The Ivory Coast won their first match of the 2012 African Cup of Nations today, a 1-0 defeat of Sudan with Didier Drogba scoring the lone goal. Shockingly, Gervinho rocketed a few over the crossbar. And he’s usually so clinical…
Curious as to their current FIFA ranking and who else might likely put up a fight against the Elephants, I looked it up. Learning that they rank 18th internationally didn’t surprise, but the fact that only 5 other African countries make up the top 50 did.
Then I looked up the past few winners of the cup. 2010, Egypt. 2008, Egypt. 2006, Egypt. 2004, Tunisia.
Egypt? For three tournaments running?
More current Ivory Coast players have played for Arsenal in the past two years than I could even name on the Egypt national team. Actually, anyone I named on the Egypt national team would be a guess–I don’t know any player for certain who is Egyptian.
(I just looked up the current team roster–I recognize nary a name. I somewhat remember Zaki for Hull City, but he’s been dropped from the most recent squad.)
The Ivory Coast didn’t light the world on fire in either the 2006 or 2010 World Cups. They failed to make it out of the group stages of either one, incidentally the only two for which they’ve ever qualified.
Do Les Éléphants choke when it really comes down to it, or will this year finally be the year? Egypt didn’t even qualify for this year’s Cup–the top spot is wide open!
It’s Super Sunday due to the two big EPL North London-Manchester games, but there’s also a couple interesting La Liga matchups and an relevant Eredivisie matchup today:
Manchester City still have their 100% home record in the league, having won all 10 of their fixtures at the City of Manchester I mean massively overpriced sponsorship with financial shenanigans definitely going on Etihad Stadium – but their last two games there have ended in defeat – against United in the FA Cup, and Liverpool in the Carling Cup. The absence of Yaya Toure, who is representing the Cote D’Ivoire at the Africa Cup of Nations, has weakened the City midfield, giving Tottenham an opportunity to dominate in the middle of the park. However, Spurs will be without Emanuel Adebayor up front – he is on loan from Manchester City and thus is ineligible to play against his parent club. Harry Redknapp, who tax evasion case goes to trial the day after the match, will be hoping that Rafael Van der Vaart and Jermain Defoe will be able to join forces and lead the line, having been competing with each other for a single place in the starting lineup all season. If Bale on the left and Lennon on the right-wing can get behind the City full backs – Micah Richards and Gael Clichy – then Tottenham will have a great chance at putting the home team under pressure – but they will need to be less wasteful with their chances than they were in the draw with Wolves last week.
England, Arsenal-Manchester United (10:30amET Fox main network, tape at 5pmET on FSC): Despite Arsenal slipping back down the table over the past few weeks, out of contention for the title, this is still a marquee matchup. There’s the history of course–the recent history that Arsenal will seek to avenge today; and before that, the acrimonious clashes of the past two decades.
Finally, if that’s not enough footy for you, and if you don’t have Barcelona/Madrid fatigue (don’t forget the 2nd leg of their Copa del Rey tie is this coming Wednesday, back at the Camp Nou), the Big Two in Spain actually have potentially tricky fixtures today:
Spain, Malaga-Barcelona (12pmET GolTV): Yet another non-trivial away fixture for Barça. The Qatari-funded Malaga project hasn’t been entirely successful so far, although they did threaten to knock off Real Madrid a couple weeks ago, before a goalkeeper howler doomed them. The player to watch for Malaga is Spanish international midfielder Santi Cazorla.
Spain, Real Madrid-Athletic Bilbao (3:30pmET ESPN3.com, tape at 7 p.m. on ESPN Deportes): We are fascinated by the Bielsa-Bilbao project. Will they press Madrid at the Bernabeu? How will Madrid respond after last Wednesday’s demoralizing loss? Players to watch for Athletic–if we might be so solipsistic as to blockquote ourselves (from our preview of November’s fantastic Bilbao-Barcelona match):
Fernando Llorente up front, at “la punta” of the attack, a player who has won 19 caps playing for Spain (including an appearance in South Africa for the World Cup-winning side); “the highly exciting 18-year-old Iker Muniain,” who seems to play in an attacking midfield role; and behind him in central midfield the 23-year old Javi Martinez
And if you’re a lover of the Italian game, here’s a Serie A match for good measure:
Italy, Inter Milan-Lazio (2:30pmET. FSC, ESPN3.com)
Klinsman's system is beginning to click, and after dominating play throughout it was the Bundesliga's Jermaine Jones and Ricardo Clark who connected on the winning goal.
