June 24 - 2008

Little over a day out from the semis and my quarterfinal buzz still hasn’t faded. Russia have stolen my heart, Germany and Spain have earned my respect, and Turkey have caused me to question the true nature of the cosmos. Honestly: Have you ever seen anything like their comeback against Croatia? I haven’t.

I know nothing of Turkey. I know nothing of Turks. And whereas I usually rely on ethnic stereotyping to explain success (”Those Germans - so efficient!”), in the Turk’s case I’ve got nothing.

Therefore, we might have to come up with some actual reasons why Turkey are able to continually fashion improbable victories from certain defeat. If you will:

• They know they are bad. As a result, they seem totally prepared to weather long stretches of the game in which the ball rarely leaves their own penalty area, let alone their own half. They don’t fray at the edges under the pounding, and they don’t turn on each other - they just take the abuse. Once the other team lets up, Turkey don’t even need time to regroup; they transition seamlessly from poundee to pounder.
• They hit the ball on target. From what I can gather, Turkish children split their time equally between prayer and finishing drills. I’d be surprised if there were another team at Euro 2008 with a higher proportion of shots on goal. When they get chances, they make good.
• They are fit. You can’t produce last minute heroics without legs under you. In every match, Turkey seem as lively in the final moments, if not livelier, than they do in the first moments of the match. In the Czech Republic game, the Turks literally looked like they could go another hour, while the Czechs were over it after 80 minutes.
• They are desperate. All but twelve of Turkey’s players are now injured, suspended, or both. The result is an “all hands on deck” mentality that places the survival of the team above all else. Just fielding a team is an exercise in courage.
• They pursue the ball. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
• They don’t quit. Painfully fucking obvious, I know, but Turkey really do believe that the game should be played to the final whistle. Watch the replays of the Croatian goal celebrations: those guys won, the game was over, and they knew it. Luka Modric was elated, collapsed to the ground, and started thinking about the semis where they would face a team they had already beaten. Slaven Bilic was ready to do some drugs and bang some metal groupies. Croatia was in the dressing room. Turkey? They were looking to get the ball forward. And score.
• Their coach, though needing to fasten a button or two, has his players ears. Scorer of two game-winners now, supersub Semih Senturk said of coach Fatih Terim, “Our coach treats every player like he is their father…When he comes to me he says ‘just play football, I know your talents’. He is the best coach I have ever worked with.” That level of respect can squeeze every last drop out of a performance.

That’s a start. And while I don’t have any stereotypes to fall back on, I do have wikipedia: it says that Turkey have been fighting with Greece for over 1000 years. Apparently the national hatred runs deep enough to cause Turks to, even today, youtube low production value hate-videos with atrocious spelling and Smurf-techno scores. Maybe it’s hatred for the Greeks that gives the Turks that extra push against their opponents. Regardless, it’s been a fun ride, but I’m betting the machine like, scat-porn loving Germans end this Turkish fairytale.

I can never tell the difference between Carlos Puyol and Jay Reatard. Was it Puyol who punched out the dumb Canadian kid at his punk rock show in Montreal, and Reatard who choked out teammate Vicente Rodriguez in a training ground scuffle? Or was it the other way around?

Consider this an open thread to celebrate the fact that Luca Toni will no longer be featured in this tournament…

June 18 - 2008

In 2006, France had a slow start to their World Cup. In-fighting and swollen egos had the team on their heels throughout the first round, and only sheer luck allowed them to pass into the second. Slowly, they started to gel before a fantastic victory over Spain cauterized whatever wounds remained, propelling them into the finals. After the narrowest of losses, France were deserving runners-up.

Today, in 2008, we can comfortably say France have become a steaming pile of shite au poivre.

Excluding a random stretch of ten minutes in their match with Holland, France didn’t once play well at the Euros. At best they looked disorganized - on average they looked frail, bereft of ideas, and technically inept. Come to think of it, they looked like the US National Team.

