WC 2010: Group C Chat (England etc)

[leviramsey]

Of course he is, it's basically the same as Villa/sha. To us, it's just a World Cup game, to them, it is their World Cup.

Perhaps Villa/Coventry is more like it... it matters a lot more to one side than the other.

[leviramsey]

[sunday] Morning [World Cup] Quarterback"]

So I'm standing with the Man of the Match, U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard, along with an Israeli reporter, in the Mixed Zone underneath Royal Bafokeng Stadium. For those who aren't fluent in World Cup/Olympic-ese, all participants in a match walk through this Mixed Zone, and reporters can talk to them -- or the players can just walk on by. On a chilly Saturday night in a Triple-A stadium in this beautiful country, Wayne Rooney walked on by. Howard stopped. Several times. When the mobs were done with him, I said to him: "This was a great event. The electricity, the drama, you playing hurt, the rivalry. Great stuff.''

Howard smiled. "I hope all the Americans in all the bars and all the homes felt the same way. My phone's been vibrating constantly since the end of the game. It was ... it was a great night for the game, and for us.''

"Not just for America!'' the Israeli reporter interjected, holding up his own phone. "The world! My country is excited! I have gotten a lot of reaction.''

"Good,'' Howard said. "Let's keep it going.''

This was the first time the United States and England have met in a World Cup match since 1950, and it lived up to everything it was supposed to be, despite the 1-1 draw. It had a hero -- Howard, who played heroically in his 52nd U.S. national game, holding England scoreless for the final 93 minutes of the game, and keeping the potent side scoreless for 61 minutes after suffering a debilitating injury. It had a goat -- England's goalkeeper Robert Green, who Bucknered the tying goal near the end of the first half. It had golden chances for both sides --Jozy Altidore, the Dolphins' biggest Haitian fan (he's dying to own season tickets there, and he loves Ricky Williams) hit the post in the second half, and Emile Heskey, the English forward, had the kind of chance he'll be dreaming about for years. Think I'm kidding? You should have seem the look on Heskey's face as he walked through the Mixed Zone afterward. It was a wish-I-could-have-one-moment-in-time-back look, bemused and sullen.

First, the Howard injury. There was a loose ball in the goal area in the 36th minute. A passive goalkeeper lets his D take responsibility for it, and if the defense comes up short, well, the keeper can always say, "Not my fault.'' Howard, at 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, sprinted toward the ball and dove headlong for it, just as Heskey slid in, cleanly, for the ball at the same time. Three things happened at exactly the same time: Howard managed to punch it away with his right hand, Howard's shoulder subluxed and he immediately cried out in pain, and Heskey's cleat hit the keeper's upper right rib area.

Imagine what happened in that one-second span of time. Howard got spiked in the upper ribs by a sliding tackle from a 190-pound striker coming at full speed and, his upper arm bone popped out of the shoulder socket (apparently, from replays), and Howard made a goal-saving save.

"Pretty intense,'' he said, describing the moment. "His spikes got me right here [pointing to the area below in right breast bone], and all of a sudden I was trying to breathe.''

(I have every reason to believe Howard has a significant rib injury, and either a severely bruised shoulder or separated shoulder. As you know, I'm a neophyte about this game, but am advanced enough in my knowledge of the game to know this: Goalkeepers need to use their shoulders and ribs when diving around the goal area. Sunday, I asked U.S. coach Bob Bradley whether he thought there was any chance Howard was coming out after the injury. "It's a given,'' Bradley said. "He's not coming out.'' And I take that to mean, He's not coming out for the rest of this competition, regardless of the pain.)

Now, after the injury, Howard told me he thought he needed 10 minutes to get his feet back under him. But you don't have 10 minutes. You've got two, maybe. And he made it clear he wasn't coming out, whether he could breathe or not. At halftime, a Toradol pain-killing injection in the upper ribs made the second half possible. While it was taking effect, there were a couple of saves he had to deal with: a rising line drive by midfielder Frank Lampard that Howard two-hand-served over the crossbar (and you could tell immediately how it pained him to lift his right arm by the way he brought it down so quickly); and a save on Heskey that both men will replay in their heads for years.

