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Meaningless but enjoyable. Badges!
Which is this Summer, which is almost over, and lately I’ve thought about the passage of time. 50, what I number! I’ll hit it next Spring, not quite there yet. This morning Stevie Wonder’s great Reggae Woman came on the radio as I was driving TS1 to work and I realized that came out 36 years ago. Born to Run turned 35 last week.
35, 36 years, those are long chunks of time. But what does it mean? Or rather, is a long passage of time something our puny human minds can truly comprehend? I can put two similar colors next to each other and see the difference. I can listen to different bunches of white guys doing the same song, say KISS or Bruce and hear the difference. Those links go to versions of The Crystal’s Then She Kissed Me, by the way, since I love rock and roll covers of pop tunes.
Time is (qualitatively) different and to answer my own question I don’t think we’re set up to grok it. The reason may lie in the very deep cosmological theories, some of which appear to say that time is actually an illusion or at least a second order phenomena emerging from the way our limited senses interact with reality. On the other hand the problem might be simpler, that unlike most everything else we experience we cannot directly see, hear, touch, smell or feel time. The real answer would be interesting to me but isn’t needed here.
Think back to some experience you had ten years ago. Summer of 2000, before the reality of the dotcom implosion hit. I went to Italy with my Dad for two weeks, we had a terrific time and I still enjoy recalling visits to Agrigento and Pompeii.
Now think about something that happened to you 30 years ago, Summer 1980. I was between freshman and sophomore years of college, home in New Jersey before transferring to USC, working for Harry M. Stevens at Giants Stadium a few nights a week and for Murjani weekdays.
For me both these experiences are a long time ago but honestly I cannot qualitatively separate them. Intellectually I know 20 years passed between them and I can think of the things that happened during that span but unlike the Springsteen and Kiss versions of the song I cannot really feel any difference along the time axis.
50 years is a nice round number and I hope to experience many more years, no doubt, but I don’t expect this to change even if I make it to 100.
Does time feel the same to you?
Had a great mini-family get together yesterday at my cousin Andrea’s house. She brought out a couple of photo albums and had my grandparent’s wedding photo, so I took my own picture of it:
This is one signing I like! And very glad to see that the rumor that swirled up when Hodgson was about to jon the club came true. I felt that Cole was poorly used at Chelsea (and for England too), particularly after Mourinho left. With StevieG announcing today he’s staying I’m feeling good about our attack for the coming season.
Joe looks good in the new white kit too
Joe Cole at his 1st training with the Reds
In this World Cup, as in past tournaments, referees have made numerous, game-changing poor decisions on goals and possible goals. Tevez scoring from offside against Mexico, Dempsey ruled offside against Algeria, Lampard’s tying goal against Germany not being over the line are just three examples from this time around.
Just as in the past calls have come in again for technical assistance to be adopted and just as in the past FIFA are saying no. FIFA decided in March that technical solutions will disrupt the flow of play or cost too much to be deployed at all levels of competition and using them only at the national team and professional competitions will rupture the universality of play. After the round of 16, with the disallowed English goal, the possibility of using two goal line assistant referees, as trialled in this past season’s Europa League, was allowed as a future change.
Let’s separate technical assistance into two options: instant replay and sensors. Instant replay has not worked well in the NFL but somewhat better in the NHL. Regardless of the quality of the decisions in both leagues the decisions simply take too long but since the broadcasts can go to commercials, which would otherwise require TV timeouts, there’s some relief. I agree with FIFA leadership, though, that with currently available systems instant replay would be too disruptive to play in soccer.
Sensors are another story and I think FIFA are missing an opportunity here. I’m sure the cost of the recent systems with which they did experiments are quite high but their mistake was going to the big sports equipment makers for the solutions. Instead, FIFA should open an X Prize-like competition to spur development of inexpensive, open source hardware and software.
The software, especially, should be open source, not only to get a lower price tag but also to ensure against tampering and other malicious interference. One has only to look at the recent troubles with electronic voting software for a good comparable.
Additionally, the software system can be strengthened by running a master copy server and requiring a fresh copy be downloaded to the game server just prior to kickoff. The download can be validated by a one time key or biometrics.
Given the near universal appeal of soccer even among geeks I think this prize competition would be enormously popular and in fact drive improvement in sensor software and results processing for many uses beyond sport as well.
So Sepp, what do you say?