None of today’s matches are necessarily must-see; but if you must watch some football, here’s what we recommend:
Saturday, Jan 21
England, Norwich-Chelsea (7:30amET ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Norwich (and Swansea) have attracted attention as newly-promoted sides that have fought their way into the top half the table. So this could be a tricky fixture for Chelsea–especially as Drogba has left for the African Cup of Nations. On the other hand, maybe this will finally be the match that Fernando Torres scores for the Blues? More successful Spaniards in the side have been the young Juan Mata (from Valencia) and the even younger Oriol Romeu (from Barcelona). The Guardian’s Dominic Fifield has an interview with Romeu in today’s paper: “Oriol Romeu likes ‘hard football’ and feels at home at Chelsea: The new boy at Stamford Bridge believes he is more of an English player than a typical product of Barcelona.” Excerpts:
Five months into his career in England, Chelsea’s boy from Barcelona already feels an integral part of the club’s evolution. The Spaniard should make his ninth Premier League start at Norwich tomorrow and will diligently set about his duties: pressing, shielding, setting the tempo from the base of a three-man midfield, offering protection aplenty. There will be no fuss and little extravagance. Merely industry. Most players prised from Camp Nou would have supporters drooling but Romeu’s game is about efficiency, not flamboyance. He is the closest thing Chelsea have had to a Claude Makelele since the Frenchman himself.
[…]
Barça accepted his departure grudgingly, insisting on having first refusal, at $10m (£8.3m) next summer and $15m in 2013, should Chelsea decide to sell. The potential exists for Chelsea to endure their very own Cesc Fábregas “Catalonia calling” saga – Romeu spent time at Espanyol’s academy before moving to La Masia – though not at those relatively meagre prices. The clause was a reflection of Romeu’s ability, even if he remained a raw talent. Luis Enrique, his Barcelona B coach, had praised his workaholic attitude rather than any slick passing ability. The local press christened a muscular player “the bulldozer”, yet, in the helter-skelter Premier League, his game has been more about anticipation and positioning than fearsome tackling. They clearly even boast a better class of bulldozer in Barcelona.
Spain, Real Betis-Sevilla (4pmET ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Extend your knowledge of La Liga beyond the big two. Sid Lowe had good things to say about Real Betis on last Monday’s Guardian Football Weekly pod, after they’d pressed Barcelona at Camp Nou and gone up 2-0..before ultimately losing 2-0. Sevilla is a team we’re partial to–players to watch include Spanish internationals Jesús Navas and Álvaro Negredo in attack, and that longtime Sevilla stalwart, Malian midfielder Frédéric Kanouté. From Sid Lowe’s March 2011 column about how Sevilla battled Barcelona to a draw–“a result of Frederic Kanouté’s brilliance“:
“Kanouté,” said Guardiola, “gave them the pausa they needed.” Kanouté, said Santi Giménez in AS, “is a spectacular, elegant, stupendous player who turned the game round.” It was classic Kanouté: smooth and skilful, never in a hurry. Intelligent and eloquent, strikingly mild for a sportsman, he’s the striker, playmaker and footballer many Sevilla supporters think is the best signing they have ever made (Alves permitting); the man who gave over €300,000 (£260,000) to prevent a local mosque from closing and played with masking tape over the 888.com on his Sevilla shirt because he did not want to advertise a bookmaker. The man who scored in the Uefa Cup final in 2006 when Sevilla won their first major trophy in almost 60 years, he also got the winning goal in the Copa del Rey final and scored in the Uefa Cup final, the following season.
Kanouté is 6ft 3in and weighs 13½ stone. The pity has been that there was not always that little bit more of him. In 2006-07, he missed six games and started a further two on the bench but still scored 21 goals. In the campaign in which Sevilla won the Copa del Rey and the Uefa Cup as well, by the end he was running on empty. Sevilla went into the final day with a chance of winning the title but knowing that they probably wouldn’t. It was a tragedy that they did not take the title: the last genuine challenge to the top two. What ultimately cost them were the eight 0-0 draws over the course of the season – six of which came in the last 18 matches and two of which Kanouté was absent for. In the others, he might as well have been.
Seeing Kanouté be brilliant but brittle is nothing new. But this is another step again. Kanouté is 33 now. It was no coincidence that he started on the bench; or that he has started fewer than half of Sevilla’s games this season. He may not be able to give much more. This felt like a last waltz from a truly great player. And that’s a huge challenge for the club. Like Alves, will they find him irreplaceable?
Friendly, USA-Venezuela (9pmET Galavision, ESPN3.com): We’re not sure who Klinsmann will be lining up for this one–just MSL-based players? And even then, no Donovan since he’s Merseyside for a couple months.