We could pick through all the issues of age and ego, but it seems to me the blame can be placed at the feet of just two men:

• Raymond Domenech, the French coach, confirmed what an entire nation always suspected - he is mentally off. Astrologist, amateur dramatist and tactical naif, Domenech added absolutely nothing to France’s approach in any of the matches. Not only was there no change in the French approach over the course of the tournament, but there has been none since 2006, a period which saw two losses to Scotland (I use Italics in the hope you will read the word as if you were choking on a Willie Sagnol fart). But that doesn’t even begin to mine the depths of Domenech’s idiocy. How did he respond to the exit from Euro 2008? He proposed to his girlfriend. Immediately after the game. In a live interview. I’m sure that will smooth things over with a disappointed nation.
• Zinedine Zidane, though, owns even greater responsibility for the French disaster. How? He retired. He took his endless bag of tricks, beguiling creativity, and superb technique, and went home. He left a gaping hole in the French midfield, and an even larger one in the French footballing consciousness. At every turn in possession, the French players looked like they were searching out Zizou for a pass. “Where’s that guy we normally give it to before he gives it back to one of us in a way better spot?” they seemed to say. It wasn’t just that they played as though they needed him, they played as if he were still on the field. But he wasn’t. And playing with an imaginary Zidane is considerably worse than playing without one at all.

And so France must start over from scratch as a footballing nation. They will fire Domenech in a matter of weeks and then, if they’re smart, they won’t begin searching for the next Zidane. There won’t be one, and France will need to come to terms with that if they are to win a major competition in the next decade.

June 17 - 2008

Italy hasn’t looked their best, and this video might offer a clue as to why: these guys are drowning in ass. If half naked chicks are charging across a training ground to get to these guys, just think how bad amazing the onslaught must be in hotel lobbies…or night clubs…or the Italian DMV. I’d say it’s “like shooting fish in a barrel,” but that doesn’t quite capture it. More like, “Fish that jump out of the barrel, self-fillet, and fry themselves up in a nice lemon-butter and caper sauce with fingerling potatoes.”

June 16 - 2007

Out of all the low moments in Czech history - including, but not limited to, the time Jaroslav Mitirovsky’s plow got stuck in a manure pit, or the day the National Laptop ran out of batteries - yesterday’s defeat must rank at the top.  Watching the match with Lukey was brutal: I’m no Czechophile, but I hate to seem them crushed under the wheels of a technically gifted Turkish side just the same.

Worse, it came on the heels of what proved to be a rough couple of days for the Czech man. His bankroll now stands at a still profitable $119.03, while his national pride clocks in at just under 10 Koruna.  Lukey’s picks are below the fold.

DEVASTATED!! After 75 minutes of pure ecstacy, sitting in the hallowed “Cock n’ Bull” in Santa Monica (with the editor in charge), my world came to a screeching halt. First goal - fine. Second goal - utter disappointment and shock. I would have, could have, never imagined watching the world’s best drop a standard cross - not only did he drop it but it just happened to fall to the feet of the Turkish douche. Wow - painful man, fucking painful. (more…)

In pulling off what was certainly one of the most stunning comebacks of all time, Turkey avoided defeat, avoided potential first time ever group round penalties, clinched their place in the quarterfinals, broke the hearts of Czechs around the world, and took the excitement level of this tournament into the stratosphere. Now every team left will think anything is possible. And it is! Today was international football at its finest - tense, dramatic, euphoric, cruel. All within the space of 90 minutes…

* Images pulled from this excellent slideshow.

As someone who has spent countless hours yelling at referees, from both the field and the couch, I am by no means an apologist for the men in black. That said, the amount of scrutiny and criticism referees have been facing recently is perhaps even more excessive than usual. Currently the Euro 2008 linesmen are being stretched on the rack by the fans and the media, with the likes of Tommy Smyth declaring the offside ruling on Luca Toni’s goal today to be a ‘terrible call’. ESPN then proceeded to show the Axis replay 9000 times in a row to drive the point home, while the commentators repeated their same remarks over and over each time, while Tommy continued to not be able to walk a yard even in the shoes of an AYSO linesman, while I resisted the urge to punch myself in the face repeatedly.

The fact is, that call was a very difficult one to make. The ball was played in from well outside the 18, the players in question were on the six, and the Romanian defender was sprinting away from goal, such that he was practically out to the penalty spot just a fraction of a second after the ball was sent in to Toni. Processing all the crisscrossing players, spread out over that much space and moving at game speed, then making the right call in an instant is hard. Why do you think they get it wrong so often? Given that we can see they were wrong 10 seconds after the call, when they show the instant replay, why not let the officials take a peek as well?

Even as I’m writing this I’m not a huge fan of the idea, as along with other potential issues it would interrupt the flow and pace of the game - ultimately, it just seems unnatural to have instant replay delays injected into football soccer matches. I guess the question is, do we want to get the right call every time, or does the discussion, conjecture, money loss/gain, whining, crying, arguing, fighting, drinking and so on that follows every bad call constitute an essential part of the game of football?

