World Cup 2010 Blog: “Winning Fans & Losing Employees The Benin Way.” plus 2 more |  |
- Winning Fans & Losing Employees The Benin Way.
- FIFA February 2010 Rankings: No Respect For Second Place.
- Japan Fans Boo China Draw; China Claim It Never Happened.
| Winning Fans & Losing Employees The Benin Way. Posted: 09 Feb 2010 01:00 AM PST
Some countries choose to relive the glory days after a disappointing collection of games. Italy did this by bringing back Marcello Lippi after the ugly experiment known as Roberto Donadoni. Others combat failure by ducking under their desks and doing absolutely nothing but mumble a bit of prayer. Raymond Domenech says hello. Benin have gone an entirely different route – they’ve blown up the whole goddamn thing. Well that’s fair.
Perhaps a little more fair if they did in fact show a “lack of patriotism”. Though what exactly does that entail? Quaking at the sight of Nigeria or Egypt? Kissing the bag with less vigor than for club? (There’s a battle for club v country waiting to sprout here.) Or maybe lip syncing the words to the national anthem? Two of the three – indiscipline and lack of team results – sound like the product of a team which would be ranked, oh, 107th by ELO. Which right now happens to be…well would you look at that: Benin. But when you run the show, you get to make the calls. Calls which will likely stand until AFCON qualifying comes round again. And should this whole “firing everybody” thing not work out quite well, some other ways to forget poor tournaments: - Pull a China and pretend it didn’t happen. - Pull a Nigeria and send all the senior players down to the U-21’s to win some youth tournaments and renew national enthusiasm. - Pull a Brazil and rename your national team…Brazil. Foolproof – all of them.
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| FIFA February 2010 Rankings: No Respect For Second Place. Posted: 08 Feb 2010 02:10 PM PST
But for Africa, everything happened. As you may have heard, Egypt won it again. And with that, they were handed the second-highest FIFA ranking ever for an African team – the best since 1994 – and a spot in the top ten. Which is pretty curious for a team that didn’t make the World Cup. And when it comes to the African Cup of Nations, FIFA gets curious…its monthly promise to world football fans. Egypt rocket up the charts to tenth, taking over for Croatia as the honorary top ten team which couldn’t qualify for South Africa. Next month: Malaysia. Ghana finished second with a squad…well, with a squad. Near the end it seemed they were just running out warm bodies in some positions, heartbeats preferred but not required. They beat Nigeria in the semifinals to get to the final where they, obviously, lost. And yet Nigeria won more points, a higher ranking, and a crate of little umbrellas with Sepp’s smiling face for tropical beverages. Apparently FIFA went with the straight mathematical theory “two is less than three”, which would explain the logic for just about everything they do. Elsewhere, Algeria were punished for making the semifinals. Serves them right.
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| Japan Fans Boo China Draw; China Claim It Never Happened. Posted: 08 Feb 2010 10:40 AM PST This game, like many before, has made Japanese fans furious. Japan have embarked on their World Cup run up with a number of disappointing results, resulting in a chorus of boos with the Japanese higher-ups leading the charge. The officially unofficial East Asian Championships gives them a chance to get back on track, but a scoreless draw was all they could muster. They’d probably love to pretend it simply never happened. China are doing just that.
The easy answer is the current match-fixing scandal “rocking” Chinese football. “Rocking”, but more in the “a cozy rocking chair on the porch of a breezy spring day” drawer than “a dingy battling the seas of a hurricane”. China’s domestic scene is the footballing equivalent to any of the hundreds of straight-to-DVD Steven Seagal Eastern European actions films released in the last six months. Nary a jaw has been dropped. Which is likely why they’d like to pretend football is on winter hiatus. Imagine if this could be done by any country displeased with the current state of footballing affairs? It’d solve so many problems. - Thierry Henry? France qualified for the World Cup at the end of regulation. Honest. - The Ciro Ferrara Era? Juventus officially submitted a request, then accepted, to play the entire campaign as friendlies and start over in 2010/11.
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Some countries choose to “shake things up” after a dismal continental tournament, pinpointing a problem. Nigeria have sacked Shaibu Amodu, after what can only be assumed were ritual pregame bong sessions, in order to put on a good show in South Africa.
For most of the world, January was a lost international outside of Japan lowering World Cup expectations to 
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