We watched Wednesday’s Clásico in its entirety with spirited company at WoodworkBK. We had the sense then that Barcelona slowly took control after the early goal by Cristiano Ronaldo, and that Pepe was terrible. Watch this extended highlight clip, which should reinforce the conclusions that (a) Barcelona completely dominated after about the 25′ mark, and (b) Pepe was a complete embarrassment–and not only for the already-infamous Messi hand stamp:
Pepe actually hurt Madrid with his play, and his theatrics yesterday matched those of Busquets last spring. He got that an yellow (~16′) for a gratuitous and cheap foul on Busquets deep in Barcelona’s half, and should have got a 2nd yellow for either his playacting at 64′ after Cesc outplayed him for the ball (listen to the Sky Sports commentators), and then of course the handstamp at 67′. So really Madrid should’ve been a man down for the last 25mins. Mourinho finally had to sub him off a little after that.
Even more significantly, he was completely rooted to the ground while Puyol streaked past him to score Barça’s first goal on that diving header at the beginning of the 2nd half.
It seems like he lost it mentally b/c he was getting outplayed all over the field–he’s just not that good on the ball, and not quick enough to contain Barcelona in midfield..
It will be interesting to see if Mourinho sticks with him after this.
Also: it looks like Carvalho was a fraction of a second pulling forward and kept Abidal onside for Barça’s 2nd goal. And then the Portuguese central defender had two really bad tackles in the final minutes of the match: one on Messi that got him a yellow, and a 2nd on Adriano in extra time that prob should’ve seen him ejected.
After a month’s hiatus (due primarily to an extended internet-free trip to India–see below), we’re back with a TV guide to the weekend. As usual, we provide US TV listings with ET kickoffs, since that’s where we reside. For our non-US readers, we’ve included a link to livesoccertv.com for each match.
Check back in over the course of the weekend, as we’ll post our Saturday and Sunday selections. But since our first selection kicks off in less than an hour, we’re posting now:
Friday, Jan 20
Germany,Borussia Moenchengladbach-Bayern Munich (2:30pmET GolTV): A good matchup in the Bundesliga’s Friday Night Lights offering. They’re just returning to action this weekend in Germany, after the longest holiday break in Europe. In fact, Bayern Munich took a little training trip to Asia earlier this month–some training and a friendly match in Doha, followed by a friendly in India–and they happened to land in Delhi while we were there. We’ll write that up in a separate post. For now, we’ll note that Munich is back to full strength–Bastian Schweinsteiger returned to the lineup in their friendly against the Indian national team, with Heynckes playing his top XI against the Indians (with the sole exception of Ribery, who came on in the 2nd half): Neuer, Boateng, Badstuber, Lahm, Kroos, Robben, Tymoshchuk, Schweinsteiger, Rafinha, Gomez, Muller.
On the other side, the only Moenchengladbach player we’ve heard of is Marco “Rolls” Reus–read this column by Guardian Bundesliga correspondent Raphael Honigstein: ‘Rolls Reus’ is the latest star off Germany’s production line. He’s definitely a player to watch. Since the fall all Bundesliga-watchers were well-aware it would be difficult to for Moenchengladbach to hang on to him. Wrote Honigstein back in October: “Reus, or ‘Rolls Reus’ as Bild has started calling him, was being genuinely targeted in the spring by Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich, Arsenal and Manchester United.” And in doing our pregame research for this match, we just learned he will move to the other Borussia this summer, after having spurned Bayern.
Actually we also just came across mention of another Moenchengladbach player to watch: Brazilian defender Dante, who was just praised by Bayern’s Heynckes. Uh oh..
After watching the second half of yesterday’s Clasico, I’m beginning to see Mourinho as Salieri to Guardiola’s Mozart. When a team of Madrid’s caliber gets schooled and forced into errant passes and frantic individual dribbles on offense and desperate tackles on defense, huffing shadow-chasing and hapless outreached hands pleading for offside calls that won’t come, the opposition must be touched by the divine; the divine stringing of passes, la pelota always kept just a fleeting inch away from Madrid’s lunging cleats, and importantly, the divine total defense, which at one point saw Özil attempting to dribble into the box only to be surrounded by seven (7!!) claret and blue shirts.
That is the intensity of Barca’s defensive strategy, immediate ganging up on the person with the ball, so that even if an opponent manages to dribble past one, or two, they never have the time to look for the pass because there will immediately be the third, and then its back to eluding the first again. Barca’s players attack at a leisurely tiki-taka pace, and save their bursts of speed for reclaiming the ball. This zealous, jealous demand for the return of the ball is as much part of the secret of their possession as it is their immaculate passing.
I want to see a team really try to take Barca on with their own style, pass for pass, tik for tak, rather than Mourinho’s vainglorious attempt to find an alternative way, trying fire against water, then air and iron, his mad doomed search for an antidote when perhaps what he needs is a vaccine?
