World Cup: so what now?

We're in first and you're not. Uh, not "we" we, "they" we. You know, them.

Well, now that the first set of Group C matches is complete, we know ... well, very little. With Slovenia's 1-0 victory over Algeria, the US find themselves tied for second in Group C. Not a bad position to be in, but it could be better. (Ask Slovenia.)

What do we need to do?
End up with 5 points or more. Yes, you can get through with 4, but you can also fall short with 4, and we don't want that, do we? Get 5 points, and you're advancing. You might even win your group.

So that means we need a win and a draw in our last two matches. Two wins, of course, would be better: with 7 points, we're through automatically. (The most you can have and not advance is 6, and that would require a three-way tie and a bad tiebreaker. That hasn't happened since the World Cup went to eight groups and sixteen teams advancing in 1998.)

Everyone, beat these guys, or else.

Right. So we advance with 5?
Pretty much, unless a) everyone beats Algeria and b) everybody draws with everyone else. Then it comes down to goal differential, which is basically how badly we beat Algeria, and then after that, goals scored (which is why you root for low-scoring matches in your group).

But that probably won't happen, as we can expect England to beat Algeria and Slovenia to advance. So 5 gets us through.

And if we lose one?
Well, that makes it tough. If we lose to Slovenia, then they have 6 points and are through (because we could get no more than 4 and either Algeria or England would also be limited). If we beat Slovenia, then we enter the final day (when both matches are played simultaneously) with 4, England has 4, Slovenia has 3, and Algeria has 0.

Now it gets fun. We would only need a draw with Algeria (a draw between England and Slovenia puts England through with us, a win puts the winner through with us) ... but England would also need only a draw and could be playing accordingly. If Slovenia upset them and we lost to Algeria, it would be that tiebreaker thing again. In general, tiebreakers are bad, because it means you have to win by a certain number of goals to stay out of trouble, and you won't know for sure because it may change if the other match changes. (Yes, it worked for us in the 2009 Confederations Cup, but that took a lot of help.)

So who do we root for on Friday?
Besides someone who can help with grammar? (For whom do we root?) Root for the US and don't worry about England v Algeria ... rooting for a low score isn't bad, or a one-goal win for England (in case we do finish tied with them), but just let it happen. Again, if we win both matches, we advance.

Do we want this man testing Tim Howard? No.

To play the Germans?
Most likely, yes. England is still favored to win the group (check the updated stats on the right side of the page), so we'd likely face the winner of Group D if we advance, and if that's someone other than Germany, we'll all be shocked. (Also note that we are basically in a dead heat with Slovenia in terms of advancement probability. What does that mean? We need that win on Friday.)

What if we don't make it?
Then we spend the next four years hearing about how we suck in the World Cup because we don't care enough. The US has a couple of recent Cups where we fared pretty well and several where we pooped the bed. A top-16 side needs to advance to the knockout stage; nothing less should be acceptable.

So let's not talk about it. Beat Slovenia, move back into a tie for first, and put the tiebreakers to bed.

Quick thoughts from 0-4* World Cup debacle

*Yes, I know we drew 1-1, but watch the match again (if you dare) and tell me that 0-4 isn't a more likely result.

-- aaaaa cross cross cross the ball aaaaa cross the ball aaaaaa STOP ATTACKING IN ONE-SIXTH TO ONE-THIRD OF THE WIDTH OF THE PITCH! They let you use the WHOLE FIELD for a reason. Watch the English do it. Again. And again. And again.
-- A side known for counter-attacking should, perhaps, not be holding up the ball to allow an attack to build. ESPECIALLY NOT WHEN ALL THE ATTACKERS ARE NICELY CLUSTERED IN ONE AREA.
-- If you are on the back line or are a defensive midfielder, Tim Howard says to you "$(&*(& #(*&*& @!_ _@() &#) )# *#()$ )*)@#!" At least that's as close as I can get to transcribing it accurately. That man was incredible today.
-- I can't blame Dempsey for lobbing a halfhearted shot on net (the one that trickled in for the draw). He probably got tired of waiting for midfield support that never arrived.
-- Adding to the tactical errors, Bradley waited until beyond the last minute to make changes (as usual). No idea why Buddle came on instead of Gomez. After all, it was 1-1, and the US did have a couple of opportunities (although one or two were ruined when they refused to pass to the open Holden on the wing, you know the sub with fresh legs who could make a run). Gomez is more the instant offense type, isn't he?
-- I do understand the point of the "third" substitution (Gomez), basically, to stall at the end and ensure there would be no last-second goal, but it just adds to the oddity of Bradley's substitution patterns. In a match where at least five guys were playing so poorly, was there not one other guy you could put on the field? (Sadly, on the back line, no. What you see is about all you get, and this is the problem with having a guy like Bornstein on the roster: when someone else is struggling or has picked up an early card, you have no one to replace him.)

The US had one or two legitimate chances and missed them both (did anyone else think perhaps Altidore should have let the ball pass through to the open Dempsey, who would certainly have slotted it home?); if it weren't for an unbelievable break, this would have been an opening loss, one that could easily have kept the US out of the knockout round. That still may happen, too. I doubt 3 points will get you forward, and even 4 may be too few.