Heskey, a burly forward, had a step on the U.S. defense and came in alone, relatively, on Howard. The book on Howard is he's fearless about ranging far from his goal, and that he's a great angle-player of a goalie. Last month, meeting Howard for the first time, I'd asked him about whether he wanted to be the guy with the game in his hands -- like a quarterback at his own 20 -- at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, down six on the road with the game on the line. He told me he does love it -- but of course the idea is to have your defense help you some. If the D isn't there, he said Saturday night:

"You have to be bold in those situations. You've got to cut off the angle and read the intentions of the guy with the ball. I tried to read [Heskey], and I thought I did, but at the end, it happens so fast, and I think he caught it too clean.''

The ball was a bazooka, right into the abdomen of Howard. It wasn't a spectacular save, and that's why Heskey will think about this one for a long time -- because he had an opening to his left and just didn't use it. That's the breaks.

Howard has played 52 games now as the U.S. keeper. He had the huge eight-save win, 2-0, over world power Spain in the Confederations Cup semis last year, and that stage was big. This was bigger. This was a great night for American soccer, despite the draw, and a great night for sports.

===

One other observation about the game: Bradley knows futbol, and football. I went to the U.S. press availability 35 miles north of Johannesburg, at a working farm in Irene, this afternoon and spent a few minutes with Bradley afterward. I hit him with this theory on the first goal of the game Saturday, where midfielder Steven Gerrard snuck inside American midfielder Ricardo Clark deep in U.S. territory and flicked a shot by Howard four minutes into the game for a 1-0 lead: It reminded me of a receiver who gets his outside shoulder inside the cornerback on a post route, and just that tiny edge allows him the necessary space for an accurate quarterback to complete a pass for a big gain.

"Almost,'' Bradley told me. "But that cornerback usually is relying on safety help. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. In this case, that's exactly what happened to us.''

On the goal, U.S. defender Oguchi Onyewu had to chose between one of two English attackers, Rooney and Heskey, to defend, and his temporary indecision created a crease for Gerrard to charge through. I have seen this so many times covering the NFL: A corner who reacts a tenth of a second too slowly, or a safety who isn't exactly where he's supposed to be on time, can cost a team so much. It happened to the Giants in the 1989 playoff game against the Rams, when Flipper Anderson got a quarter of a step on New York corner Mark Collins. Boom. Giants season over. And in the Super Bowl three seasons ago, fifth wideout David Tyree of the Giants got inside of New England corner Asante Samuel on a post route and scored the first New York touchdown of the game. All it takes is a split-second, and that's all it took Gerrard to beat the Americans Saturday night.

"All it takes in a game like this is a second when the reactions are not exactly what they're supposed to be,'' Bradley said. "That's what tips the scales in games with these stakes. That's what I tell the players -- in most games, the window of opportunity is small. In a game like this, with the greatness of the players, the window's smaller.''

===

"This is what you prepare for mentally. You don't prepare mentally for making great saves and playing the perfect game. You prepare for trauma.''

-- Goalie Robert Green, who will have plenty of that for a long time. He allowed the softest goal in recent World Cup history -- or maybe ever -- which turned into the equalizer in the 1-1 England draw with the U.S. Saturday.

"He must wish the ground would open up and swallow him whole.''

-- BBC's World Cup Live Blog, on Green's goalkeeping gaffe.

"Hopefully the English papers take it easy on him tomorrow.''

-- United States defenseman and captain Carlos Bocanegra, thinking wishfully, about Robert Green.

Well, the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror both headlined their stories on the match with "Hand of Clod,'' a mocking reference to the famous Diego Maradona shot that propelled Argentina past England in the 1986 World Cup.

"Worst England blunder ever,'' the Sunday Mirror said.

"This ball has been doing silly things.''

--American goalkeeper Tim Howard, trying to defend his pal. And they really are pals. They've met and know each other from competition in Britain.

Not that silly, Tim.

