Surprised by how wrong you can be...

At least I am surprised by how wrong I can be. Never figured France for winning the match last night. In fact if truth be told I never figured France for getting out of the group. I thought the sides that drag you down to their level (the Switzerlands and Koreas and Irelands of this world)would triumph. But instead they played their first good game in fully six years and were good for their victory. I don't think they'll meet two worse full backs in the tournament though. Spain made a mistake. Or several - playing the high offside line with Zidane to supply through balls and Henry to run was stupid. Not playing with wingers was merely ill-advised for two reasons. Firstly if you progress you want to be comfortable with playing a team selection that can beat the selecao, with nothing down either flank you play into Brazil's strength (plus you play the high line like Ghana did and you will get hammered) and secondly their full backs were so weak you needed something to take the French wings minds off attack. They didn't and Sagnol and Ribery took them apart. Sagnol looked like a worthy heir to Lizarazu - which he has never looked before. This was Ribery's only effective match in the tournament and he was marvellous. Hell, even the deeply average Malouda looked good. Too many of the same players turned out for Spain. Xabi, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fabregas, and on the bench Iniesta and Senna. Okay, there is no team in the world that wouldn't like to have some passing midfielders, but just because you have five of the best doesn't mean you have to play them all: see England and the Lampard/Gerrard axis of feeble. They needed a ballwinner in there and didn't have one. Raul wasn't needed - that is until he was taken off when the new formation would have suited him and you'd have had him there rather than Luis Garcia.

* I meant to say - why didn't they play a decent full back like Asier del Horno? Is it because he is black or something?

What the civil war denied us the joy of...

News that the lovely people at the progressive democrats have fallen out with each other (and why wouldn't you? You have a viper in your midst.) has been greeted with glee tempered with dread round our way. Mary Harney has many faults - chief of which is being leader of a party which defends privilage and as morally correct and capital as something, the operation of which is beyond human interference - but I don't think she is a crypto fascist. McDowell is. That's not to say he personally believes in scientifically outmoded racial inferiority doctrines (for those not paying attention for the last fifty years or so the notion of a race among human populatios is derided by geneticists) but racist is as racist does and his constitutional referendum that he slipped by used the race card and people's fear of race. It redefines citizenship in a way which is not appropriate for a republic but one which is for a nation: in this situation McDowell chose not to follow the progressive model of the US but is instead heading the direction of Serbia. This is particularly ironic given the Minister for Justice is a disciple of all things American including their failed criminal justice system and their barbaric, expensive, and useless prisons. It seems to be no coincidence that a media panic about gang wars opens up on his watch. During all this the minister has an ever lengthening Criminal Justice Bill which will solve all problems. He just doesn't have any legislation passed ever. His bloated incompetence is further demonstrated by his aloof sang froid as the courts had no option but to reveal the unconstitutionality of our statutory rape laws. Their illegality is not his fault - it was pointed out to us in college about 18 years ago - but what is his fault is his failure to react when cases were in progress as had never happened before. So, we have a Minister for Justice that single handedly created a racist nation, failed to protect children from child abuse, who by his own admission is minister for justice during soaring gang crime that he believes needs much legislation to crack down on but who has introduced no such legislation (just reamended and deamended drafts) - in other words as abject a failure as a minister as has ever held a post in this country. Why should anyone worry? His stop-start career, built on media whoredom should be over. Unfortunately Harney had the nerve, the balls, the chutzpah, to take the post of Minister for Health - perhaps the most underfunctioning department in the government. She was always going to fail there. Her stock is crashed.

So why the stalled leadership bid? Harney is a link to the old school: to a time before it would have been acceptable for a man with the moral stink of McDowell to run for public office. His kind would be seen as the kind of beast that rose in central and Eastern European countries: no decency about him. The PDs under him could mutate, slightly, from the party of capital and privilage into an actual racist extreme right wing party thus able to, possibly, garner a popular vote (it currently has no sizeable electoral base and weilds power in great disproportion to its support) and move up a gear. What would possibly unite the very rich and the very poor other than having a classic old school extremist right wing party like we never had in Ireland? Naive class self interest is rampant in this country. Comments like "I'm a builder/nurse/pensioner Haughey looked after us", laughably naive (he gave back a bit of what he stole, like a porcine Robin Hood), are common stock. The poor are under the cosh. Their jobs have not got better wages and conditions over the last decade. They see them being taken by better educated immigrants who will move up and move on or just work like, well whatever hard working people work like these days, and take the money and spend it in another country where it's worth something. That is how they could give their allegiance to the party of the divine right of capital which has stolen their futures from them.

It is quite funny that the PDs were founded to break us out of civil war politics and they may just succeed. It's difficult to explain Ireland's political parties to someone from abroad. I usually say that left and right is only one axis. There is also the y axis of socially liberal and conservative. Then there is the z axis of republican versus unionist. The independence/ republican/ nationalist axis was at its most extreme socially liberal and left wing rather than fascist like in the rest of Europe so we never had an all out fascist party due to our civil war politics. McDowell's PDs, if he gets to run them, may change that. Finally a break from civil war politics will allow the creation of a fascist party that so many in this state will benefit from. In the old days he would have needed religious support for this. The beauty of the state we now live in where our rights are defined by our nature as consumers rather than as citizens and our aspirations by consumption rather than production is that this is no longer necessary.

