Demonstration In Rio To Protest World Cup Evictions

On Saturday, July 30, 2011,the day of the World Cup Draw, the Popular Committee of the World Cup and Olympics will have a public action in defense of “The People's Cup.” A march for the People's Cup will begin gathering at the Largo do Machado at 10am.

While the 20 million dollar party for choosing the qualifying groups for the 2014 World Cup is happening on the 30th of July in Rio de Janeiro, thousands of the city's residents are being removed from their homes in preparation for the tournament, street vendors are prevented from working and the vast majority of the population will not have enough money to pay for tickets to the World Cup.

Put simply, the World Cup has corporatized the people's game and now it will remove the people who love the game so that the Plutocrats may enjoy it. If the people will receive anything, and it's doubtful they will, it will be the trickle down. A disgrace.

The World Cup: A Brief, Gringo's Guide to Futbol

Most of the planet has been tuned in to the World Cup since June 11, 2010, and will continue to watch and argue about it until the last whistle is blown on July 11. It's expected that the audience for the final game will draw a tenth of the people on the planet. An audience of about 600 million people. It doesn't matter very much to these people that their own countries didn't qualify, or got eliminated. No. They're watching, glued to the Tube, because that game is the World Game. And they love it. And they know great Futbol when they see it.

Unfortunately, in the US relatively few people care about futbol. Or soccer as most call it. They don't reflect on the fact that the barefoot kids kicking a ball made of duct tape and rags in a vacant lot in Port au Prince or Kabul or in a favela in Rio are playing the same game that well scrubbed kids wearing uniforms and $100 shoes are trying to play in this country. So they don't reflect on how democratic the game is. How anybody can play. And does. And how all you need is some ground and something to make a ball with. Shoes are optional. Goal posts are optional. Uniforms, optional. Only getting the ball into a goal counts.

And best of all, you don't have to be big. In fact, it helps to be small and fast and coordinated. Lionel Messi is a big star at 5 feet 7 inches. England's Peter Crouch at 6 feet 7 inches is consistently insulted by those who say he's a good player, for a big man. What helps is to be fast, very fast, and to have the kind of endurance that lets you run without stopping, hard, for 90 minutes and to be coordinated. The game doesn't let you use your hands, unless you're a goalkeeper, so you have to be able to use your feet, your legs, your thighs, your chest, your head. You can learn to do this with practice. The part you cannot learn you have to be born with: it's a futbol gift that is distributed at seeming random across the entire world. But you recognize it as soon as you see it.

In the US the common folklore is that futbol is boring. Right. It's boring in the same ignorant way as anything that has not been examined and is not properly understood. Actually, I suspect that this is a rap given the sport in the US because you cannot stop the game for commercials. That would be sacrilege. You cannot cut away to the studio. You watch until the time runs out. Then, and only then, do you get up, get something to eat, relieve yourself, watch commercials. In Spain you don't stand up during the game. That blocks others' views. Same in Germany and Italy. OK to yell and scream and curse and drink. Not OK to block somebody else's view.

Who are these players in the World Cup? The world's best futbol is played by club teams. The club season starts in early Fall and continues until Spring. Some of the teams are famous names, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, to name a few from the top of English Premier League. In England there are about 5 professional leagues below the Premier League. Every one of the players in every one of the teams in every one of those leagues aspires to play for a team in the top league. And every single player on a team in the top league aspires to be "capped," to be asked to play for the national team. That is a huge and important honor. This is the situation in the top leagues throughout Europe, which are in Italy (Internazionale, AC Milan, Lazio), Germany (Bayern Munich, Wolfburg), Spain (Barcelona, Real Madrid), France, and Holland. It's also the case throughout Cental and South America and Asia. The US has a few leagues, the top one MLS isn't really good. That's why the MLS season is going on now even though the world cup is happening. The players in MLS aren't at the World Cup (with a very, very few exceptions).

If you have DirecTV you can actually watch futbol in the regular, club season from England, Italy, Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and so on. These are exciting games. Goltv.tv and FoxSoccerChannel broadcast live and taped games.

How do you get to the World Cup? After about a year of qualifying (18 games in South America; about 10 in North America) a national team has to beat enough of the other teams in its region to make the finals. Every 4 years 32 teams are selected for the World Cup through regional qualifying. Those teams showed up in South Africa this year on June 11. They were divided into 4-team groups and played 3 games. The best two teams in each group advanced to the round of 16. Then there were games that pared the teams down to 8, and then 4. There are now 4 teams remaining.

