Reuters Soccer Blog

Villar success highlights wider malaise

Paraguay goalkeeper Justo Villar could win the vote as player of the Copa America – emulating Oliver Kahn, the Germany keeper named top player at the 2002 World Cup.

If, or when, this happens, regardless of their merits as players, the vote could highlight a deficiency in the football played at the tournament.

Villar captains a team who reached Sunday’s final against Uruguay without winning any of their five matches, even if they scored five goals in three group games.

Paraguay coach Gerardo Martino said in an interview with Reuters in Asuncion in April he felt his team were shaking off the shackles of a tradition of defensive football with strength in the air to achieve a new balance.

Martino hoped to see Paraguay take another step forward from their good World Cup last year and they were 3-1 up against Venezuela going into the 90th minute in their final group match only to end up drawing 3-3 and scraping through as the second of two best third-placed teams.

Having won penalty shootouts against Brazil and Venezuela to reach the final, they could lift the trophy by the same means if Villar and his defence continue with their heroics during 120 minutes and the players follow up with more perfect kicking from the spot.

Not because of this directly, the South American Football Confederation is considering an expansion of the tournament to include six guest teams instead of just two from the Concacaf region of North and Central America and the Caribbean.

Will God be Brazilian in 2014?

“God is Brazilian” is a favourite phrase for Brazilians when fortune smiles on their country.

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva famously uttered it after massive new oil reserves were discovered off the coast in 2007.

Often, it is used with a dose of irony after something turns out right even when circumstances suggested it would or should not — such as a game where Brazil find themselves on the back foot for 89 minutes and then sneak a late winner.

The phrase would also fit perfectly if, having dallied and left preparations to the last possible moment, Brazil pulled off a successful and seamless World Cup in 2014.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter highlighted concerns when he said: “It’s tomorrow, the Brazilians think its just the day after tomorrow.”

He added that Brazil were further behind than predecessors South Africa had been three years before the 2010 tournament.

His comments clearly tweaked Brazilian nerves and drew an angry response from Ricardo Teixeira, who is both head of the Brazilian organising committee and the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF).

Soccer Break Wednesday

Now the international period is over we can focus on domestic issues again, or can we?

Tuesday’s matches provided plenty of drama, from the battles Spain and the Netherlands had to fight to get through tricky Euro 2012 qualifiers, to Ghana’s lighting up of London, to Australia’s World Cup revenge against Germany in a friendly.

Brazil’s two-goal hero against Scotland continues to grab the headlines. Would you be interested in signing the talented 19-year-old Neymar?

For two of Europe’s biggest clubs there is bad news. The strike that could have seen the cancellation of La Liga matches this weekend has been called off, so Real Madrid must play three days before their Champions League quarter-final against Tottenham Hotspur.

Staying with a North London theme, Arsenal could be without striker Robin van Persie after the Netherlands forward was injured against Hungary in the 5-3 thriller. No doubt Arsene Wenger will have something to say so keep your ears open.

And what about Jens Lehmann? Gunners fans…would you trust him in goal over Manuel Almunia?

Some good news now. Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson says the game is developing well in the United States, though there’s always a flip side. After the encouraging 1-1 draw against Argentina on Saturday, the U.S. lost 1-0 to Paraguay on Tuesday.

Soccer Break Monday

Welcome back to another week of digesting the global game, and where better to start than with a look at the Lionel Messi effect on the sport.

The wizard-like Argentine is a joy to watch and by playing in countries such as the United States, where soccer is not the main sport, he can only have increased enthusiasm for the round ball game.

The U.S. will also face world champions Spain in June.

In Europe, while Spain huffed and puffed and finally blew the Czech Republic’s door down for a 2-1 win in Granada with yet another mesmerising display of quick passing, there was little else to go crazy about.

In fact, UEFA president Michel Platini fears that Euro 2012 qualifiers are becoming a little boring, and he is concerned that players look forward more to Champions League matches than internationals.

Brazil were another big name to take to the field and win at the weekend but despite their 2-0 loss at the hands of the five-times World Cup winners, Scotland’s Charlie Adam said his team had learnt some valuable lessons.

Other people who could be a taught a lesson are the laser users at the Wales-England match and the fans who were noisy during the minute silence for the Japan earthquake and tsunami victims at the U.S.-Argentina game.

Scotland on their way back to London, but England match must wait a while

Scotland’s soccer team return to London for the first time since 1999 at the end of this month — but they won’t be playing England at Wembley.

Instead they will face five-times world champions Brazil in a high profile friendly at the Emirates Stadium which should be filled close to its 60,000 capacity.

If that game goes ahead without trouble — which is the most likely outcome — it could give added impetus to the English FA’s plans to host a one-off “home international” series in 2013 to mark their 150th anniversary.

That could then mark Scotland’s return to Wembley for the first time since the stadium was re-opened four years ago.

The game against Brazil though, and Scotland’s return to London, evoke memories of the days when Scotland were regular visitors to Wembley, playing England there in alternate years in the world’s oldest international series that began in 1872.

The reasons why the matches ended after the short-lived Rous Cup in 1989 following the demise of the Home Championship between the four British nations in 1984, have been well documented down the years.

Questions began to be asked after the 1977 game at Wembley when Scottish fans rioted after a 2-1 victory, demolishing the goalposts and wreaking havoc on the Underground and in central London.

Farewell Ronaldo, one of the game’s greats

Ronaldo has just made the official announcement that he is to retire with immediate effect, bringing to an end one of the great soccer stories.

The 34-year-old Brazilian announced his decision at a news conference in Sao Paulo a few moments ago, after concluding that the battle for fitness — always a bruising struggle — was one he could no longer win.

