Sunday, June 11, 2006

Arjen Robben



Arjen Robben was incredible. The Serbia-Montenegro defense looked like turtles compared to this guy. He was all over the field. It seemed that nearly every time he touched the ball he created a chance on goal. The only piece he was lacking was a decent touch in a dead ball situation... but then, neither side had a free kick or corner kick on mark the whole game.

I cannot wait until the next game the Netherlands play. Netherlands-Ivory Coast. Don't miss it. It may be one of the fastest paced games in this round.

3 comments:

Flushy McBucketpants said...

too goddamn depressing... plus i'm trying to get a ton of work done so that i can take a long lunch and go watch brazil-croatia. there's not much to be said other than our attacking was pitiful and our ball control in the 2nd half was awful and just got worse the closer we go to the final wistle. we stunk so bad i could smell it all the way over here.

Flushy McBucketpants said...

Oh, hell yeah. There's no way Keller was going to stop that. Koller's goal was also more or less unstoppable, considering the marking and the fact that he was practically standing in the goal. There have been a lot of beautiful long range, basically unstoppable goals in this cup. Lahm, Fring, Rosicky, Kaka, Pirlo... very nearly Reyna too. Apparently a lot of keepers have been complaining about the teamgeist ball, and considering the bend on those shots, I can see why.

Flushy McBucketpants said...

You are correct. Rosicky's second goal wasn't really Keller's fault either, but it was something he could have stopped, if only he hadn't begun falling to his right as early as he did (though given Rosicky's trajectory, this also seemed to be the correct move to make). Rosicky's first goal, though, was unbeatable. Keller would have had to have been wildly out of position to stop that shot.

I think our offense was much worse than our defense. Onyewu took care of Koller for the first half with one exception. Rosicky's first goal probably would have been scored against any opponent and the third goal was really just bound to happen, given that we needed to commit men forward to get a goal for ourselves, leaving us wide open for a quick counter. That said, there were a number of chances that the Czechs had that didn't result in goals, which we should've snuffed out with better marking. Eddie Lewis should never have been playing left back in that game.

We do have some good midfielders, but they haven't been working particularly well as a unit. Our runs up the wings were rare. McBride does not have a good striking partner to work off of. No one was making any kind of runs or cuts up the middle looking for a through ball. Our offense was unimaginative and generally feeble. It's do or die against Italy. We need 3 points. God willing, we'll actually put a decent attack together.