Saturday, July 08, 2006
World Cup 2006
At the beginning of this tournament, I made a predication on all the scores of the matches. Though I hardly got any of the scores right, I made a prediction on the final 4. Final: Italy vs Portugal, winner: Portugal. 3rd v 4th: Argentina vs Switzerland, winner: Argentina. After the so many matches, my crystal ball did not materialise. But I have based my prediction on a few factors. And they are as follow. a) Tactics: Football is less skill based than it was around 20 years ago. Pure skills can win you a tournament with ease in the past. Now it is the era of tactics. The formation you choose and how you place each player on the field such that he can exploit his strength is far more crucial. b) Quick wit: Many things happen in the game, there is no linear way to play it. Players and coach have to play alot by ears and make changes very quicky with each event happening on the pitch. c)luck: yep, luck plays a bigger role than skill. i have seen enough cases of freak accident to feel it is more important. alternatively, you can say i choose to think that the game is based on luck rather than bribery.
Like many people, I have come up with a list of my world cup all stars based on the matches i have seen so far. Therefore, my choice of countries is limited. Then again, some countries are simply not worth my time. Most of it, I do not believe in forming Galacticos or Chelski. No doubt, we need some big names but clustering all the big names will do more harm than good. Here it is (as usual, i have drawn this up myself from scratch, the field right up to the name is all by myself, so it ain't as professional):
FIRST XI:
GK: Ricardo (Portugal)
CB: Carlos Puyol (Spain)
CB: Ivan Hurtado (Ecuador)
LB: Philip Lahm (Germany)
RB: Bartosz Bosacki (Poland)
MF: Patrick Viera (France)
MF: Xabi Alonso (Spain)
MF: Michael Essien (Ghana)
LW: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)
RW: Alexander Frei (Switzerland)
ST: Francisco Fonseca (Mexico)
Substitutes: Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi (Japan), Geovanny Espinza (Ecuador), Nuno Valente (Portugal), Arne Friedrich (Germany), Hakan Yakin (Switzerland), Arjen Robben (Holland), Aaron Lennon (England), David Villa (Spain), Fabio Grosso (Italy), Francesco Totti (Italy), Fabio Gilardino (Italy), Frank Ribery (France)
I have always been a fan of 4-3-3 with a strong leverage on central midfield. Through pass, vision is a more effective style of play then crossing and heading.With these players, there are several options to play this formation, the whole theme of my team revolves around speed and positioning. The 3 central midfielder are all defensive midfielders who have good vision. They are suppose to win the possession of the ball and pump it up to Fonseca, who is probably one of the strongest player of the tournament. The wingers only have 1 traits, speed, overwhelming speed to create space so that they can run i to receive balls from the play through centre. They can also give fairly decent crosses which Fonseca should be able to anticipate. The backline to the strategy is the conversative style. Having said that, the wing backs are both exciting and quick feeted players too. Whilst the centre concentrates on exploiting gaps and counter. The side exploited speed. The Gk, Ricardo, need i say more? He always guesses direction of penalty right. SCARY. This style is risky and not tried by many, few players on my list made it into the all team.
posted @ 11:46 AM ||