===

Drove to Rustenburg Saturday with football editor Mark Mravic (a not-so-closeted socceraholic), his son Branko and fellow scribe Mark Bechtel (you can follow Bechtel and Mravic's adventures on SI's World Cup blog). It's a three-hour drive via the scenic route -- a sometimes-mountainous, sometimes-Bush-dissecting trip to a stadium in a midsized city known for its platinum -- and gold-mining in the country's North West Province. It's a Kansas City-type city, I'd guess, rising out of the countryside.

So we were an hour from the stadium, out in the bush, and I spied a tiny roadside eatery with one table and two barstools called The Garden Café. We stopped. The other three got the local sausage, cooked on a tiny round propane grill, and I got a grilled tomato and cheese sandwich. As we ate, I asked the proprietor, a friendly, dentally challenged man named Leon, if he'd been able to see the South Africa-Mexico draw the previous day. No, he said, because he'd had some work to do around his restaurant and cottages. But he heard about it.

"From the guys out there,'' he said, nodding to the bush, a endless area of tall brown grass. "Guess they had a radio. But when South Africa scored, I heard all kinds of screaming from there.''

===

In my first week in South Africa, I have had waiters named Offer and Quiet.

But those can't top the first name of my bartender Sunday night in Capetown.

Medicine.

===

I'm here with my wife, and the other day, we were in a cab in Cape Town and the driver asked where we were from.

"I grew up in Pittsburgh,'' my wife said.

"The Steelers!!!!'' the fellow said.

"You know the Steelers?'' she said.

"Everyone knows the Steelers!'' he said.

===

"My kids have asked why there are so many bees in south africa. "Do they eat a lot of honey?"

--b_bandhauer, Brandon Bandhauer, of Barre, N.Y., on the constant 90-decibel hum of horns called vuvuzelas throughout World Cup games, to my @worldcupking Twitter account during the game Saturday.

===

Five Things I Think I Think About the World Cup

1. I think if you didn't like that game Saturday, you don't like sports.

2. I think it's fairly ridiculous that here we are, at the biggest sports event in the world, and the fans in the place -- and the media -- have to guess at the time remaining. In Johannesburg Friday, the only way to track the time of game was to use binoculars to follow the world TV feed, which was being played on the small scoreboards in either end of the stadium, with the elapsed time running in the upper left corner of the screen. In Rustenburg, it was worse -- the time was not on either scoreboard and the only way you knew how much time was elapsed was the two or three times per half the PA announcer said how much time was gone. This is one of those things that you soccer purists can tell me all you want about how "this is the way it's always been in soccer'' and "look at your watch if you want to know how much time is left.'' It's dumb. Maybe that was okay in 1950, but a clock on the scoreboard isn't going to ruin the precious tradition of soccer.

3. I think Wayne Rooney has some Michael Irvin in him. He knows when to grab when he can get away with it.

4. I think Rooney's the genuine item. You only have to see 97 minutes of soccer to see that.

5. I think the best thing I can tell you about the World Cup, compared to American sports, is that it's about three times as intense as the Super Bowl. I was sitting in this mid-sized stadium (no press box, just a row near the top of the lower level, covered, outside), about 15 minutes before the game, with no teams on the field, no immediate promise of players coming out of the tunnel to take the field, and the vuvuzelas were trumpeting at maybe 90 decibels by themselves, and the fans were screaming and chanting to add maybe 20 more decibels, and I'm thinking, "There's no one in sight, and the anticipation is so ridiculous that these people are screaming themselves silly.'' It's no knock on the NFL. I love big games in the NFL. But this -- with games in 20 or so town squares on huge screens EVERY day of the World Cup, and the nation taking the month off to watch them (not in person, maybe, but on these screens or on TV) -- is some great sport right here.

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

First chance to comment.

Heskey was our best player by a mile. USA were a little fortunate to get a draw.

Wright Phillips and Green can feck off.

[PompeyVillan]

Looks like football has really taken off in the states.

[mykeyb]

The three players from our starting eleven who are outstanding (close to world class) for their clubs are Gerrard, Rooney & Lampard. None of whose league club play 4-4-2.

Most pundits are saying if we are going to progress in the knockout stages we are going to need to change to 4-5-1 (which would strangely suit the 3 players above). Surely we should be playing this formation now.