Or, perhaps simply listening to Rob Stone and Julie Foudy talk about any subject for more than 30 seconds is enough to drive one to the brink of Cassano-like insanity?

Don’t worry there’s more:

June 13 - 2008

Forgetting to set your DVR to record the Euro matches is like spending a lifetime with sight before suddenly going blind. I mean, if it were up to me, I’d rather be born blind, than go blind. Because, what would you be missing?

In other words, I spent the whole day looking forward to my evening soccer orgy, and now I’m watching Top Chef with my wife. I’m hoping the fat lesbian will serve Tom Colicchio a matzo-ball using a fast-pitch windup. Or maybe the guy with the shark-fin on his head will serve the hot hostess (arm-scar!) a Spanish-Fly infused ravioli. Come on, do something exciting.

Insofar as I awaited the promise of my recorded games only to have them disappear, I can totally identify with Ivica Vastic. The 38 year old scored the tying goal for Austria against Poland, a feat that was to earn him a lifetime supply of beer from a brewery in Vienna. And wouldn’t you know it? He’s not going to see a drop.

“We don’t need such type of motivation. We need three points against Poland, but we definitely need no beer belly,” said Alfred Ludwig, secretary general of the Austrian Football Association.

But his decision also seems to have economic reasons.

Ludwig said the association might lose the credibility it enjoyed with its sponsors if it accepted the offer. He was referring to the Stiegl brewery, which supports Austrian football and distributes the official Euro 2008 Carlsberg brand.

He hit the net, thinking, “Free beer, bitches, freeeeee beeeeeeeer!” Only to have the sweet juice ripped from his lips. No free beer, and now he has to pay for the worst beer in the world, Carlsberg. And maybe he’s not being subjected to Top Chef right now, but I guarantee he misses that free beer. More than that, he misses the promise of free beer.

Some links from folks responsible enough to watch the games, and beyond:

• Unprofessional Foul is liveblogging the matches, and doing it quite well. A sample: “And can he stop running after the ball and kicking it to his players for throw-ins? You know he tries to go out for drinks with the players and asks them questions after the game like, “What are we doing tonight guys?!?!” Sort of like Regina George’s mom in “Mean Girls.” Oh you guys, you keep me young!”
• Who Ate All The Pies finds that Paddy Power is offering a free Hummer (the kind that guzzles gas, not…you know) to the first Spanish goalscorer in tomorrow’s match with Sweden. The catch? They have to the Chiki-Chiki dance. I admit, the video is strangely captivating (”Uno…El Breakindance!”).
  
• “Oh, that’s gotta’ hurt.” Ya’ think?
• Though not Euro-related, Kickette’s ongoing coverage of the Wayne Rooney wedding is indispensable: “It’s basically a never-ending money-blazing extravaganza of nouveau riche chavtastic proportions. Alas, the weather was quite shite and it rained buckets. Damn the skies and their inability to be paid off.”

Enjoy the Group o’ Death matches.

June 12 - 2007

I like to poke fun at the Czech man, but the simple truth is this: the guys know how to make money on soccer…which he can then wire to Prague to perpetuate human trafficking schemes involving large breasted Czech women. Lukey is off to a roaring start, with a bankroll that has swelled to the tune of $140.68 - that’s an increase of 40.68%, math wizards.

And did I mention he’s making the pilgrimage out to LA this weekend? He is. Bet against my liver, please.

Ahhh yes, 6 more games, 4 more wins and so I believe my record stands at 8 WINS, 2 losses. Best thing about the last few days? Listening to Tommy Smith try to pronounce the Russian players names. I kept thinking, is this guy calling him a “jerkoff”, “u-off”, “shek-off”, “and-u-cough?” Dude, I’m convinced this guy is retarded (the glasses don’t help). (more…)

June 12 - 2008

The provenance of this video is unclear. These guys are definitely Italian, but one or more of them seems to have learned to yell at the TV from Englishmen. Is the video shot in Italy? England? New York? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure a forensic lamp specialist could figure it out - that thing is a masterpiece.

At any rate, you can pretty much follow the highlights of the Italy-Holland match through the reactions of the viewing party: the rule-bending goal, the Italian chances followed by devastating Dutch counterattacks, and the near Italian misses. And wait, is that Frank Lampard sandwiched on the couch?