XI. World Cup Factoids and a Few Observations
The Highbury Pub was filling up five hours before the US vs. England kicked off. ESPN Milwaukee was broadcasting the Milwaukee Wave's Soccer Saturday radio program from the stage in the bar and 100 vuvuzelas were ready to irritate.
Today we complete the first set of 2010 World Cup group play games. I’ve watched more than 90% of all the minutes – and yet managed to miss five goals live (Holland, Argentina, Slovakia, Brazil’s second and North Korea’s). It’s been an educational experience. I’ve learned many interesting factoids (many acquired by virtue of this being the first Twitter World Cup) and made a few observations as well.
I. Denmark’s starting lineup on Monday had just as many Dutch League players as the Netherland’s lineup (three).
II. Nigeria is the only country in this World Cup without any domestic league players on its roster. On the other hand, Germany, Italy and England’s rosters are made up completely of domestic league players.
III. Brothers in the Cup: The Boateng brothers on Ghana and Germany will face each other in the group stage. Kevin-Prince and his half-brother Jérôme are in the same group and will be on opposing sides June 23rd in Group D’s final match. It’s a fascinating story. After calling up forward Jerry Palacios on Tuesday to replace injured Julio Cesar de Leon, Honduras becomes the first World Cup team ever to roster three brothers. Jerry’s brothers Wilson and Johnny are also on the team.
IV. I thought I heard on the telecast that Ghana’s John Mensah was 19 years old and already had 63 caps. Turns out he’s 27. If he were 19, it would’ve made him the most capped player at that age this side of Mia Hamm…instead it means this is a meaningless factoid…though he does have a half-brother, Ekow Benson who has played for the Ghana National Team. Makes me wonder, which brothers have played for the USMNT…
V. Both goalkeepers in last Sunday’s Serbia vs. Ghana match, Richard Kingson and Vladimir Stojkovic played for Wigan last season. Neither impressed last season, so they may both soon be former Wigan keepers.
VI. The four youngest teams at this World Cup are: Ghana (24.1) followed by North Korea (24.8), Germany (25.0) and Cameroon (25.2). Ghana gets its youth by including Ghana’s World Cup roster includes eight members of its 2009 U-20 World Championship squad. Surprisingly to me, the oldest is not Italy, but the Italians are in the top four: Italy (28.2), Australia (28.4), Brazil (28.6) and England (28.7). The youngest team at each of last three World Cups has been African– 1998 Cameroon, 2002 Nigeria and 2006 was also Ghana.
VII. Impressive how many folks noted the resemblance between German midfielder Mesut Ozil and apparently not forgotten actor Peter Lorre.
Mesut Ozil and Peter Lorre
VIII. 17 of 23 players on Algeria’s roster are from France.
MatchPricks.com blogger and France supporter Colin Deval looks longingly at a trophy he believes the French have no chance of winning again as long as Raymond Domenech is coach.
IX. Three former MetroStars coaches are head coaches in this World Cup: Bob Bradley (USA), Carlos Alberto Pareira (South Africa) and Carlos Queiroz (Portugal). Perhaps Eddie Firmani can take over Italy in the knockout round.
X. More countries (204) competed to be in the 2010 FIFA World Cup than are in the United Nations (192).
XI. Brazil’s starting lineup Tuesday was numbered 1-11.
And some observations:
* Be careful what you wish for: While many were surprised that Algerian goalkeeper Faouzi Chaouchi had his suspension for head-butting a referee commuted for the World Cup, Slovenia wasn’t complaining after it’s opening victory was decided by Chaouchi’s alligator arms.
* Slovenian defensive midfielder Alexander Radosavljevic shares the same little used last named of former US National Team star and current Toronto FC Head Coach Preki. For a moment I considered the chances of Preki and Alex being related, but then I figured “Radosavljevic” is probably to Eastern European soccer what “Washington” is to the NBA.
* Super slo-mo replays really bring out the emotions of players, coaches and fans, but the most startling effect of the high tech replays for me is the clarity of fouls. Either this is the most dangerous World Cup in memory or the slo-mo replays are translating the risk and violence of the sport more than traditional camera work does.
* Soon after I made my surprising World Cup bracket picks public last week I felt a twinge of regret…I wished that I had selected Cameroon and Serbia to go through to the second round instead of Denmark and Ghana. But the Danes stoic performance against the Dutch and Ghana’s win over Serbia now have me thinking I was right the first time.
