Five days in and…

We are five days into the World Cup, I’ve watched about half the game fully and highlights or radio commentary of most of the rest. The football has been largely Ok ,but no better. Teams seem more worried about loosing their first game and have played very safe, negative style. Not loosing the first game being more important than winning.

Of the big teams Italy, France, England and Portugal have been OK to disappointing at best.

Germany were outstanding, unquestionably the best side so far. OK it was a poor Australian side that looked a step or two off the pace, but Germany did what good teams should do and comprehensively beat them.

Something Brazil failed to do today against a well drilled, but ultimately inexperienced North Korea team. Korea set out to hold Brazil back, and they did the job worrying well if you follow Brazil.

Argentina and the Netherlands have both played positive football and I look forward to seeing both these teams play again to see how good they may be.

Spain is the last of the fancied teams to start play. They take on Switzerland tomorrow (Wednesday) in Durban.

It’s nothing like 1990, which was an atrociously defensive tournament, Argentina in particular played only negative football in Italy, and it was enough to take them to the final. They were primarily concerned (like Italy and a few others) with giving nothing away. Hope to get something on the break and be prepared to settle for penalties if it came to that.

After Italia ’90 FIFA started trying to open the game up. They tinkered with the offside rule, gave a certain amount of benefit to attackers, differentiated between “active” and “passive” players and gave the attacker the benefit of the doubt a little more. To some extent this approach worked, the World cup in ’94 and Euro ’96 were far better examples of better tournaments with a lot more good football.

It may be easier (once again see North Korea today) to build a defensive team rather than a team that’s capable of going out and winning a game at the top level. Another example would be Inter successfully working for 90 minutes to keep Barcelona penned up to win the European Cup.

As teams start needing the points in the second and third round of group games over the next 10 days, it should open up a little and we should have a better idea of who really sits where.

But today, Germany look like the team to beat, and the runner up in Group C (England’s group) will probably be first to have a go at them in the knock out stage.