World Cup 2010.7 ~ ESPN.com I Love You!

Two great matches today both of which I watched online via ESPN.com. The coverage over the Internet is wonderful, ESPN is to be commended for giving the world access to this sporting event in this way. I've loved every minute spent before my large, HD computer screen taking in these amazing games.

Slovakia v Italy was the first game of the day for me. Italy is the defending world champion and a team that was just past its prime. The question raised about the Italians was how important is their expertise? Today's match provided a definitive answer: It can make for some wonderfully coordinated and executed futbol, but in the face of youthful energy and exuberance it comes up short. It appears that young players are also smart.

And in this match, the Italian strategy of letting the younger Slovakians exert their energy throughout the first half as a way to tire their opponents proved short-sighted at best (and I'm giving them a lot a credit that this was at all on their minds). By the time the Italian team decided to enter the fray and display their expertise, it was just too late.

In the whole round robin of this tournament, Italy drew a tie against Paraguay--clearly a team on its ascendancy. Next they drew a tie against New Zealand (the picture is from that game when Winston Reid of New Zealand tackled Giampaolo Pazzini of Italy), a team that had no right to even be in South Africa (sorry, Kiwi's). Ranked 78th in the world by FIFA, and THEY kept the reigning world champions to a tie.... Italy's performance was pathetic at best.

So enter Slovakia -- the lesser half of the former Czechoslovakia. Twice Czechoslovakia made it to the finals: 1934 and 1962; never has either the Czech Republic or Slovakia made it as a separated national entity to the eliminations rounds. Can they move into the quarter finals? This has yet to be determined, but that are clearly the better team than Italy to represent their group against the Netherlands. Congratulations Slovakia, you play one hell of a game -- it was like an eager and talented son stomping out their arrogant father.

Japan had a similar match against Denmark in the evening. Their 3 to 1 trouncing of the Danes was largely won on a battle of penalty kicks. Yet they kept the Danish offense in check throughout the match. The Japanese victory places both hosts (Japan and South Korea) of the 2002 World Cup Tournament in play in the first round of elimination play.

Today really solidified in my mind how open and vulnerable the old establishment of the game is. In it's 18 Championships history a lot has changed in the world. Of those 18 victors 9 have gone to South America and 9 to Europe. The South American victories have been parcelled out to 3 nations: twice to Uruguay and Argentina and 5 times to Brazil. The European club is nearly as exclusive: 4 times to Italy, 3 times to "West" Germany, and once each to England and France.

In 18 competitions the runner up team in the finals have only been for a nation other than the 7 aforementioned on 7 occasions, and even these 7 matches only represent 4 different countries (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Sweden and the Netherlands) all of which are also from Europe. And no interloper has threatened the hegemony of the original orthodox 7 nations in the final match since 1978! That's 32 years of a very exclusive domination of world soccer.

So why do so many nations spend so much money and so much energy on trying to enter this club? I don't know, but today I saw two more teams compete at a level that could make them contenders, and that was amazing sport to me.