Liverpool FC today announced that Roy Hodgson has joined the club from Fulham as the new manager and I’m pleased at his selection. He famously rescued the London squad from the brink of relegation and took them to the Europa League finals just weeks ago. Amusingly while our former manager took the Inter Milan job, our new boy is a former Inter Milan manager.
Hodgson’s first job is to settle three of our top stars before they bolt. Rumors abound that Chelsea, Man City, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Inter Milan are all willing to pay big money for one or more of Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres and Javier Macherano and that Masch at least is interested in going. If the Reds are to get back to the top four this coming season we cannot really afford to lose even one of them. Fabio Aurelio has already been shown the door and though not a great fullback he did add needed depth to the squad, while Chelsea will be taking Yossi Benayoun after the transfer window opens.
Roy is quite a contrast from Rafa, temperamentally and tactically. Though strong in his self-belief I’ve rarely seen or read of Hodgson showing strong negative emotions publicly while Rafa has no problem letting off steam. Working with, let’s face it, a good but less talented squad, Hodgson matched his lineup and match planning to the opponent while Rafa (when players were healthy) adhered to his own rotation system and on the road at least almost always set out a 4-5-1 defense-oriented formation.
Hodgson has also been good at getting value for money in player purchases. His former club will likely turn large profits selling on Brede Hangelund, Mark Schwarzer and Bobby Zamora this summer, to give three recent exemplars.
If our three stars stay and stay healthy, as all missed big chunks of the ’09-10 season, and the net talent inflow exceeds the outflow I think the prospects are bright. Hello Roy, shows us what you can do!
Real sports fans are never satisfied or happy when the team they support goes home without winning the competition. The heart wants what the heart wants, no matter what the head may say–you may not expect to win but that’s a different thing altogether.
So I’ve mixed emotions after Saturday’s round of 16 loss to Ghana. Four years ago we left Germany after the group stage with one point, a serious disappointment after nearly reaching the semi-finals in 2002. Winning our group for the first time in 80 years was great and after the Algeria win my hopes were raised for a deep run as in last Summer’s Confederations Cup. Ghana seemed beatable and if we did that, well, the Uruguay-South Korea winner was a decent possibility.
All that was dashed in six minutes after kickoff. Ricardo Clark gave up the ball inside the USA half and there went another early hole to dig out of, which he complimented with a useless, well-earned yellow next time he was on defense. If Bob Bradley made one obvious mistake in South Africa it was starting Clark in this match; Alexei Lalas (I think) said in the pre-game that Bradley must have seen something in the last practice we don’t know about because his first stage play didn’t earn him the spot. Maurice Edu, who came on for Clark after 30 minutes anyway, should have started.
Anyway, back to the opening topic. We won our group, got a result against England and overall had a stronger tournament than several perennial powers*. Landon Donovan was outstanding and Michael Bradley had, statistically, one of the best group stage performances of any player and both should make big money transfers after the tournament. We suffered (for the third straight Cup) from several astoundingly bad referee calls. We weren’t 100% healthy, with the fire power of Charlie Davies and Brian Ching missing out.
All good things or reasonable explanations for why it isn’t us playing Uruguay later this week.
Yet I’m still not satisfied since we could’ve and should’ve done better. There were no terrible decisions by the referee Saturday, except he might have more aggressively policed the time wasting. Ghana earned their goals and we couldn’t break through for the winner after Landon’s PK evened the line. It may have been his first significant mistake of the tourney but Bob Bradley put Clark out in place of Edu. Frankly I would’ve been okay with Clark if Bennie Feilhaber also started and Robbie Findlay sat.
In the post-match press conference a reporter asked Bradley if he thought he’d be at the helm in Brazil in four years. The answer was the usual ‘not my decision’ mishmash, of course, but that some people think seriously that Bradley’s six years are enough surprised this fan. I would not replace him. Bob has delivered a lot, certainly done a better job than his predecessor Bruce Arena, and has worked well to bring along younger players. The team’s average age is just under 27 (26.8) and when you consider that Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Steve Cherundulo, Jay Demerit and Marcus Hahnemann are well over 30 (Howard, actually is still considered young for a keeper) the future looks bright. Bradley is barely 50 years old himself.
* France were a bad Jerry Lewis joke. Italy lacked the creativity in attack and finishing up top that brought them the 2006 trophy. England were mostly a collection of stars, quite surprising after running through their qualification group. Denmark, Switzerland, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Japan are not perennial powers but expected at least by many to do better than USA.
