Sirens on full volume

Weirdness continued, Sunday; the middle game between Algeria and South Korea was also on ABC, and was completely missed.  The late game, though, despite having the US in it, went back to ESPN.  Good for me, but weird, in general.

So I was able to watch it very late, which was much better than not at all.

It started out very poorly for the Americans, with a very poor defensive play by the right back giving Nani an easy goal in the fifth minute (his first goal of the year, across all competitions; I knew he'd had an off year, but didn't realize how much so).

And for a few minutes thereafter, the Americans looked as bad against the Portuguese as they had for most of the Ghana game.

In the fourteenth, there was some contact weirdness.  First, Mereira went down in a really terrible dive, rightly ignored.  But while the staff came out to look at him, Postiga had to leave the field with an injury.  No contact there, so I assume it was a hamstring pull, or something similar.

But the US settled down (important for a team that had never won after surrendering the first goal), and by the 36th minute, possession was only 56-44 in favor of Portugal.  Not to imply that was a big surprise, the US was only finding offense by going over the top.  And their shots were mostly from distance; the only in-close ones were blocked by the defenders.

Shortly after that, we had the first ref-called water break of the tournament that stopped play for a couple of minutes.

In the forty-fifth, Howard was called on to make a pair of saves.  The first he made well, tipping it off the post, but was offbalance, and had to stretch to tip the ball over the net on the second.

I had to laugh, right after that, when stoppage time was announced at two minutes, since there were at least two stoppages that were individually longer than that (Mereira's "injury" and the water break).

But nothing happened during that time, so they went into the half with the US down a goal still.

The second half started with the Portuguese giving the US a bit more room, perhaps to keep their shape at the back better, and prevent shots over the top.  Thinking back on one of the other games, I wonder if stopping the long ball works better by being tighter at the back or pressuring the kicks more.

The US did get a 5-on-2 break in the 51st minute, but Bradley's pass ahead was a half-step behind the forward, and they lost the momentum.  Very disappointing.

Two minutes later, Bradley again did less than well.  He had an open chance two minutes later, with the goalie completely out of position, but shot it directly into the defender, Costa, who was in the goal.  Not his finest moment.

Ronaldo broke free, finally, about six minutes later, but fired the shot high and wide before the defense caught up.

A couple minutes later, the US finally equalized on a shocker.  There was a pretty bad corner kick, but the ball went out to Jones, ten yards outside the box, and a bit off to the left side.  He took it a little bit to his right, then fired a shot around Costa (in good position again) and into the far side of the net.

Play continued pretty even for quite a while, then.  The US finally found some space with a great run down the right hand side in the 81st minute.  Then there were three quick, nice passes, to Bradley to Zusi to Dempsey, going across the goal one way, then back for Dempsey to finish from the near side goal line.

That got the Portuguese to push forward, at one point managing to have five men offsides in one play.

As stoppage time went on, it looked like time was going to run out for Portuguese, but Bradley misplayed a ball at midfield, and the ball got kicked up to Ronaldo, who made a run down the right field side.  From well back, he crossed into the box and hit a diving Varela for the header to tie the game.

Once the celebration was done, the ref only allowed a few seconds of play, so the game ended in a flabbergasting draw.  A second center-back was subbed in in the last minute or so, and he signally failed his only charge.  Disappointing doesn't even begin to cover it.  A win would've cemented the US into moving on, and even given them a good chance to win the group.

Now, they'll need to beat Germany to win the group, though a draw would be good enough to get them into the knockout.  Knowing the riskiness of playing with desperation, I suspect the US and Germany will play a very desultory game, with both teams looking for a draw.

Group of death, pt 1

The Iberian Peninsula was already smarting from Spain's humiliation at the hands of the Dutch, several days ago, when Portugal played Germany yesterday in the so-called Group of Death.

As an unrelated thought, I'm not loving the German jerseys.  The 1990 German World Cup jerseys are probably my favorite jerseys of all time, but I'm at best indifferent to the current ones.

Be that as it may, the game started with Germany taking the ball, and engaging in a very long feeling-out period, where they weren't finding much in the way of openings.  And after a few minutes, it got more even, as Portugal got the ball and fed Ronaldo as much as they could.

He had a couple decent chances, but wasn't getting much in the way of support, while the Germans were maintaining their composure and continuing to push, offensively.

They had one pretty good chance when the Portuguese goalie came out to play the ball, and fed it right to Khedira, just outside of the box.  Sami couldn't put the shot on net, though, so a great chance was wasted.