[villa4europe]

how can they say it doesnt have a proper clock? that makes no sense

[kurtsimonw]

I think they mean with added time, it doesn't have a definite set time (Which is a ridiculous reason since baseball has no clock. at all).

[Jondaken]

[sunday] Morning [World Cup] Quarterback"]

So I'm standing with the Man of the Match, U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard, along with an Israeli reporter, in the Mixed Zone underneath Royal Bafokeng Stadium. For those who aren't fluent in World Cup/Olympic-ese, all participants in a match walk through this Mixed Zone, and reporters can talk to them -- or the players can just walk on by. On a chilly Saturday night in a Triple-A stadium in this beautiful country, Wayne Rooney walked on by. Howard stopped. Several times. When the mobs were done with him, I said to him: "This was a great event. The electricity, the drama, you playing hurt, the rivalry. Great stuff.''

Howard smiled. "I hope all the Americans in all the bars and all the homes felt the same way. My phone's been vibrating constantly since the end of the game. It was ... it was a great night for the game, and for us.''

"Not just for America!'' the Israeli reporter interjected, holding up his own phone. "The world! My country is excited! I have gotten a lot of reaction.''

"Good,'' Howard said. "Let's keep it going.''

This was the first time the United States and England have met in a World Cup match since 1950, and it lived up to everything it was supposed to be, despite the 1-1 draw. It had a hero -- Howard, who played heroically in his 52nd U.S. national game, holding England scoreless for the final 93 minutes of the game, and keeping the potent side scoreless for 61 minutes after suffering a debilitating injury. It had a goat -- England's goalkeeper Robert Green, who Bucknered the tying goal near the end of the first half. It had golden chances for both sides --Jozy Altidore, the Dolphins' biggest Haitian fan (he's dying to own season tickets there, and he loves Ricky Williams) hit the post in the second half, and Emile Heskey, the English forward, had the kind of chance he'll be dreaming about for years. Think I'm kidding? You should have seem the look on Heskey's face as he walked through the Mixed Zone afterward. It was a wish-I-could-have-one-moment-in-time-back look, bemused and sullen.

First, the Howard injury. There was a loose ball in the goal area in the 36th minute. A passive goalkeeper lets his D take responsibility for it, and if the defense comes up short, well, the keeper can always say, "Not my fault.'' Howard, at 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, sprinted toward the ball and dove headlong for it, just as Heskey slid in, cleanly, for the ball at the same time. Three things happened at exactly the same time: Howard managed to punch it away with his right hand, Howard's shoulder subluxed and he immediately cried out in pain, and Heskey's cleat hit the keeper's upper right rib area.

Imagine what happened in that one-second span of time. Howard got spiked in the upper ribs by a sliding tackle from a 190-pound striker coming at full speed and, his upper arm bone popped out of the shoulder socket (apparently, from replays), and Howard made a goal-saving save.

"Pretty intense,'' he said, describing the moment. "His spikes got me right here [pointing to the area below in right breast bone], and all of a sudden I was trying to breathe.''

(I have every reason to believe Howard has a significant rib injury, and either a severely bruised shoulder or separated shoulder. As you know, I'm a neophyte about this game, but am advanced enough in my knowledge of the game to know this: Goalkeepers need to use their shoulders and ribs when diving around the goal area. Sunday, I asked U.S. coach Bob Bradley whether he thought there was any chance Howard was coming out after the injury. "It's a given,'' Bradley said. "He's not coming out.'' And I take that to mean, He's not coming out for the rest of this competition, regardless of the pain.)

Now, after the injury, Howard told me he thought he needed 10 minutes to get his feet back under him. But you don't have 10 minutes. You've got two, maybe. And he made it clear he wasn't coming out, whether he could breathe or not. At halftime, a Toradol pain-killing injection in the upper ribs made the second half possible. While it was taking effect, there were a couple of saves he had to deal with: a rising line drive by midfielder Frank Lampard that Howard two-hand-served over the crossbar (and you could tell immediately how it pained him to lift his right arm by the way he brought it down so quickly); and a save on Heskey that both men will replay in their heads for years.