My Tournament Grading
Jonathan Bornstein played above expectations for the second straight match after Oguchi Onyewu missed out apparently due to injury (at least according to Ives, as I’ve yet to see any official explanation) and Carlos Bocanegra had to shift into central defense.
Other than JB the American defense was just not good enough in the last match. Tim Howard should have stopped at least one of the two goals, if not both, and (Clark’s giveaway aside) Bocanegra and Demerit were inadequate on both. Steve Cherundulo was very good going forward and very good at clogging up his side of the width the first three games but couldn’t deliver what was needed Saturday.
Landon and Michael Bradley were our two best players and both scored very nice goals. Clint Dempsey was pretty good but perhaps the constant fouls on him and the long Europa League run with Fulham took too much as he didn’t show enough energy in the loss. Ricardo Clark was a disappointment, I was a big fan of his when he played for the Earthquakes and Dynamo in MLS. Feilhaber and Edu should always have been playing instead of him. Jose Torres was given minutes and the coach was right to not give him more.
Jozy Altidore–our youngest player, remember–showed he learned a lot about being the target man at Hull, poor as his results with that club may have been, and I think a Premier League team will buy his contract next month. Hercule Gomez was good but whether it was lack of service or opportunities didn’t live up to his supersub reputation. Other people seem more impressed by Findlay than me and Buddle never got stuck in, though plenty of people expected him to start against Ghana instead of Findlay and they may have been right.
Bottom line: Just getting out of group next time around in Brazil won’t be good enough, the Yanks will need to make a deep run. The four American games got about the highest TV ratings for men’s World Cup matches in US history and the buzz was nearly as loud as the vuvuzuelas so you know expectations will be piling on. Experience will be there since Jozy Altidore, Charlie Davies, Michael Bradley, Stuart Holden and Jose Torres will be getting into their prime playing years, Landon and Dempsey will probably still have more than enough gas in the tank and Tim Howard will have four more years of top club experience, not to mention half a dozen young players who didn’t make this squad.
I’ll be watching. Only winning the big ugly golden trophy will make me happy.
ps – Can you imagine the pressure on the Brazilian players playing at home?!?!
Getting this out of the way: the refs I’ve seen for the most part have been good, with the exception of Jorge Larionda*, and between the improved filtering and familiarity just pushing it into the background the South African horns are no longer irritating me much. ESPN and their commentators are so far so good with again one notable exception. Alexei Lalas was a great player, a bad club executive and a terrible TV host; ESPN should cut their losses and drop him.
USA-England was a good start for us. If you could toss out the first five minutes of settling in, we’d have won the game 1-0. Too bad FIFA won’t do that. Silver lining: the 3 Lions goal did come from Liverpool’s Stevie G on a nice pass from former Red Emile Heskey. Not sure how Robert Green is preferred to David James, but that’s Fabio Capello for you. Now we need to make Slovenia eat their player’s words and get the win Friday.
Germany romped over the Aussies. Tim Cahill’s red was a massive mistake but I doubt his continued presence would have substantially altered the result. Podolski reversed his club form and was the German’s second best player after captain Phillip Lahm; both players created width that Australia couldn’t handle.
Spain 0-1 Switzerland, upset of the round! I watched this game and though La Furia Roja were too predictable, too repetitive and were almost Arsenal-like in passing over shooting. As one comment I saw said, if Pedro was preferred over Cesc Fabregas as a sub why would Fabregas want to join Barcelona. The goal was on a counter, Casillas couldn’t handle the one on one and Puyol was so far upfield he couldn’t get back into the six yard box to help.
I didn’t see Brazil-North Korea but Zonal Marking has two good recaps. Why Brazil’s breakthrough was always going to come from Maicon especially shows how come the Samba Kings will almost certainly be on the field come July 11.
South Korea were value for money and tomorrow’s early match against Argentina, who were not, should be a cage match. Japan squeezed past Cameron in a mild upset. Netherlands were pretty much always winning anyway but got a helping hand from a Danish own goal; Liverpool’s Dirk Kuyt put in their second.
France were a joke on Friday though Uruguay’s romp today against South Africa show I may have underestimated the South American side’s quality. Portugal and Ivory Coast were in on the joke together in a very disappointing match.
The second and third round of games should be more aggressive, if the Uruguay-South Africa affair was predictive.
More games, nummy nummy!
Love this. Three weeks until we show the Redcoats the door again!
