cascadian telegrams

a look back at usa’s 2010 world cup

Ives Galarcep (‘Soccer by Ives’) summarizes better than I ever could, so I’ll just point to his summary here.  He’s right that the tournament was not a failure for the US team but it is indeed disappointing as we could have gone farther.

My biggest disappointment was that it was a chance for the US team to prove that the Confederations Cup – where we were the only team to beat the Spanish national team in 50 games, and where we came within 45 minutes of beating Brazil in the final – was not a fluke.  Instead, we reinforced the notion that it was indeed a fluke. Sigh.

I do hope that Bradley goes and someone like Juergen Klinsmann steps in, and I hope we start growing younger players.  We need strikers with killer instinct for Brazil 2014 (all of our goals came from midfielders) and a solid central defense.  Luckily we should still have Tim Howard.

usa second round (and onward) predictions

The US plays Ghana tomorrow in the second round of the world cup.  Ghana, of course, is the team that sent us home in 2006, arguably on some dodgy calls (the red card on Onyewu before the half based on Pimpong’s dive) that cost us the game when Stephen Appiah buried the peno. 

It’s payback time for Ghana.  They don’t have midfielder and Chelsea star Michael Essien who is injured, and they’re struggling to produce offense.  The US will be very motivated to beat them.  We should win this game then onto the winner of Uruguay-South Korea.  Both of those teams are beatable as well, so we have a favorable draw thanks to coming in first in our group.

The key to the Ghana match (and our progress) is down to to things: converting our chances and holding the defensive back line.  Pace, stamina and grit we’ve got in spades.  We have a terrific goalkeeper in Howard who is one of the best in the world.  We also have a midfield in Bradley, Edu, Clark et al who can win the battles in the middle .  But individual soccer skills and touch on the ball ala Brazil or Spain… not so much.

Simply put, if players such as Altidore and Dempsey continue to miss “gimme” goals from six yards out or whatever, shots that world-class players would never miss, we will not advance.  The competition will be more fierce and the teams more skilled.  They will convert opportunities and we must do so as well if we expect to advance.  They simply can’t shank these shots from right in front of the goal: we go home if that happens. We may need Hercules Gomez or Edson Buddle to step up and convert some opportunities.  Gentlemen, this is your opportunity to lay claim to the next generation of Amerk footy: Step up, and take us through.

The second part is our defensive back line.  They will be tested by fleeter teams.  Unless we face a team with an aerial ball specialist,  we need to keep the still-slow and not-fully-recovered Gooch on the bench for the near term, as he was clearly not up to snuff in the first round.  So Bocanegra-DeMerit-Bornstein-Cherundolo backline is probably what we go and stick with. 

Watford-based DeMerit can rise to big occasions (as he did in the Confederations Cup) but has also made some very glaring errors, and Bocanegra is, well, showing his age a little: He’s been beat a few times.  They will have to hang very tough,  and the midfielders may have to help out.  If we play South Korea, we might need Torres in the midfield to help shut them down.

In spite of our deficiencies,  I predict the USA will advance to the quarter-finals and maybe the semi-finals.  We will know more tomorrow.  Come on you Yanks!

happy birthday malcolm

Happy birthday to Malcolm who is eight years old today!

 

 

Age 7:

Age 6:

Age 5:

Age 4:

Age 3:

Age 1:

The birthday stats:

Height:  4’ 6”/ 137.2 cm (94th %… doesn’t take after his dad that way.)

Weight:  86 lbs/ 39 kg (a bit too heavy… perhaps does take after his dad this way)

We’re off for a sushi lunch today… his favorite.  Birthday presents include the Diet Coke and Mentos Kit ala MythBusters :).  No big kid party this year, although I’m gonna take them bowling again this weekend, like last year.  And it would not be complete without the traditional Danish birthday song:

I dag er det Malcolms fødselsdag!  (today is Malcolm's birthday)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Han sikkert sig en gave får             (he's sure he'll find a gift)
som han har ønsket sig i år            (that is something he's wished for this year)
og dejlig chokolade med kage til.   (and delicious chocolate and cake)

Hvor smiler han, hvor er han glad   (how he smiles and is happy)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Men denne dag er også rar,            (but his day is also nice)
for hjemme venter mor og far       (for mother and father are waiting at home)
med dejlig chokolade med kage til.  (with delicious chocolate and cake)

Og når han hjem fra skolen går,       (and now he walks home from school)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Så skal han hjem og holde fest,       (he plans to go home to a party)
og hvem der kommer med som gæst,  (and those who come with him are guests)
får dejlig chokolade med kage til.    (finding delicious chocolate and cake)

Til slut vi råber højt i kor.                 (until at last we shout loudly in chorus)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Gid Malcolm længe leve må               (and wish Malcolm a long life)
og sine ønsker opfyldt få -                (and may he find his wishes fulfilled)
og dejlig chokolade med kage til.

usa advances!