Heskey, a burly forward, had a step on the U.S. defense and came in alone, relatively, on Howard. The book on Howard is he's fearless about ranging far from his goal, and that he's a great angle-player of a goalie. Last month, meeting Howard for the first time, I'd asked him about whether he wanted to be the guy with the game in his hands -- like a quarterback at his own 20 -- at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, down six on the road with the game on the line. He told me he does love it -- but of course the idea is to have your defense help you some. If the D isn't there, he said Saturday night:

"You have to be bold in those situations. You've got to cut off the angle and read the intentions of the guy with the ball. I tried to read [Heskey], and I thought I did, but at the end, it happens so fast, and I think he caught it too clean.''

The ball was a bazooka, right into the abdomen of Howard. It wasn't a spectacular save, and that's why Heskey will think about this one for a long time -- because he had an opening to his left and just didn't use it. That's the breaks.

Howard has played 52 games now as the U.S. keeper. He had the huge eight-save win, 2-0, over world power Spain in the Confederations Cup semis last year, and that stage was big. This was bigger. This was a great night for American soccer, despite the draw, and a great night for sports.

===

One other observation about the game: Bradley knows futbol, and football. I went to the U.S. press availability 35 miles north of Johannesburg, at a working farm in Irene, this afternoon and spent a few minutes with Bradley afterward. I hit him with this theory on the first goal of the game Saturday, where midfielder Steven Gerrard snuck inside American midfielder Ricardo Clark deep in U.S. territory and flicked a shot by Howard four minutes into the game for a 1-0 lead: It reminded me of a receiver who gets his outside shoulder inside the cornerback on a post route, and just that tiny edge allows him the necessary space for an accurate quarterback to complete a pass for a big gain.

"Almost,'' Bradley told me. "But that cornerback usually is relying on safety help. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. In this case, that's exactly what happened to us.''

On the goal, U.S. defender Oguchi Onyewu had to chose between one of two English attackers, Rooney and Heskey, to defend, and his temporary indecision created a crease for Gerrard to charge through. I have seen this so many times covering the NFL: A corner who reacts a tenth of a second too slowly, or a safety who isn't exactly where he's supposed to be on time, can cost a team so much. It happened to the Giants in the 1989 playoff game against the Rams, when Flipper Anderson got a quarter of a step on New York corner Mark Collins. Boom. Giants season over. And in the Super Bowl three seasons ago, fifth wideout David Tyree of the Giants got inside of New England corner Asante Samuel on a post route and scored the first New York touchdown of the game. All it takes is a split-second, and that's all it took Gerrard to beat the Americans Saturday night.

"All it takes in a game like this is a second when the reactions are not exactly what they're supposed to be,'' Bradley said. "That's what tips the scales in games with these stakes. That's what I tell the players -- in most games, the window of opportunity is small. In a game like this, with the greatness of the players, the window's smaller.''

===

"This is what you prepare for mentally. You don't prepare mentally for making great saves and playing the perfect game. You prepare for trauma.''

-- Goalie Robert Green, who will have plenty of that for a long time. He allowed the softest goal in recent World Cup history -- or maybe ever -- which turned into the equalizer in the 1-1 England draw with the U.S. Saturday.

"He must wish the ground would open up and swallow him whole.''

-- BBC's World Cup Live Blog, on Green's goalkeeping gaffe.

"Hopefully the English papers take it easy on him tomorrow.''

-- United States defenseman and captain Carlos Bocanegra, thinking wishfully, about Robert Green.

Well, the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror both headlined their stories on the match with "Hand of Clod,'' a mocking reference to the famous Diego Maradona shot that propelled Argentina past England in the 1986 World Cup.

"Worst England blunder ever,'' the Sunday Mirror said.

"This ball has been doing silly things.''

--American goalkeeper Tim Howard, trying to defend his pal. And they really are pals. They've met and know each other from competition in Britain.

Not that silly, Tim.

