world cup preview no 2: spain

spain should win the world cup; for all of the hype surrounding their biggest world cup rivals, even brazil, spain have quite comfortably the most talented side in the tournament - in whichever of the systems del bosque decides to arrange them. simple enough. but unless their coach makes potentially the most controversial decision of his career, spain might find themselves overmatched during a tough run to the final.

looking through their side, and spain have perhaps only one player in their presumptive starting xi that could be accused of mediocrity, poor old joan capdevila, their underappreciated, but (in all honesty) underpowered left-back; the second weakest, well, perhaps you'd pick much-decorated barcelona captain carles puyol or sergio ramos, athletically gifted but occasionally unsure of his positioning, despite being the right-back of two la liga winning real madrid sides, but you wouldn't really want to bother. it's in central midfield though, that divine catalonian stronghold, and in attack that spain really dominate the talent, with the world's best central midfield playmaker - xavi hernandez - complemented with del bosque's choice of xabi alonso, sergio busquets, andres iniesta or cesc fabregas, playing behind a strikeforce comprised of possibly the two most complete strikers in the world, david villa and fernando torres.

this presents a problem, however. torres and villa are supreme footballers, with probably everything you'd want from more traditional strikers (as opposed to the newer, evolutionary at least, breed of false nine - ronaldo, messi, rooney, van persie). capable of playing together, the two are an obvious pairing; there isn't a side in the world, apart from perhaps maradona's argentina, that wouldn't take either. the problem is that by playing both, spain have an awkward - at best - midfield, the finesse of barcelona but without the myriad options in possession, or the sheer depth, the successive lines one needs to pierce in attack, when defending. playing both necessitates a midfield four, with xavi an automatic selection, potentially surrounded left to right by andres iniesta, xabi alonso and david silva, but that deforms the shape into something much flatter, which leaves the team less suited to taking on sides with more men in midfield when defending (difficult to press because it leaves you out of position and one man free, difficult to be passive because triangles can be formed around you, but also the third midfielder is a useful tool to cover for raiding full-backs), and attacking (there isn't that continuous recycling of options the standard three man triangle perpetuates). this might not be a problem against the weaker teams of the group stage, but faced with a stronger three man midfield in the group stages and spain could be challenged (they were even challenged by the USA's aggressive 442 in the confederations cup last year).

instead, to maximise his chances of making history del bosque needs to drop one of those forwards - probably fernando torres, partially down to his inferior link up play but also health issues - and install cesc fabregas permanently in that midfield. suddenly a linear 4-4-2 becomes a 4-3-3 in the barcelona style, with cesc, xavi and busquets dancing behind a front line of iniesta, villa and silva (with torres, mata & pedro waiting in the wings to inject a little pace off the bench). interestingly however del bosque has gone relatively light in central midfield, preferring the extra attacker, which leaves him with a difficult conundrum - risk playing, and fatiguing, your three best central midfielders from the start, or introduce the system in the group stages with the hope of minimising the chances of injury or lethargy letting him down? the latter seems like the best option, and probably represents spain's best chance.

world cup preview no 1: argentina

alright, let's do this properly: argentina will fail at this world cup. and that failure will be solely due to one man, the idiot on the right.

there's been a rather growing, disappointing murmur coming from commentators in the last two weeks that maradona might be some sort of cloaked genius, manipulating the world into buying into his incompetence before unleashing a team organising in perfect stealth, under an umbrella of faked indecision, arrogance and prejudice. nonsense. maradona has been a car-crash from start to finish, a disgrace to his nation in all honesty, presiding over a laughable attempt to qualify before crowning his own stupidity by selecting a squad that disregarded two of his best midfielders. everything he has done thus far has suggested pure, unadulterated incompetence.

reason number one that argentina should fail: maradona has picked the wrong players, and will probably play them. newcastle's jonas gutierrez in some sort of bizarre right sided shuttle role, despite being incapable of doing much except running around. an ageing juan veron in the deep lying play making role, despite languishing in argentinian football, his legs fading. four centre-backs as the back four (more on that later). no esteban cambiasso. no javier zanetti. no lucho gonzalez. what this means is that argentina will line up in a sort of 4-4-1-1, with the four centre backs sitting deep, a central midfield pairing of veron & mascherano flanked by benfica's angel di maria on the left and the aforementioned gutierrez on the right; messi plays a floating role behind the lone striker, gonzalo higuain.