 

They left it until extra time (although they didn’t, really:  Dempsey’s strike in 20th minute was not offsides!) but the US both wins their group and advances to the Round of 16… way to go USA!!  They deserved the win and the group.

In spite of the disallowed goal  and a great shot off the post in 57’ (and a handball by Algeria in their box in the 80th minutes… should have been a peno) Dempsey had a great game, mixing it up with the Algerians and providing opportunities for the team.

But in the end it was Landon Donovan – long-time fixture and titular head of the US squad – who scored the goal in dramatic fashion in the 91st minute.

And for once, Bob Bradley wasn’t overly conservative and made some good substitutions, bringing in Buddle and Feilhaber and Beasley near the end to generate some offense.

This bodes well for the next round, if we can unleash Dempsey and Altidore for some goals.

Fair play to Algeria for a good effort (although they were tired and fouling like mad towards the close, and their captain Yahia punched Dempsey in the face off of the play, the feckin’ wanker), but the better team won in the end.

(I liked this comment on one of the footy webs from a Brazilian:

Hello.  
I'm a brazilian fan.  
I am so proud of US Team. Fantastic win !!!!  
I'm sure this is one of the most important goals in Soccer´s history.  
This goal can help US Soccer to become the top of list in the US Sports in a few years.  
17 milions watching the 2nd US game !!! How many this time ?  
17 millions was watching NBA.  
I think that only Kostadinov goal in 1993 against France in Parc de Princes was so emotional like this one by Donovan.  
If a talented writer was to create a screenplay for a soccer movie he wouldn't create a better story.  
Unbelievable !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
I"m speechless !!  
G-D Bless America.  
Paulo  
Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

)

tour de blast: volcano 1, seward park boys + me 1, final

Yesterday was my first Tour de Blast ride, which is a long climb up to the top of Mt. St. Helens and back down again.

At lower elevations, the weather was fine – slightly drizzly, upper 50’s, good climbing weather – and the first 1500-2000 feet of climbing were pretty easy:  Hills and rain are a fact of life in the Northwest, this ride is just more of each packed into one day.  Although the total climbing elevation of 6200’ is more than I’d ever done in a single day before, I was confident I could turtle up the long hills and get back to the bottom before closing time. We started out around 8 a.m.

Things got a bit rougher above 3000’.  I was a few minutes behind my faster friends, and my chain came off and jammed in the front chainrings not once but twice during a climb, nearly causing me to topple over as I had to “clip out” of the clipless pedals fast to avoid falling into other cyclists.  That cost me about ten minutes of mucking about with my chain and rolling back downhill to get things shifting normally again before returning to the ascent.

By the time I got to Elk Rock before 11 a.m. the weather had turned nasty:  It was very foggy with freezing rain and I was soaking wet from rain and sweat and freezing cold.  Riders were huddled under a few small tents trying vainly to warm up.

Thankfully the Seward Park boys had waited a few minutes for me there to tell me they’d decided to turn back, which was good.  The ride organizers were recommending that riders turn back due to crappy weather at altitude.  If I hadn’t run into them, I would have assumed they pushed on and kept going to the top and been frozen and miserable the rest of the way back… thanks for waiting for me Alex!

As it happened we were frozen and miserable on 8-9 miles of the ride back down anyway, as we got pelted with freezing rain for the nine-mile downhill.  I was never so glad to see an uphill again as when we got to the bottom of that hill, so that my limbs and feet could warm up!

I know it sounds awful, doesn’t it?  But on a decent day it would be a fantastically-beautiful ride, with incredible views as you climb the mountain.  We’ll do it again next year if there’s a good weather report beforehand :).

joga bonit-uh-oh: the rise of the turtle teams

the Spain-Switerland first round game has just finished, with Switzerland stunning tournament favorites Spain 1-0, even though Spain had something like 77% of ball posession.  While it’s nice to see the underdogs/little guys win, my friend Alex has a point:  Does it mean boring, defensive-minded football is winning out over the beautiful, flowing game as played by teams such as Brazil or Spain (or the Netherlands if you include “total football” in the definition of “beautiful”)?