Yet another Clásico–the two Spanish superpowers meet again today, in what will be their 8th battle in the past 9 months (see table below). Real Madrid hosts Barcelona at the majestic Estadio SantiagoBernabéu, for the first leg of their Copa del Rey quarterfinal tie. Kickoff is at a very Spanish 10pm in Madrid, which corresponds to 4pmET/1pmPT here in the US (where ESPN Deportes and GolTV will be televising the match, and ESPN3.com will be streaming it live; see livesoccertv.com for additional TV listings).
But the “yet” is telling–after all those intensely anticipated and intensely played matches over the past year, even we have Clásico fatigue. It does seem like the buildup to this one is muted compared to the previous matches, perhaps because it’s a Copa del Rey quarterfinal. The domestic cup competition is certainly a distant third in importance to these teams, far behind the Champions League and La Liga titles. It’s one thing if these two were meeting in a one-off final for the Copa, as they did last April, in what turned out to be a thrilling match (see our detailed breakdown of the film from that match here and here). But for them to have to meet twice more in the quarterfinals just seems a bit..unseemly.
That Copa del Rey victory was Madrid’s sole sucess in recent memory in this rivalry. Consider the run of results over the past few years, stretching back to the beginning of Pep Guardiola’s reign, which started in the summer of 2008, when Barcelona let Frank Rijkaard go and promoted Josep up from managing the B team (annotated with links to previous CultFootball posts about certain of the matches):
Confirming that Clásico fatigue has set in, on this past Monday’s Guardian Football Weekly podcast Sid Lowe called in from Spain to the crew in London, as he usually does to commentate on all matter relating to Spanish football. Listen from the 29′ minute mark–he first reports on Madrid and Barcelon’s recent less-than-stellar recent form. Madrid came from behind last weekend to win 2-1 against lowly Mallorca, via goals from Higuain and Callejón (more on Callejón below). Meanwhile Barcelona were down 2-0 at home against Real Betis before ultimately winning 4-2 (and that after they’d points earlier this month in a yet another draw against local rivals Espanyol in the Catalan derby), and slips in this interesting analysis: “Betis were great..Betis really went for Barcelona. I think they showed that if you put pressure on Barcelona high up, and you get at those players who quite aren’t so good at bringing the ball out and maintaining possession, in particular because Pique wasn’t playing, then you can actually cause Barcelona some problems.” We’re curious who “those players” refers to–Mascherano? In any case, Pique is expected to be back in the traditional center back pair with Puyol, so it’s a moot point for today’s match–but something to keep in mind.
He’s then asked about today’s Clásico, and replies that even in Spain there’s a bit of weariness with respect to this match: “there is a very slight sense of–I don’t if I’d call it boredom, I don’t think it’s quite boredom–but a sort of tiredness of the Clásico.” Then Sid says–just as his dog starts barking, as it curiously almost always does at some point during his calls from Spain–that Casillas was quoted as saying the rivalry has become “decaffeinated when the teams play each other too often.”
Will Casillas compañera Sara Carbonero need a (caffeinated) café con leche to stay awake for today's Clasico?
Well, today’s decaffeinated match, most eyes will of course be on Messi and Ronaldo. As well they should be. But a soccer team is really a complex system. Certainly there are moments of individual brilliance, especially, as we’ve seen, from players like Messi and Ronaldo. But those moments have to happen within the context of the team. So watch Messi–but watch his movement off the ball as well as on it, and watch his combinations with Xavi and Iniesta especially. Further deep, watch Busquest–probably the least-liked Barca player, but an essential one. He’ll drop deep at times, into the center of defense with Pique and Puyol (especially when the wingback, Dani Alves and likely Adriano, get forward for width in attack); he’ll be called on to intercept and tackle to break up the opposition’s attack; and he’ll initiate the Barcelona moves forward, combining as well with Xavi and Iniesta in the center.
On the opposite side, it sounds like Sami Khedira (defensive/holding midfielder) and Angel di Maria (attacking winger) are out for Madrid due to injury. They are key players for Madrid, but the Galacticos have talent in reserve. We’ll likely see Ozil in the center ahead of Lass Diarra and enforcer Pepe (they’ll be tasked with trailing and tackling Messi), with Ronaldo on one wing and youngster José Callejón on the other. Callejón slipped into the starting lineup in Madrid’s latter, largely meaningless Champions League group stage matches–and started scoring at such a clip that he’s continued to start. He’s 24 years old, came up through the Madrid youth system, but then went to Catalonia for a 3-year stint with Espanayol, before returning to the fold this summer.