===

Drove to Rustenburg Saturday with football editor Mark Mravic (a not-so-closeted socceraholic), his son Branko and fellow scribe Mark Bechtel (you can follow Bechtel and Mravic's adventures on SI's World Cup blog). It's a three-hour drive via the scenic route -- a sometimes-mountainous, sometimes-Bush-dissecting trip to a stadium in a midsized city known for its platinum -- and gold-mining in the country's North West Province. It's a Kansas City-type city, I'd guess, rising out of the countryside.

So we were an hour from the stadium, out in the bush, and I spied a tiny roadside eatery with one table and two barstools called The Garden Café. We stopped. The other three got the local sausage, cooked on a tiny round propane grill, and I got a grilled tomato and cheese sandwich. As we ate, I asked the proprietor, a friendly, dentally challenged man named Leon, if he'd been able to see the South Africa-Mexico draw the previous day. No, he said, because he'd had some work to do around his restaurant and cottages. But he heard about it.

"From the guys out there,'' he said, nodding to the bush, a endless area of tall brown grass. "Guess they had a radio. But when South Africa scored, I heard all kinds of screaming from there.''

===

In my first week in South Africa, I have had waiters named Offer and Quiet.

But those can't top the first name of my bartender Sunday night in Capetown.

Medicine.

===

I'm here with my wife, and the other day, we were in a cab in Cape Town and the driver asked where we were from.

"I grew up in Pittsburgh,'' my wife said.

"The Steelers!!!!'' the fellow said.

"You know the Steelers?'' she said.

"Everyone knows the Steelers!'' he said.

===

"My kids have asked why there are so many bees in south africa. "Do they eat a lot of honey?"

--b_bandhauer, Brandon Bandhauer, of Barre, N.Y., on the constant 90-decibel hum of horns called vuvuzelas throughout World Cup games, to my @worldcupking Twitter account during the game Saturday.

===

Five Things I Think I Think About the World Cup

1. I think if you didn't like that game Saturday, you don't like sports.

2. I think it's fairly ridiculous that here we are, at the biggest sports event in the world, and the fans in the place -- and the media -- have to guess at the time remaining. In Johannesburg Friday, the only way to track the time of game was to use binoculars to follow the world TV feed, which was being played on the small scoreboards in either end of the stadium, with the elapsed time running in the upper left corner of the screen. In Rustenburg, it was worse -- the time was not on either scoreboard and the only way you knew how much time was elapsed was the two or three times per half the PA announcer said how much time was gone. This is one of those things that you soccer purists can tell me all you want about how "this is the way it's always been in soccer'' and "look at your watch if you want to know how much time is left.'' It's dumb. Maybe that was okay in 1950, but a clock on the scoreboard isn't going to ruin the precious tradition of soccer.

3. I think Wayne Rooney has some Michael Irvin in him. He knows when to grab when he can get away with it.

4. I think Rooney's the genuine item. You only have to see 97 minutes of soccer to see that.

5. I think the best thing I can tell you about the World Cup, compared to American sports, is that it's about three times as intense as the Super Bowl. I was sitting in this mid-sized stadium (no press box, just a row near the top of the lower level, covered, outside), about 15 minutes before the game, with no teams on the field, no immediate promise of players coming out of the tunnel to take the field, and the vuvuzelas were trumpeting at maybe 90 decibels by themselves, and the fans were screaming and chanting to add maybe 20 more decibels, and I'm thinking, "There's no one in sight, and the anticipation is so ridiculous that these people are screaming themselves silly.'' It's no knock on the NFL. I love big games in the NFL. But this -- with games in 20 or so town squares on huge screens EVERY day of the World Cup, and the nation taking the month off to watch them (not in person, maybe, but on these screens or on TV) -- is some great sport right here.

That´s quite a good read...

[Jondaken]

how can they say it doesnt have a proper clock? that makes no sense

Quite a few of the stadiums dont tell you the time played on them, except on the small screens at the corner, which you would really stuggle to see. And acording to that article, sometimes even those screens wont tell you the time and tehre is simply no way of knowing how many mins have past unless you look at your watch.

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

Never thought about that and never cared.

Look at my watch or phone or ask someone by me.

[mykeyb]

How poorly do you think we would have to do for Capellos position to come under threat. I think we will qualify for the knockout phase and so think his job will be safe unless he decides to go.