Good question.  What the defensive-minded (let’s call them “turtle teams”) do is reduce a game of 100+ meters to centimeters, by putting lots of players between the 5 and 20 yard mark.  Now the flowing, attacking teams have to win a battle of centimeters and make it through a wall of players.  A hot goaltender (like the Swiss keeper today) makes it even harder for attacking teams.

Certainly soccer/football is more enjoyable to watch with the flowing/attacking teams, but the world cup national teams now face a soccer form of “asymmetrical warfare”:  There’s no way most countries can compete with the development system or huge salaries of leagues and players on the big national sides such as Brazil or Spain, so they mark tight , defend like hell and hope for an opportunistic counter-attack or two (our team, the USA, does this too, although we have a few decent offensive-minded players).  Even a top team like Italy is notorious for scoring an early goal and going into a maddening, boring, defensive shell for huge swaths of a game.

I don’t know what the right answer is here.  There’s a yin-yang aspect to team sports, and a really good team should be able to crack open the defense of a turtle team, like Brazil did in their opener versus North Korea.  It’s just harder to do.  We’ll have to trust that good teams can evolve to counter the defensive shell strategy of turtle teams.  That should be watchable in itself.

us-england prediction

Let me first get this out of my system…

 

FOOTY!  WORLD CUP 2010!  Pant!  Pant!

There I feel better now.  I love-love-love the World Cup.  It’s like being a deer in rutting season every four years… hard to think of other things.  In fact, I should be coding right now, but, erm, I’m typing a stupid blog entry.  Ahem.

Now then, down to business!  We (USA) face England tomorrow in our first game.  Drama straight way!

The cold, calculating side of my brain says England 3 – 1 over USA.  Our back line is suspect and they won’t be able to stop Rooney and ‘beanpole’ Crouch, especially with service from the likes of Gerrard and Lampard.  We’ll give up too many set pieces and they’ll convert them.

On the other hand:  Donovan, Dempsey and Altidore have proven they can rise to big occasions (see:  Confederations Cup, Everton loan, Fulham in EPL etc.) and they’re not afraid to run at, well, better teams (see:  Spain, Brazil).  Plus we have Buddle who’s on a hot streak and a natural scorer, and I like Torres and Gomez if they let them on the field tomorrow.  Youth & Speed, Youth and Speed… that could be the undoing of England tomorrow.  Did you watch the Stanley Cup final?  Patrick Kane is all of 21, they’re in OT after a super hard-fought game 6 in Philly, and… the kid looks like he just laced up.  Youth & speed…

Yes I know about Lennon on the England side, but… Imagine there’s no Lennon… it isn’t hard to do…

We can win this game!  Come on you Yanks!

And if we don’t, well I’ll revert back to form and cheer for England as I normally do, being half English n’all.  Either way there’s a cider in it for me tomorrow!

field day

school’s (almost) out… for.. summer!  field day 2010 included face painting and a photo booth.

visualizing the crisis in the gulf

likely this will be the third worst oil spill in history.  The worst was the Arabian Gulf/Kuwait in 1991 – Saddam’s forces deliberately dumping oil into the gulf to thwart landing by American troops, and the second was an offshore well off of Mexico in 1980.

Here is a google spreadsheet with data breakout.  The NYT has a useful interactive graphic.

 

The long-term environmental effect could be catastrophic:

According to NOAA researcher Samantha Joye, the undersea oil poses a direct threat to large marine wildlife, such as fish, sharks and cetaceans, and also to the tiny stuff, including zooplankton, shrimp, corals, crabs and worms. By endangering these latter populations, the foundation of the marine food chain, the oil could have chronic long-term effects on the wider Gulf ecosystem, including the industries -- more shrimp and oysters come from the Gulf than anywhere else in the world -- that rely on them.
Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/gulf-oil-spill-impacts-460610#ixzz0q71CHu5U

what a long bicycle ride looks like

last year I made a post on what a hockey game looks like from a metabolic perspective.  It was very regular and easy to see my shifts and the breaks between periods.

Out of curiosity I decided to do the same today for a long bicycle ride (around most of Lake Washington; the ‘most of’ part being that we returned across Mercer Island and I-90 on the south)

It’s pretty predictable: at about 1:22 is the first break (at Tracy Owen Park), then a snack in Marymoor Park around 2:44, a $%^! bastard of a hill over the three-hour mark, and, um, lunch around 4:45 and then a toodle home :).

Despite what it says, distance was not 0 miles, it was somewhere between 50-60 miles, which means I’m pretty damned slow. But I don’t care.  If bicyclists were sea creatures, I’d be one of the pelagic ones that go great distances rather slowly :).