of course, this just reveals a multitude of problems. it first means that argentina don't have much thrust from central midfield, with the increasingly static veron paired with the tigerish but limited mascherano. lucho gonzalez, having enjoyed a good season at porto last year and a good season at marseille this year, would have been a better fit, especially with the substandard gutierrez to his right. alternatively, dropping gutierrez and switching leo messi onto the right, in the position he plays for barca, would have suited two midfield destroyers doing mop up duty, which leads you to the perfectly suited cambiasso (left side) and mascherano (right) holding, allowing you to also insert kun aguero or carlos tevez as a second striker in a 4-2-3-1. of course, this would need attacking full-backs, which leads us neatly onward...

reason number two that argentina should fail: the lack of attacking full-backs (or full backs in general). maradona has spoken a lot of leo messi and his importance to the side. just wants him to attack you see, no tracking back for leo. so! says diego, the solution is simple: four centre-backs, none of whom progress past half-way. if you've got four centre-backs, you don't need your star attacker to slot back into a defensive position! of course, this forgets that full-backs are incredibly important, the only players that are able to actually attack space in the modern game, and also incredibly important to barcelona, which is where messi has flourished. messi can flourish at the camp nou precisely because the full backs are there to stretch the pitch as wide as possible, which does two things - it gives him, and the team, as many options as possible to keep possession, and it also makes it difficult for opposition full-backs to follow the winger as he comes inside, as they can't risk allowing someone like dani alves to slot in. this isn't to say that messi is a "system player", but certainly that a system exists to make the most of his divine talents. and that system probably doesn't involve playing nicolas otamendi at right back. even pulling jonas further back in the above 4-2-3-1 might be a better option.

of course, nonetheless, people are suggesting maradona's bullishness might be some sort of attempt at recreating the spirit of 86, where he and a bunch of cloggers combined under carlos bilardo to win a world cup final they had no business getting anywhere near. but this assumes a couple of things, namely that football today can be won in such a manner (and unless maradona has assumed the organisational and motivational abilities of jose mourinho, one would struggle to conjure the name of any club or international side that has achieved real success in the last five years with such an unashamedly one dimensional approach) or that players today can be motivated simply by naked aggression (even those who utitilise that approach best today, managers like alex ferguson, have a slightly more nuanced approach, and even then it is one legitimised by years of consistent success).

argentina will probably make it through what looks one of the two weakest groups with comparative ease, merely through the weight of talent at their disposal, and their supporters' hopes must rest on maradona using those games to stumble upon a better formula. otherwise, the albiceleste could be in for embarrassment.

just when i thought i was out...

blame the world cup. after a year long hiatus, i'm back. in all honestly, i couldn't resist: the ego, baited by the rising cacophony of ill-informed opinion that dominates the discourse of any world cup year, made me do it.

well, that isn't quite true. i'd been planning to restart this for a while, but what provoked me to begin now was the awkward, frankly embarrassing performance i witnessed live from graz earlier today.

ah, england... you never disappoint me.

full disclosure up front - i didn't catch monday's game against mexico (tv issues) - but what has stunned me across these two warm-up games is capello's refusal to properly prepare. now, the understandable reaction to this accusation would comprise two parts: one, that the italian needs time to decide upon his squad, and two, that there is an advantage to be derived from maintaining a sense of surprise come june 12th. both are utter bunk.

the first point is ostensibly more reasonable, but ignores the simple fact that if england are actually in a situation where darren bent or shaun wright-phillips have to play any sort of role, we won't win the world cup. the identity of the 7th or 8th choice centre back, 4th choice winger or 5th choice striker appears fundamental, especially when you begin to run through those worst case scenarios - what if gerrard is carrying an injury and rooney hasn't recovered and lennon isn't match fit and barry suffers a set-back and ashley cole breaks his foot again?! - but if this was to happen, if we are to suffer these injuries, it's effectively over for us, as it would for most of the major challengers. if brazil, for example, were down to kleberson, i'd be revising down their chances quite drastically.

