wrongfooted the ‘keeper. If we feel it is necessary to analyse a FOOTBALL at all.

There would be more of course, but Ivory Coast-Portugal is just about to start. And this one should be good.

Foot And Mouth

Sometimes, in certain situations, with certain people, you just have to sit back, take your hat off and admire. I caught myself doing exactly that today when I read Jose Mourinho’s comments in the build up to tonight’s Champions League clash at the Nou Camp. He’s at it again. Every word that passes this man’s lips are studied. Here’s a snippet from the professional flame fanner: "It is not a dream for Barca, it is obsession. The obsession is reaching the final in Madrid. It's one thing to follow a dream, it's another to have an obsession. For Barca it is an obsession.” Mourinho knows full well that he throwing cats among pigeons with such a comment. He has made a career out of it. That and being a bloody good manager. And then he reaches for another bag of cats: "The only thing I told my players was that I wanted them to support the work of the referee and if the Barcelona players want to do the same, it will be easy for the referee." Classic Jose. A clear dig at the perceived theatrics of the Barca players designed not only to infuriate them but to sow the slightest seed of doubt in the referee’s mind. And off he goes, pigeons everywhere, knowing his work is done.

Meanwhile, one man uncharacteristically not in English headlines this week has been the maestro, Lionel Messi. Another man whose unique skills deserve to be admired. Whereas Mourinho seeks to dominate proceedings off the pitch, it is the Argentine whom, along with Xavi, is the one most likely to carve open even the most obstinate Inter defence. They will be marked men of course, and in the form of Lucio, Walter Samuel and Esteban Cambiasso, their task may well prove thankless once more. But remembering the build up to the Arsenal game, the one in which Messi left all and sundry with jaws dropped down to their feet, the mercurial one was hardly mentioned. Four goals later and he was being revered as a talent to compare with Maradona. Again, I speak in English terms here. In Spain, they already knew the boy’s worth. But it is a very English phenomenon to only entertain thoughts of a player’s greatness if they pull a big performance out against Premier League opposition.

Back to tonight, and in essence, we see a tête-à-tête between Mourinho and Messi to determine who is to be the most revered come the season’s end. It is Mourinho’s great skill that he consistently manages to be more talked about than his players. This is a product of his vanity but at the same time a product of his canniness to appreciate that with the heat on him, his charges can bask in relative obscurity and therefore operate in a less tense atmosphere. If he wins the European Cup this year with Inter, Mourinho will join such illustrious company as Sir Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough and Arrigo Sacchi, to have won it twice.

Messi, on the other hand, has the perfect platform to prove his greatness credentials against Inter. At 3-1 down, against a side so well-drilled, he will have his work cut out. He will have to create space against a side that doesn’t give any. He will be kicked. His shirt will be pulled. But a Messi-inspired Barca win, taking them back the final, would go a long way to silencing any detractors there may be out there to his claims to greatness. Of course, there are plenty of others who could have a say in tonight’s events, but you just get the feeling that the battle will come down to a straight fight between two of the season’s irresistible forces: one man’s mouth against another’s twinkling feet. Adam Bushby