On Tuesday, at 2:30 pm ET, Uruguay plays the Netherlands. On Wednesday, at 2:30 pm ET, Germany plays Spain. There is a game for 3rd place on 7/10, and the final on 7/11.

What does it take to win a game at this level? It takes a lot more than great individual players. All of the remaining teams have great players and have played very, very well. Spain probably has the most talented, most famous team. Germany and Netherlands have played brilliantly. Netherlands beat Brazil. Uruguay has been impressive as well. Its star Diego Forlan has been a magician throughout the World Cup. To win at this point, though, it takes massive energy and confidence. You cannot let down at all during the entire game, and you cannot be slow to start. The US team demonstrated that playing from behind, after an early goal, makes winning really difficult, if not impossible. The team has to play as a team. We are well beyond the point at which a star or two's great play will win the game. And the most important thing, I think, is that there be no defensive errors.

When a goal is scored everybody tends to blame the keeper. That's easy, but that's frequently not fair. If the defense allows a clear shot on goal, the keeper can sometimes do very little to make the save. Defensive lapses, and more important, forced defensive lapses, are the key to who will win these final games. That means that teams need a swarming, strong, airtight defense that can "close down" the field. But they also need an offense that is capable of creating space in front of the goal, space into which a striker can kick a ball into the net.

I hope you'll all drop what you're doing and watch these final games. The rest of the world will put everything on hold. You can do the same. It's worth it.

A prediction: Spain and Germany will advance to the finals. Spain will win the finals 1-0.

Spain v US: How Embarrassing Will This Be?

I'm sorry. Just because the US managed to beat Egypt and managed on negative goal differential to make the semis (by one minus point) does not mean that the US team is an adequate, international team. It's not. Stop fooling yourself about this. The proof of inadequacy is coming on Wednesday at 2:25 pm ET on ESPN2 when the US team play Spain.

The commentators can say anything they want about the passion of the US team when they played Egypt. Playing Spain is a different matter. This is not a team ranked 45 in the world. I expect it to show that the US is dreaming to believe it will make the round of 16 in the world cup next year with this team. I expect it to reveal to all who watch how very lost this team is. You heard it here first.

I Got It Wrong

Jozy Altidore, who saved the US from big, bad El Salvador with a 77th minute goal


Yesterday, it wasn't Mexico that had problems in the qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup. Mexico easily won 2-0. No big deal. The US, on the other hand, managed to get behind 2-0, and then had to struggle in San Salvador to a 2-2 draw. The US was dominated by El Salvador for the first hour. The defense was terrible. And this is the part of concern if you care about US fortunes in the World Cup, El Salvador is definitely one of the weakest teams in the 6-nation group.

Why do I think that 2010 is going to be yet another humiliation for US futbol?

El Tri In Meltdown

Suspended Hotshot Rafael Marquez

It's entirely for selfish reasons that I bring this up. When World Cup 2010 is played in South Africa, my plan is to be in Mexico and to watch games from the many cafes in Tulum. And that won't be anywhere near as much fun as it was in 2006 (which was a tremendous amount of fun) if Mexico somehow doesn't make the cup. This should be unthinkable. But it isn't. Right now the team is in meltdown.

According to the LA Times Rafael Marquez, who is out of the next to qualifiers because of a foul on the US keeper, had this to say:

"It's unfair that people are trying to pin the blame on me for the bad results we've been having," Marquez said. "If you ask me, Mexican football has a deep-rooted problem. . . . Our football is stagnating, and with everything that's happened it's time to come right out and say it. If we carry on like this, we're all going to pay for it."

Well, that's really great, isn't it. And far from optimistic. And then there's this remark from Nery Castillo, who is also angry because he couldn't make the grade at Manchester City and had to return to his Ukraine club, lashing out at Mexican journalists:

"Do you know what your problem is?" Castillo said. "It's that I'm in Europe and you're in Mexico. And you're always going to be in Mexico."

Well, that's really great, too, isn't it. He could as well have been speaking about many of his teammates. That builds warmth, support, comeraderie, and victories on the field.

Today Mexico plays Costa Rica in qualifying in Mexico City. If that goes badly, and it might without Marquez, you'll probably see Mexico fire its current coach, Sven-Goren Eriksson, about whom there have been enormous complaints. But by then, it might be too late. Mexico may have played itself out of the cup.

Mexico lost to the US in Ohio last month 2-0. That was its third loss in the past four qualifiers. And, lest we forget for a second, they played terribly against the US.

This is really sad, and some kind of national disgrace. Let's hope El Tri finds a way to get its act together. Their schedule after Costa Rica is not that tough, so maybe, just maybe they can pull it together.