Of course, the US have no excuse to come away with fewer than 7. It is time to put up some numbers, to put home some goals, and to stop making Tim Howard cover everyone in the box. Algeria and Slovenia must be beaten, and the US side must pick up some momentum. Squeaking by the group stage and getting hammered in the knockout round will be a big step back from the side that were 45 minutes from winning the Confederations Cup.

P.S. England has still never beaten the US in World Cup play. Lolz!

Linkasaurus

Pat Forde points out yet another massive flaw in the BCS, although he isn't as harsh about it as I would be: coaches don't even fill out their own ballots. Of course this shouldn't be a surprise, and really wouldn't matter anyway – coaches have no way of accurately estimating the change in relative strength of 20+ teams they couldn't watch on Saturday because they were, you know, coaching (remember you don't have all week to fill out your ballot) – but it's still an indication of how deluded BCS backers are. And remember that this is the part of the formula that gains more weight when the "title" game isn't fought down to the wire, because of course it's the computers that are wrong.

Jim Delany doesn't think the Big Ten has to worry about recent, um, lack of performance. In the original article on AnnArbor.com, Delany also points out (quite accurately) that many of these bowls are, for all practical purposes, road games for the Big Ten, and in that context, sure, struggling a little bit is to be expected. Then again, if this came from someone other than a man who may be singlehandedly preventing a I-A playoff system, you could put something more into it. After all, wouldn't it be easier for the Big Ten to regain national stature if Penn State beat, say, Alabama, Florida, and USC to win a real national title?

Way back when I had time on my hands (before the innernets), I wrote a little baseball sim for Full Impact, an old, old spreadsheet for the Mac. It generated line scores, estimating runs per inning, hits, and errors based on frequencies I gathered from a season's worth of box scores from the Sporting News. Years later, someone took the same concept and ran with it, creating an actual model to predict the chances of scoring X runs in an inning given Y runs scored per game. Very cool, and most likely you all have just fallen sound asleep.

Apparently owners are spending too much money on players. Not in baseball (this time), but rather in soccer. UEFA, Europe's governing body for soccer, is concerned that more teams will seek to emulate Manchester City and Real Madrid, spending as much as they can to sign as many top players as they think they can get without worrying about the future. I suppose their concerns are warranted: too much debt can force a club to list its valuable players to pay off the debt, and in some cases it can even cost the club points in the standings. See, for example, last year's League Two standings, where four clubs, including the two relegated clubs, were penalized for being in various stages of insolvency. (Consider that the club earning the stiffest penalty, Luton Town, played in the Championship in 05-06 and has since been relegated three times, now playing in Conference National.) So clubs are made to force consequences for terrible management, unlike here, where they simply go into bankruptcy or get pity money from the league or sometimes even give their players apologies instead of paychecks.

Random thoughts

• Apparently some people think that Guitar Hero III is better than Rock Band because you're always playing notes on the guitar in GH, whereas in Rock Band, sometimes you don't play (because it's like you're in a REAL BAND where OTHER PEOPLE GET SOLOS TOO). Funny, most people think that the extra notes on the GH III charts are a problem, not a bonus ... anyway, this is going to make Guitar Hero: Just Like Rock Band take off like a shot. Well, at least among the less intelligent crowd ...


• Great slide in the Reds-Yankees game last night: the guy slid on one leg, keeping the other off the ground until he passed the catcher, then tapped the plate, beating the tag. Catcher thought otherwise. Catcher was wrong.


• Also, a great catch by Brian Giles to end the Tigers-Padres game last night, although it reinforces my position that all baseball stadiums need something like the protective netting around hockey rinks ... he flipped over the little wall around Petco and landed in a handicapped-seating area. Okay, maybe netting wouldn't have helped him that much, but make the walls higher, not just so players don't go flying into the seats, but so jackass fans can't reach into the field of play and interfere with balls in play. (When it helps the home team, it's just dumb. When it hurts the home team, it should be grounds for banishment for life.)


• You probably don't like soccer much, or don't watch it much, or don't watch other than the World Cup and occasional MLS games, but Euro 2008 is on now, and if you didn't see yesterday's quarterfinal match between Turkey and Croatia, well ...
  
  They played 90 minutes with no goals. In this tournament, in elimination matches, that means two 15-minute halves of extra time (not sudden death - they play the full 30 minutes), and then PKs if it's still tied.
  
  For the first 28 minutes, nothing much happened: a couple of good opportunities, a couple of good saves. But then a Croatian ball passed through the box and was moving toward the corner, just along the goal line ... not having seen the previous match in Euro 2008 when this happened, the Turkish keeper chased it down, but a Croatian beat him to it, flicking it into the box where it was headed behind the keeper frantically dashing back to the goal. 1-0 Croatia, and with just a minute left plus injury time, Turkey looked defeated.
  
  Turkey pressed forward frantically, but Croatia blunted their attack and played a long ball ahead. With Turkish defenders ahead, the attack was offside ... the Turkish keeper, who'd come way out of his goal, quickly launched a free kick. It landed short of the box, was flicked on to another Turk, who blasted a shot off a Croatian defender ... and in! Two minutes into injury time, it's 1-1. A minute later, it's time for PKs.
  
  Rule #1: don't miss the net. Make the keeper save it. So Croatia ... misses the net. Not once, but twice in their first three kicks. Turkey did not miss; when Croatia's fourth kick was saved by Rustu, Turkey advanced.
  
  Sure, maybe there wasn't so much action in the first 90, but the end of that match is one thing that makes soccer such a special game.