the second is linked to the first. in international football, the lack of familiarity that defines the contest places a premium on experience. playing squads are inevitably going to be flawed - even spain have joan capdevila at left-back - so the teams that are successful are generally those that are able to rise above those limitations together, as a unit, and prey on the weaknesses of others. it's misleading to simply believe that singular talent will suffice, because the teamwork and understanding that invisibly promotes such talent at club level doesn't - and cannot - exist in the international sphere.

so although it sounds like a plain, redundant truism, the best teams in this world cup will be those most comfortable together. spain benefit from the heart of their presumed team being bound in parallel by both tenure and that barcelona philosophy, whilst brazil have spent the past few years under dunga learning and perfecting what is a quite stunningly effective system (see zonalmarking.net for an excellent breakdown). these systems haved worked not because they have been particularly surprising, but simply because they work a lot better than those of their opponents.

england, on the other hand, had a system - it was that 4411 - which has now been endangered by a run of injuries to key players and a remarkable loss of form to others (hello, emile heskey!). so in have shuffled a cast of bit part players in the last few friendlies - jermain defoe, wright phillips, carrick, walcott, baines, crouch - tinkering with that system in the vague hope that something better might emerge, or at least that a viable plan b could be established. the reality is, of course, that england's best chance must revolve around creating a system that emphasises their strengths rather than the need to conform to arbitrary tactical preferences, and that system must involve playing rooney as a "false nine", alone up front, simply because in that role for united this season the striker has been at times unplayable, not only scoring plentifully but more importantly encouraging a footballing fluidity that england will sorely require.

but it's more than that: heskey is out of form, and as creditably as he played in the qualifiers, rooney is now clearly more than capable of playing alone in that role, which itself liberates an attacking midfield spot behind for a more talented player. england would have a couple of options in that situation - a 4231, playing gerrard/j cole/lennon behind rooney, with lampard and the presumably recovered gareth barry in the base, or a 433, playing lennon and gerrard in advanced roles right and left (or adam johnson if you wanted the rather voguish "inverted wingers"), with lampard free to assume his chelsea position, breaking from a midfield trio containing himself, gareth barry and another, perhaps michael carrick. either of these systems would allow england to match up better against superior opponents (who will otherwise generally be able to play around or through england with an additional midfielder), but crucially also involve more of their most talented personnel.

this, therefore, has ultimately been the folly of their preparations. rather than answering the slightly superfluous question of whether theo walcott deserves a starting place, capello could've been getting much needed testing time for a superior system. and ultimately, england would benefit more from a honed system than ten or fifteen minutes of surprise in the first meaningful game.

already, i am depressed.

yep: real sink into massive debt in order to finance kaka & ronaldo moves

per sid lowe:

The question that everybody has been asking finally got an answer today when the Spanish savings bank Caja Madrid admitted that it has agreed to give Real Madrid a €76m (£64m) loan to be secured on two unnamed sources of collateral. Madrid are also understood to have a similar deal in place with Banco Santander.

Real have spent in excess of €160m to bring Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United and Kaka from Milan but the sporting director, Jorge Valdano, has admitted that the intention is to sign "four or five players more".

Caja Madrid's board of directors approved the loan on Monday. A source at the bank, which is the fourth-biggest in Spain, added that a similar deal had been approved by Santander, the bank that extended a credit line to the previous president, Ramón Calderón, as he tried to sign Ronaldo last summer. Santander itself has not commented.

so that is €150m in loans in order to sign two players? as predicted, real are extended easy credit and sink further into debt to fund signings, despite the world financial meltdown?

how terribly predictable. where's the platini outrage when you need it?

glen johnson: crazy signing

liverpool have apparently decided to spend £18.5m on glen johnson.

glen johnson?!

when they have a perfectly good right back?

no back up striker?

dirk kuyt on the right wing?

albert riera on the left wing?

one half-decent central midfielder on the bench?

i know, i know - liverpool are owed £7m from pompey for crouch. so it's really only £10m! right. £10m that could've been spent on david silva, or any sort of decent back up striker (no, david ngog doesn't count).

what interests me is that rafa has never placed any importance on signing english players previously. in fact, i'm not sure he's ever signed an english player apart from crouch. oh no, forgot jermaine pennant (jesus christ almighty). there may be others, but my point is this: i find it inexplicable that a manager who obviously doesn't really care about buying homegrown players suddenly finds himself paying around £8m over the odds simply to recruit a player born in this country. (let us be clear: glen johnson, were he from any other country in the world, would not cost more than £10m. a going over by the left-winger of kazakhstan would usually see to that.)