He serviced some state

So he's dead then. And why should we speak ill of the dead? Because we can. Because his censorship of dissent by threat and writ is over. His control over a craven media is finished and the backlash is audible today. Because I can honestly think of nothing positive to say of him. I'm a dog in the streets from North Dublin in a town the size of the whole of Longford with a wee country road and no buses. His corruption polluted the whole of the country. I'm not saying the country was great before him, but it was much, much worse with him. There is no legacy. When people try to convince me of his 'presidential' qualities they usually mention the tax exempt status for artists that allows the multimillionaire Bono to lecture at me about helping the poor. It strikes me as symptomatic of his seigneurial contempt for the plain people of Ireland. We should be indebted to the great and the good and be glad to fund their lifestyle.

Panis et Circensis

And so the global spectacle begins. The sport beloved of dictators and racists everywhere. Even if Franco didn't actually like the damn thing - into his horses like a proper aristocrat apparently - he like the rest saw the power. Think of the government of colonels in Brazil, the military junta in Argentina, all of the Soviet bloc. Okay so maybe it's not all that global, China isn't there - yet. India isn't there or interested - yet. And the US hasn't dominated it and sold it back to us with added sugar and a drug habit - yet. I see the US winning the world cup before an African nation.

So anyway, I'm down with the circuses big time. And beer is bread right?*

So who to watch? Everyone says it's hard to look past Brazil, so lets do that. Lets face it if Kevin Gallacher of Blackburn Rovers and Scotland could make Roberto Carlos, at his peak, look ordinary what would an international standard winger do to him? Nobody could beat Brazil. Save Argentina, Mexico and Paraguay in about the last year in competitive matches. Argentina giving them a proper stuffing too. Last world cup they were lucky that when using the rather useless Ze Roberto as a full back against Holland he didn't have to face the injured Overmars. Holland would most likely have beaten them. I can't see that this time: though the team may not fight each other it seems to lack geniuses. I groan every time I see Cocu on their team sheet. Tidy. They were always a better team with Seedorf playing. Still has his pace too. Though they do have the mighty, or mightily named and popular with the kids round here for replica shirts van Hennegoor of Hesselink. Or Jan as they call him no doubt.
The Czech republic are rated 2 in some quarters (FIFA rankings are absolute bollocks) but this team is too old this time. Sorry guys, you were robbed by dreadful refereeing in the last two Europeans, but not this one. The Crouch template at the top can't run any more - people forget that they used to say of Koller that he was remarkably mobile for such a big man. Now he's only remarkably mobile for a big man who has been dead two days. Same for France - save the robbed bit: too old, too old, too old. Guy Roux was offered the French job before the last world cup and said he'd only take it if he could take apart the team and start again - a few of those playing for the Ivory Coast this time would have been a good idea - that was six whole years ago for the Zidanes and Thurams.
Talking of robbed the USA were robbed by dreadful refereeing last time round against the eventual finalists Germany. Unusually with the officiation at the last tournament there doesn't seem to me to have been any direct advantage handed to the hosts (oh, by the way that's the answer to Korea and Japan's chances - no corruption, no semi finals. Plus Korea'll be in Switzerland's group and they have a secret lifeforce sucking weapon that removes the zest from any of their opponents. And Japan are fourth best in their group) so maybe the Germans were glad handing... Anyway this time round they'll struggle to escape a rotten group. And fail.

Oh Spain Spain Spain. Why do you do it to me? I always head into the World Cup and look to you. And you always let me down. (ditto Portugal until I copped on one day that any country still banging on about a team that won underage championships 15 years later - even we stopped that and had considerable success with the underage teams, more than Portugal in fact - was a country with a team of losers. Time to go all the old guys. Once that's done a team that might win might be fashioned). What can you say? The young midfield players like Iniesta, Barcelona's best player by some distance in their European cup semi final, not the anonymous Ronaldinho who gave a nowhere pass that Giuly latched on to with sublime pace and anticipation and lashed into the net from a difficult angle first time and did absolutely nothing else in two matches, and Fabregas have beautiful balance unlike two of the greatest midfielders in the world manning the centre of England. They can tackle and track and cover. And boy can they pass. And Iniesta makes great runs. Joaquin was easily the best winger at the last Europeans. Raul is... found out? No pace, no dribbling, no great shot, just the lethal cold bloodedness in front of goal. No nerves at all. I'm not convinced by Torres either. And the defence looks like it has goals in it. So sadly no.
England my England, obsessed with a bone that only English soccer players seem to possess. If Rooney plays and he's as fit as Beckham was for the last European championship they will get nowhere. While it is the squad that wins the world cup (who knows what stand in left back you'll have come the business end of the tournament when, really, anything could happen) it isn't good to be delving into it right from the get go. Not that they had too many attacking options to bring along. Why don't Lampard and Gerrard perform for England like they do for their teams? Makelele, Sissoko, Hamman, that's why. Pure and simple. Neither is remotely a complete midfielder. Neither can tackle (and some of the ones Lampard does you only get away with in the premiership if you are an England international), neither can defend. Gerrard is a headless chicken with no tactical sense without the ball. But with the ball... he strikes it as beautifully as anyone. Better than Lampard. Though the new balls may suit Lampard. Bear with me. Watch a typical Lampard goal from behind the nets. He strikes through the ball harder than anyone else, keeps it down and on target. But that's it. Other than that he has no idea what's going to happen next. Thing is the ball deforms when he hits it and moves eccentrically through the air. Keepers often say it moved at the last minute and with him that is in fact the case. It behaves like the off centre striking point is a strange attractor. Gerrard places the ball with serious velocity. Like quite a few teams England are good enough to win it: I'm not sure they're the team to beat Brazil though - they lack ball carrying wingers to exploit Cafu and Carlos Brazil's greatest weakness






* my beloved used to make real bread from live yeast and in the morning after eating loads of it the smell coming from the toilet bowl was like you'd been out on the almighty batter with the beer the night before. Quite strange.