I suspect a few people will react by shrugging their shoulders and saying they didn’t even know he was still playing but the end of the road for such a great player deserves marking properly, so here’s an appreciation by our own Brian Homewood, for many years our correpondent in Rio de Janeiro.

By Brian Homewood

Three times World Player of the Year, twice World Cup winner and overall topscorer in the tournament’s history – not a bad record for a player who suffered three serious knee injuries and was constantly fighting weight problems.

Ronaldo was often mocked for his extra kilos and not  even the country’s president could resist the temptation to have a dig.

During a video conference with the team on the eve of the 2006 World Cup, after Ronaldo had weighed in at 95 kilos for the training camp, then President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked: “And what about Ronaldo, is he fat or isn’t he?”

Where does benchwarmer Ronaldinho go from here?

AC Milan are flying high at the top of Serie A but Ronaldinho is stuck to the bench with Massimiliano Allegri-branded glue.

The struggling Brazilian has started once in the last nine games and that was in the lacklustre 2-0 home defeat by Ajax Amsterdam, Milan’s only loss during the spell.

Most soccer fans outside Italy have probably never heard of Milan boss Allegri, plucked out of relative obscurity at Cagliari, but he has certainly made a name for himself in Serie A by deciding his side would be better off without carrying a player who may be Silvio Berlusconi’s favourite but whose powers have long since faded.

It is now a case Ronaldinhoinhoinho such is the forward’s diminutive status in Milan’s grand plan.

Along with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Allegri has re-energised the Rossoneri and after going six points clear they now look big favourites for a first scudetto since 2004 – thus ending Inter Milan’s five-year reign, 

New signings Kevin Prince Boateng, Robinho and Ibra scored in that order for the second straight league game in Sunday’s 3-0 win at Bologna, leading newspapers to parody Ronaldinho with a new dream-laden moniker – Boatinhovic.

The trio, the January return to fitness of Alexandre Pato and Allegri’s call for a new signing in the transfer window to replace the injured Filippo Inzaghi mean Ronaldinho’s future at the San Siro looks bleak.

Premature move for Swiss prodigy Ben Khalifa?

The Swiss Super League is certainly not the strongest in the world but it’s a fairly safe bet to say that it beats the German fourth division. So why has 18-year-old Nassim Ben Khalifa, one of Switzerland’s most exciting prospects, swapped the former for the latter?

Last year, Ben Khalifa hit the headlines when he led the attack in the Swiss team which surprised everyone by winning the world under-17 championship in Nigeria.

He was runner-up in the vote for the best player of the tournament and also scored four goals. Back home, he was a regular first-team player in his debut professional season for Grasshoppers, scoring eight goals as he helped them finish third in the table.

In the midst of all this, German Bundesliga outfit VfL Wolfsburg stepped him and snapped him up for the 2010-2011 season. Yet they appear to have little intention of fielding him any time soon. Ben Khalifa told Swiss media this week that he is fifth or sixth in the strikers’ pecking order and would have to fight for his place with Edin Dzeko and Grafite, the two players who have topped the Bundesliga scoring charts in the last two seasons.

For the time being, this means that Ben Khalifa is turning out for the reserve team VfL Wolfsburg II, who play in Regional League North, the fourth tier of German professional football. This has also had a knock-on effect with his Switzerland career — having made his full international debut against Austria in August, Ben Khalifa will be with the under-21 team this weekend rather than travelling with the seniors for the Euro 2012 qualifier in Montenegro.

Switzerland coach Ottmar Hitzfeld says he made the decision due to Ben Khalifa’s lack of match practice.

It hardly seems like a move forward. Yet the story is typical of many promising young players from Latin America, Africa and the smaller European nations. They move abroad to a bigger league in their late teens, get shunted into the reserves and are barely heard of again.

Just how important is the World Cup?

 No other sporting event has the same impact as the World Cup. Entire countries grind to a halt to watch games, no more so than Brazil where shopping and banking hours are completely altered throughout the tournament month and many just take an official month-long holiday. Politicians jump on the bandwagon, making a big thing of how much they are supporting the team, and launch government inquiries when their teams fail.

Entire reputations can be shattered as Juan Sebastian Veron discovered in 2002, when he was vilified for Argentina’s first-round exit, and Ronaldo experienced four years later when some saw as excess kilos around his waist became an affair of state and were blamed for Brazil’s quarter-final elimination.

Paraguay’s Oscar Cardozo was inconsolable after missing a penalty against Spain on Saturday and the floods of tears in the Brazil dressing-room team after quarter-final defeat by Netherlands said everything about how much defeat means to them.

Like many of his colleagues, Brazil coach Dunga had spent four years planning and preparing for South Africa. All that work was undone in 20 minutes when the Dutch scored twice and Brazil had Felipe Melo – who is almost certain to have his career permanently tarnished – sent off.

Former Brazil striker Tostao, who played alongside Pele in the 1970 team, believes that we may be attaching too much importance to a one-month long tournament.

“In spite of the importance of a World Cup for the players and for the national teams, it doesn’t make good sense to define concepts and plan the future because of a tournament which lasts only seven matches, four of which are sudden death,” he wrote in the Folha de Sao Paulo.

“The best team is the one which was the best this month. If they held another World Cup one month later, the results would be different.

Reuters World Cup 2010 podcast — quarter-finals (II)

Listen!

Join us for a look back at the extraordinary first two quarter-finals at the World Cup and a look forward to Germany v Argentina and Spain v Paraguay. Paul Radford, Felix Bate, Jon Bramley and Kevin Fylan argue over the merits of penalty goals in soccer and consider Ghana’s desperate misfortune.