it's madness, but madness that underlines benitez's ultimate lack of judgement in the transfer market. it isn't so much an inability to discern the talented from the talentless, apart from perhaps for dossena, but more that he doesn't have a clue how to prioritise need or appraise value. too many risky purchases for too much money, too many players signed for positions that were already filled, at least adequately. if this transfer doesn't end up using money that could've purchased genuine quality benitez might be alright, but if it results in yet another transfer saga whereby liverpool plainly can't afford the asking price, serious questions should be asked.

they won't be, of course. but they should be.

a synthesis of ronaldo thought

well, i guess it was inevitable really. the ego wouldn't allow ronaldo to stay at manchester united, especially when they were merely the second best team in the world, especially when the bright lights and glittering history of madrid came into view. and regardless, the inevitability was alledgely contractually bound: a pre-contract agreement between ramon calderon's bumbling adminstration and ronaldo, with a fixed penalty clause of something in the region of £26m if the portuguese was not signed, seemed to force perez's hand; it would appear that the agreement was in fact between united and real as well, and that perez was trying, to no avail, to reduce that fee. the june 30 deadline mentioned by united may well be the contractually mandated one, but really this isn't important beyond the intriguing political aspect - ronaldo is finally madrid bound. and it has massive implications in four areas, both to the involved clubs, the player and football's finances.

for united, i cannot decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. whilst the man was possibly the most complete attacker imaginable, combining power, pace, acceleration, strength, confidence, technique, finishing, instinct, delivery & movement into one unstoppable package, he was far from the complete footballer. he lacked workrate and commitment, and actually unbalanced the united team by requiring others to do his running for him; the main reason berbatov didn't fit in was because it added a little too much lethargy to the united attack and necessitated the removal of one of the energiser bunnies (either tevez or park) from the starting xi. also, whilst he frequently supplied moments of frankly ludicrous quality that are possibly beyond any other player in the world, he was also frequently the type of player who would provide the flashes of ability without ever taking over a game - a finisher of moves rather than the instigator, not always the constant, dazzling influence of, for example, messi. and whilst united were a startlingly effective footballing machine during the last two seasons, destroying lesser foes, but never really possessing a real footballing eloquence that defined their opponents in the champions league final. ronaldo was the ultimate asset for what was ultimately a defensive juggernaut, snatching vital goals and terrorising teams on the break (alongside the rest of the dynamic attack), but you cannot say that his departure will destroy a truly fluent offensive unit.

in fact, ronaldo's departure potentially opens up new possibilities for united. if a more diligent, visionary passer can replace him, united are well set - they won't have to compromise with a hard-working but limited player on the flank, and they can play more through berbatov rather than around him. in terms of ready made replacements, ribery would be ideal i think - a player who sits deeper and is more influential, but who scores goals and can beat people with the dribble; he would also be comfortable and dangerous even when stationed out wide, a refreshing change from ronaldo's gradual transmogrification into a central beyond that, it would just be quite interesting for them to go after benzema, even if he's more of an out and out striker, or potentially david silva or kun aguero, although the latter two aren't physically ready and united need someone who can step in right away.

at the time of writing, it looks like the first player in will be luis valencia from wigan; at £17m he would be overpriced, but i can imagine him offering a great deal more than nani as that first change wideman from the bench. similarly intriguing as depth would be arjen robben, who at around £7-10m may be the biggest bargain in world football (even if he is rather unpleasant and, like ronaldo, absolutely refuses to track back). carlos tevez, on the other hand, would be an absolute mistake. his talent and value isn't dependent on the other players in united's squad, and ronaldo leaving doesn't make him any more worth £25m.

meanwhile, that £80m also allows united the chance of recruiting another midfield holding player as insurance in the event that owen hargreaves isn't able to resume his career; without the englishman, they're only really left with one disruptive midfielder in the squad (fletcher) and we saw how that worked out in rome.

so, united actually have a chance to get better. they can parse their most disruptive locker-room influence, breaking with a player who by turns both limited & fulfilled them, and achieving greater depth across their squad. they can certainly emerge as a better football team.