[briggaman]

How poorly do you think we would have to do for Capellos position to come under threat. I think we will qualify for the knockout phase and so think his job will be safe unless he decides to go.

I would think his position would come under threat if we don't make it to the quarter-final at the very least...

[Qwpzxjor1]

Looks like football has really taken off in the states.

We should sit them down in front of a Test Match for 5 days. They'll appreciate that a draw only lasted 90 minutes then.

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

Ain't that coming from a sport that lasts like 3 hours or whatever?

Also that Troy Powell, what an idiot. Do they think if like a game in a final ends in a draw, that's it.

[Chindie]

King out?

Taking a crock, brilliant idea. I don't care how good he is, he can't be relied on to stay fit.

[norton65ca]

Ain't that coming from a sport that lasts like 3 hours or whatever?

Also that Troy Powell, what an idiot. Do they think if like a game in a final ends in a draw, that's it.

three hrs duration but only ten minutes of actual action. Give me real football any day. I rate N American sports as follows:

1) well, obviously, soccer (since we're speaking Murkan I'll use their term.)

1.5) beach volleyball (forgot that one but knew I'd find somewhere to slip it in ;-)

2) Ice Hockey (Canadian really but hey.)

long, long gap

3) Basketball (and really the NCAA, not the NBA)

unbelievably long gap

4) NFL

5) Lacrosse

6) Curling

7)Motorsports

8)watching paint dry

well, I guess that's it.

oh, wait a minute, there is another one.

but I don't rate it AT ALL.

[Sureshot]

Yeah, I told my housemate (granted, he doesn't really follow sports) that we tied and ended up having to repeat myself 3 times after he couldn't understand the concept of drawing.

[leviramsey]

On the clock issue, that is a fundamental mindfuck for the American mindset.

All the timed North American sports use an open countdown clock. At any given instant you know exactly how much time is left and you can tell if there's Fergie-time going on (is the clock running when it shouldn't be or not running when it should be?)... several times in a typical gridiron game you'll have the referee directing the timekeeper to correct an error in timing ("please reset the game clock to 7 minutes 52 seconds"). The first few seasons of MLS, they used that setup (thanks to a special dispensation from FIFA): instead of 45 minutes plus stoppage time the clock would start at 45:00, stop when there was an injury or after a goal, and when it hit 0:00, the referee would blow the whistle at the earliest practical opportunity (if a player was dribbling with the ball toward the box, the referee would wait until the shot was taken to blow the whistle). I think that's a much fairer system than what football currently does, and I don't think that any argument could sway me, that's how self-evident it is.

[MrDuck]

King out?

Taking a crock, brilliant idea. I don't care how good he is, he can't be relied on to stay fit.

Ironically it's his groin that's gone too... his knees are fine. :?

[leviramsey]

USA-England game highest rated English language World Cup group stage broadcast in US history

The USA-England match Saturday was the fifth most-viewed soccer telecast in ABC history. The two-hour match window averaged a 7.3 household rating (8.4 million households) and 12.9 million viewers. When the one-hour pregame coverage was included in the figures, the game delivered a 6.1 household rating (7 million households) and 10.8 million viewers.

The match ratings are based on ABC viewership in 56 markets and do not include data from Univision (Spanish) and ESPN Deportes (Portuguese).

ESPN's most-watched game over the weekend was Argentina vs. Nigeria -- a 2.8 household coverage rating (2.8 million households) and 3.7 million viewers.

Top markets for USA-England

1. San Diego: 11.5 rating

2. San Francisco: 11.2

3. Las Vegas: 11.0

4. Cincinnati: 10.8

5. Salt Lake City: 10.2

Most-watched matches in U.S. history

1. USA-China, 1999 women's final, 18 million viewers (11.4 rating)

2. Brazil-Italy, 1994 final, 14.5 million (9.5 rating)

3. USA-Brazil, 1994 round of 16, 13.7 million (9.3 rating)

4. Italy-France, 2006 final ,12.0 million (7.0 rating)

5. USA-England, 2010 first round, 10.8 million (6.1 rating)

The ratings do not include viewing in bars or other public places.