A few minutes later, Pereira was carded for a foul in the box.  It seemed a pretty obvious foul to me; enough that I was surprised it was only a yellow, but the Portuguese still argued it vociferously.  But it was not retracted, and Mueller got a kick from the spot.  Unsurprisingly, he had no trouble converting, and the Germans started celebrating.

The Portuguese got another chance in the 25th, but Nani put it a hair over the top of the net.

Hummels extended the lead seven minutes later; the defender Alves missed a cross coming off a corner kick, and Hummels came in right behind him to head it into the net.

Five minutes after that was where the train went entirely off the rails for the Portuguese.  Going for a header, Pepe struck Mueller across the mouth (probably accidentally).  Mueller went down, complaining (it probably hurt, but he certainly made the most of it).  The ref didn't immediately make a call at all, so I was very surprised when, a minute later, he was showing Pepe a red card.

The replay showed that Pepe saw Mueller down there holding his jaw, and walked over, put his head against Mueller's, and complained about Mueller's complaint.  Very odd, and complete, loss of composure.

From that point on, the Germans basically had the run of the field.  It took them another eight or nine minutes to score, but they were threatening with regularity by then.  The goal came when Mueller, at the top of the box, blocked an attempted clear, and then kicked it past the surprised goaltender.

And that's pretty much how the second half played out.  The Portuguese had the odd threat by Nani or Ronaldo (both played very good games, despite the rest of the team.  In fact, it was the best game I'd seen by Nani in at least a year), but mostly the Germans were controlling the play and threatening at will.  The only thing really odd was that Ronaldo was never subbed out to prevent injury.

It might have had something to do with Coentrao getting injured in the 65th minute; that used their third substitution.  Hard to say.

In any event, Ronaldo did his best, but it wasn't nearly good enough (nor would anyone's best, I think).

The final score came in the 78th, when a cross by Schuerrle deflected off the goalie's hand, and right to Mueller's feet.  Reacting with impressive speed, Mueller kicked it in without worrying that he'd fall over from the effort.

All in all, an impressive effort from the Germans, and a pretty terrible day for Portugal.  As I said, Ronaldo and Nani looked very good, but the rest of the team was quite bad.

And things don't look great for the Lusitanians, going forward, as Pepe and Coentrao will be unavailable against the Americans (and Coentrao might not be for Ghana, either; I don't believe that is yet known).  Portugal's chances of advancing do not look good.

Germany, on the other hand, should win the group pretty handily, barring them taking someone lightly.  I'll talk about the rest of the group's chances in a bit.

Iberian Intermission

I did catch the first semifinal match tonight (had to watch the recording from the DVR) between Spain and Portugal. Coming in, I should say that I generally do not like Portugal (they used to be complete dive masters. I think they've improved, but I've never really liked them). But I also don't really like Spain that much. To be honest, I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's just because their games are so slow and boring; I think every game I've watched of them (at least in the last couple of years) has been a one-nil victory. And this game was basically more of that. I hadn't seen Ronaldo play in quite a while (with the exception of the Germany/Portugal game early in the tournament, it was a couple of years), so I wasn't sure if he was still in top form. It certainly appeared that he was. For as much as his play used to irritate me (there was never any denying his talent, but he was terrible for diving for a while), he looks like he's grown up quite well. He seemed to be in great shape, and still have soccer as his top priority. I might need to revise my opinion of him. In any event, this game was certainly a snoozefest. The defensive pressure, especially downfield, was quite good. But on the offensive side, there just didn't seem to be much going on, and very little urgency (especially from the Spaniards). The upshot of that was that there were very few chances for either side, and quite a few of the ones that presented themselves were ruined by shots that were just off-target. And, to add insult to injury, my recording gave out in the first overtime again. So I had to wait for Sportscenter to watch the results. I certainly wasn't surprised that it went to PKs, although it did sound like the Spanish found some urgency in the second overtime. I was certainly shocked, though, that Ronaldo didn't factor into the PKs at all. What were they waiting for? Did they really think there were five better shooters on the team? So, anyway, now the Spanish can wait around and see who they'll be playing in the Final. And then we can all find out if they can manage to be the first team to win three Continental/World tournaments in a row. If Germany wins the other semifinal, I'll certainly hope not. If Italy moves on, I'll be torn, but might well get behind the Spaniards for a day. I'm sure one of the Italians has six fingers on his right hand.