* I had another crazy idea to improve interest in this little tournament: In the future, FIFA should qualify 31 teams the same way it currently does and then create a 32nd team made up of the best players left off of other teams and countries failing to qualify. This would be an incredibly talented team with very little time to train together. The team could be coached by one of the World Cup’s carousel coaches: Bora Milutinovic, Carlos Alberto Parreira or Guus Hiddink. This quadrennial’s 32nd team could include Pato, Ronaldinho, Adriano and Neymar from Brazil, Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden), Emmanuel Adebayor (Togo), Amr Zaki (Egypt), Petr Cech (Czech Republic), Eidur Gudjohnsen (Iceland), Javier Zanetti (Argentina), Antonia Valencia (Ecuador), Tomáš Rosický (Czech Republic), Karim Benzema (France), Karim Benzema (France)….and Brian Ching.
"Crime scene" outside the Highbury Pub in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
* Things that bothered me, rightly or wrongly, during the US/England match: An arrogant and bombastic (until the 4oth minute) England supporter standing in front of me, ignorant American fans, John Harkes, US not winning, assumption that US was outplayed, focus on Robert Green’s glaring goalkeeping gaffe.
* I too cried while listening to the National Anthem before my team’s 2010 World Cup debut. For me, it was for Bob and the Fire boys.
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John Mensah is definitely NOT 19 years old. He’s got to be at least 26 or 27.
Yeah…Looking Mensah up, I think someone on Twitter might have confused you on that one, Peter.
I must be the one person that isn’t turned off by Harkes. He does okay for an American soccer announcer. Though I wish that an Al Michaels or a Brent Musburger or even a Marv Albert could lend a voice to a soccer match. Until then I’ll settle for the Brits and Scots.
I’ll say this about John Harkes: I’d rather be forced to listen to him than Ally McCoist.
According to World Soccer, John Mensah’s birthdate is 29/11/82, making him 27 at present.
As for the Super Team made up of non-qualifiers and rejects, it’s a nice idea in theory. But who really benefits? And which federation would the place come from? Europe or South America? Unlikely. Asia, Africa or Central America where teams could really benefit from the interest stirred up by World Cup qualification. I personally think it would devalue the World Cup.
Ah HAH!! That explains it…hmmmm Freddy is REALLY 21 though, right?!? i’ll edit Mensah factoid. Does this mean i have to return my Mensa card?
some great facts there, John Motson’s twitter page is good for some random facts
The John Mensah thing…
There’s both a John Mensah, a 27 year old 64 caps, and a Jonathan Mensah, a 19 year old with just 5 gaps in Ghana’s squad.
Peter, another minor factoid / oddity is that 2010 Group B has 4 teams that all played at Foxboro in 1994: Nigeria, Argentina, Korea and Greece. Probably not noticeable to anyone that didn’t attend the Foxboro games.
Fwiw, John Harkes has actually improved a bit since someone evidently pointed out that he was saying “as well” about 50 times per game.
1871, Ah HAHHHH!!!!!!! THANK YOU! That makes me think i REALLY did hear that. on the espn telecast…anyone know who the commentators were for that game? Anyone else hear the same thing? Anyone bored enough to go back and listen to the broadcast to find out whether or not it was said to see if i was truly led astray?
Tony B, i absolutely agree. My wife and i used to play the JH “as well” drinking game when he co-hosted FSC’s weekly MLS highlight show.. Even though he was only on for about 20 minutes an hour, we were usually trashed by the half hour. It was literally 40+ every week. i tried playing it the other day during a WC telecast and i was sober as a judge at halftime by which time i switched to the “compliment the officials” drinking game to make things more interesting. Sincere kudos to Harkesy for improving this aspect of his commentating.
Thank you to Ted Prezelski who sent me this email responding to my query above re: any brothers ever playing for the USMNT:
Peter-
You asked in your column about brothers that played for the US Nats. I can only think of one pair: Otto and Rolf Decker. Rolf had four caps in the mid fifties. Otto had only one, despite his scoring two goals against England after coming off the bench in a match in 1953.
While you are poking around trying to find other brothers, here are some things to keep in mind. Clarkie and Ed Sousa, who played for the storied 1950 US squad, were not related. Although Chris and Sean Henderson both played on the Rapids, Sean was never capped by the national team. Same goes for Alexi and Greg Lalas.
Ted Prezelski
Soccer fans certainly grow a lot for last 15 years. Too bad the main tv channels don’t show the soccer matches. You have to have cable tv to watch the matches.
But I believe that Argentina will rise the cup of this year world cup football.
I like your idea of the 32nd team. I guess they could name their team ‘The Outcasts of WC 2010′. Before you came up with this, I was thinking that there should have been a competition with 1 team from each continent including Australia, plus one more team from the rest of the world (all the little islands that are not a part of a continent). They should change the rules somewhat by having more substitution – so that more people can actually participate, etc.
You have a splendid idea.
the MatchPricks.com blogger and France supporter Colin Deval looks longingly at a trophy he believes the French have no chance of winning again as long as Raymond Domenech is coach is good.