for ronaldo, i think there is genuine danger in this move. this is a lazy player with a bad attitude, moving from a footballing culture where structure and work and discipline are emphasised far more than at real. as united have demonstrated, top-level football today requires a combination of graft and ability up front like never before, where a lack of appropriate balance between players who are willing to press and close down and those that aren't is to the significant detriment of your team (one only needs to look at the effectiveness of barca's front three at pressurising the opposition to assauge any doubts). now, this is a clear evolution of football since the last galactico era, and indulging lazy footballers is a recipe for disaster, especially in european competition. as such, adding kaka and ronaldo is potentially destructive: although one may need to play out wide to accomodate the other, and we know that isn't ronaldo's ideal position these days, the real danger is that teams will find it too easy to outmanoeuvre real defensive "shape".

in short, real might not be as good as it appears, especially given that they still have a whole host of ineffectual midfielders, one centre-back of any repute (who also happens to be mental), no left-back and little cover elsewhere. and you can imagine that ronaldo, a primadonna at the best of times, may not find himself as happy as he was in the successful united side.

for real, apart from the above problems, face an issue of mounting debt. for all of perez's celebratory nonsense, every proclamation that the "most expensive things are also the cheapest", one cannot imagine how real can genuinely afford these players. perez actually alluded to this when he said that the arrival of these players improve's madrid's finances by "increasing ticket sales, increasing bank loans and increasing the club's economic value". so he's decreasing debt by increasing debt?

the point is a simple one: madrid have something in the region of €500m debt, which can only have increased during the calderon years as the incompetent former president spent the best part of €300m on a swathe of mediocrity. and this is despite real's last debt crisis being sorted out in the early perez years by a sweetheart deal to sell off the training ground for somewhere around €400m (helped, but not, as popular preconceptions have it, bought by the government). so what does this suggest? that the €300-350m in revenue made by real a year isn't enough to finance even €100m's worth of players a season. real may boast about that revenue figure - deloitte put them top of the worldwide money league - but obviously revenue is a fairly useless figure when out of context, as it doesn't account for outgoings. and clearly, a club of madrid's size has some fairly significant outgoings, with probably at least 50% of turnover going on wages (chelsea spend something like €200m on wages a year, united €140m, so it is likely that real are at least at that level), with agents fees and transfer spending accounting for a whole lot more.

so, essentially, there is no way that real have the capital reserves to purchase these players outright: their arrival will necessitate further loans and further debt being heaped onto the already sizeable pile. obviously, given the financial climate real have access to a remarkably easy line of credit, seemingly this time from the catalan bank la caixa, and for all michel platini's moaning about british football debt it is surely a bigger problem that spanish clubs are allowed to rack up debt with such impunity due to a deep-rooted lack of oversight and regulation. this strikes me as reasonably outrageous.

finally, this is dangerous for football, inflating the market at a time when revenues are more at risk than ever before. two years ago, franck ribery was worth £18m (one of the great transfer coups of our time, bayern should be both eternally proud & grateful: proud of their own nous and grateful that everyone else at the time was willing to let an already-superb player go to the bundesliga for under his market value) and now, with the money injected by real and the inflationary posturing of manchester city, he is priced at £65m. ridiculous, of course, but you can hardly blame bayern for turning round to potential suitors and simply pointing to the fees paid for both ronaldo and kaka; they, like manchester united, certainly do not have any financial imperative to sell (in fact, they have a more pressing need to get rid of the obscenely overpaid luca toni as first priority) and can name their price. it is incredibly worrying.

so, we shall see what comes of this. i think it actually presents united with the opportunity to improve, strangely enough, whilst real & ronaldo need to be wary of overconfidence. the whole football world, though, needs to be wary of taking that final step into the abyss.

a little late comment on the champions league final

United's approach does not vary much when they step from Premier League to Champions League. That seamlessness was achieved only after prolonged angst. Ferguson, after all, had soon discovered that the manner in which the Champions League was won so memorably in 1999 would never do as a standard operating procedure. "We got battered on the counterattack by Anderlecht and PSV," he said last week, thinking of away defeats in the group stage in the autumn of 2000. "Teams had worked us out quite easily. We were a complete 4-4-2 team, relying on the wide players to do a lot of defending for us and attack. We got strung out in those games, so we had to start thinking about playing three central midfielders to make sure we were not exposed like that again."