Semi-related

When TV networks cover their own national teams in any sport, the question isn't whether there'll be on-air flag-waving — just how much.

So while ESPN made it clear that its World Cup coverage this time wouldn't be led by U.S. announcers — only one of its eight game announcers, John Harkes, is an American — it was still bizarre Saturday when the U.S. team played its much-hyped opener against England and the lead on-air voice was … British.

"If there's a hue and cry over anything incomprehensible I said, then I can only apologize," Martin Tyler said in an interview after calling the USA-England tie.

There's no need. Tyler, calling his ninth World Cup, is a famed soccer voice available because his usual outlet, Sky Sports, doesn't have Cup TV rights in Britain. And after ESPN largely used U.S. announcers to make soccer sound accessible and not too foreign on past Cups, Tyler now leads a multinational on-air team that makes sense, given the USA is guaranteed just three games in the 64-game Cup.

But Tyler's Saturday assignment, after calling Friday's South Africa-Mexico opener, turned traditional TV sports on its head. It was as if, say, an Australian had called Michael Phelps' Olympic races for U.S. TV. Or maybe like having had a Finn or Russian, rather than Al Michaels, call ABC's 1980 Olympic ice hockey. (Miracles? Nyet!)

Tyler says he didn't say "soccer" — instead of "football" — because "that's not a word I use. … I felt I've been asked to do this for what I do, not what they want to make me do. And I haven't had anybody tell me to say this or that."

So he was an ABC/ESPN announcer — albeit working the game with Harkes, a former U.S. team captain — who had to remind himself not to root against the USA. "I felt my job was to be a professional broadcaster," Tyler says. "And that's what I did. It was no problem dealing evenhandedly with the teams during the game. It's afterwards that you feel emotions."

Tyler said English goalkeeper Robert Green, who spectacularly muffed a save to allow the lone U.S. goal, had "given away one of the softest goals you'll ever see at this level of football" to create "a catastrophe from England's point of view." Tyler's kicker: "To say it was a schoolboy error is unfair to schoolboys."

But, says Tyler off-air, Green is actually "a very, very good friend of mine. I haven't sent him a message yet. I don't know what to write. Wounds like that run pretty deep."

Tyler says he's trying not to "get into too much London vernacular" although he is not afraid to use "a few British-isms everybody knows."

Still, for Tyler, players don't lose the ball; they're "dispossessed." Seasons are "campaigns." And while even U.S. viewers who rarely watch soccer outside the Cup probably understand "nil-nil," you wonder what lots of U.S. viewers were thinking as Tyler noted club "relegation" in English leagues. (Have to look it up?)

ABC's overall coverage didn't play up national-rivalry angles, beyond touches like live shots of British and U.S. troops in Afghanistan watching the game together and erupting in a strange mix of cheers and cringes. Which was probably wise, given the role of England's biggest company in an ongoing American environmental disaster. (Not so Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, who said of Saturday's game: "We'll finally have a chance to get back at those limey bastards for the oil spill.")

Tyler says he doesn't say "we" even when he calls England's team for the Queen's own viewers. But Steve McManaman, a former English Cup team member serving as an on-site ESPN analyst with Mike Tirico on Saturday, couldn't resist. After Tirico tried to give casual U.S. soccer fans a way to relate to Green's historic gaffe — suggesting the goalie became a Bill Buckner figure — McManaman offered U.S. viewers an observation they likely didn't expect: "If we're going to win the World Cup then we're going to have to play 100 times better than that." (Sort of a glimpse at what ABC might be like if the colonists' revolution had been quelled.)

ABC's coverage, using exquisite game footage from the Cup's world TV feed, had an excellent replay graphic to illustrate offsides calls and non-stop action that seemed almost un-American with its lack of TV timeouts. And ESPN studio analyst and ex-U.S. team member Alexi Lalas got supernatural assistance: "The gods of soccer have smiled upon the U.S."

But Tyler gave the U.S. team a bit more credit. Tying Britannia rather than being ruled by it, he suggested, "shows how far U.S. football has come. It's no longer a bunch of 'hammer throwers,' which is one of the expressions I grew up with." And U.S. soccer got nil respect.