And for the Other Cup

I always love it when the World Cup comes around. The excitement, and the level of play, are both usually unbelievable.

Of course, it was a failure to continue that level of play that led to the US managing a draw (actually, some were calling it a 1-1 victory, which I'm not entirely sure I disagree with). To some degree, I feel sorry for Green. I don't know what happened there; I suspect a lapse of concentration, but I've no idea what caused it. The only other thing I want to say about that game is that the US did a really good job of controlling the midfield in the first half of that game; they had a number of really nice passing sequences. Now if only they hadn't had those defensive lapses...

What has struck me so far, though, is mostly just how low-scoring the tournament has been. Only three teams have managed more than one goal, and two of those only got two.

One of the commentators made a comment about how it had been a terrible 24 hours for goaltenders, with the Green goal, and then one that was only a little bit better (Slovenia's, maybe?). But even with those two, it was still very low-scoring to that point. At that point, only one team had managed more than one, and them only two.

Even after Germany's four-goal outburst (and man, that Aussie defensive back line looked bad in that game. I've never seen so many breaks that got behind the defenders), there have still only been 17 goals in 11 games. That's about 3/4s of a goal per team, per game. I'm too lazy to go back and look at previous tournaments, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's about half of the normal average.

I guess we'll see if Brazil, Portugal, and Spain break things open.