for about 9 minutes at the camp nou, everything was going to plan for alex ferguson. barcelona were teetering, slightly unsettled and shaky; a valdes spill almost conceded a goal; ronaldo was prominent against that dubious backline. as it would turn out, those 9 minutes were the most enjoyable for alex ferguson. a quick run, a pass slide through the right channel; a sharp turn, a shot snatched instantly; a weak hand, hopes extinguished.

as someone who had tabbed united to win, i watched those 81 minutes in a haze of disbelief and frustration and wonderment. barcelona simply brushed ferguson's men aside, their passing as delicate and precise as united's was ragged and hopeless; it quite quickly devolved into a laughable mismatch.

the manner of the defeat has prompted a variety of bombastic headlines, almost cathartic in their earnest, congratulatory applause of barcelona's victory - by turns, united were outclassed, given a footballing lesson, their midfielders mediocre, their strikers out of position, their defenders overrated. but in picking their angle - catastrophy, adulation - the majority of the media seem to have overlooked two things: firstly that the game was appalling, the unremitting bleakness of the spectacle only punctuated by the sobering lack of competitiveness, and second that the sheer awfulness of manchester united exaggerated any supposed brilliance of barcelona. 

simply put, they're not that good. and united aren't that bad.

as soon as the final whistle blew, sid lowe was busy posting an article on the guardian claiming with the victory, barca had "joined the greats". piffle. ultimately, manchester united were hamstrung by crucial injuries and their tactically-challenged manager deciding that the most hyped showpiece final in quite some time was the opportunity for him to surprise everyone with his genius. it wasn't, and united lost.

united's problem was one of tactics rather than playing personnel. as expected, ryan giggs was drafted in to replace darren fletcher. it wasn't a like for like replacement, and united were always going to miss the scotsman's graft and determination, but no matter: giggs would slot into a 3 in midfield and help united keep the ball in possession, and maintain a decent shape when barca had it. ferguson had other ideas, pushing giggs high up the pitch, joining ronaldo in attack to shift the side in a 442.

it was a disastrous decision. most importantly, it allowed barcelona, already the world's best team in possession, additional time and space on the ball. xavi and iniesta are already probably the world's best two midfielders, but the presence of busquets alongside them meant it was 3 of them and 2 of united; a more unfair duel one cannot imagine. carrick and anderson were doomed, the barca midfield simply playing it around them when they decided to press and playing it across them when they decided to sit. this also meant that too often, park would get sucked inside to pick up a central midfielder as united were overwhelmed, providing not only an easy outlet pass to sylvinho but just another opportunity for barca to deform their rickety defensive shape; it also handicapped united in possession, depleting their options in midfield against a side who are adept at pressing high up the pitch. passes began to fall away, and united simply got more ragged, more hopeless as the match went on, barca deftly manoeuvreing around united's rearguard as they picked off pass after pass.

the problem was fundamental and never addressed: ferguson's answer was to bring on strikers, first tevez, and then berbatov, at the expense of anderson and giggs respectively. the removal of anderson was particularly baffling as united couldn't cope in midfield anyway; they proceeded to struggle even more. against a side of such footballing genius, it was criminal. iniesta, who was by far the best player on display (even if thursday's hagiographies followed the predictable "messi defeats ronaldo" route), danced across the olympic stadium's turf, tearing united to shreds.

this wasn't a challenge, any more than the average la liga game was a challenge. united stood off and did everything barca wanted them to do, and got slaughtered. chelsea, on the other hand, established that blueprint to nullify barcelona, harrying them, pressing them, stifling them, intimidating them. guardiola showed his lack of tactical prowess by mishandling messi during that game, but united did nothing to even test this; barcelona simply played their own serene game. just as there are other matches you should look at to analyse the merits of anderson and carrick (very good players), or the benefits of playing rooney as a left-sided attacker (legion), or the importance of darren fletcher (high), so there are better games to judge the true brilliance of this barcelona side. the fawning needs to stop: this was a victory directly facilitated by the poor management of alex ferguson, and one not likely to be repeated. well, not least for another 8 years or so.