Unpredictable City flying under the radar

Based on their unpredictable form since Manuel Pellegrini took charge at the Etihad, only Manchester City could beat the reigning European champions on their own ground and then still only make headlines for failing to win the game 4-2 rather than 3-2.

You just never know quite what to expect from this current Manchester City side, whose progression under Pellegrini this season has been sufficiently inconsistent that few commentators have marked them out as potential Premier League champions let alone Champions League destroyers.

That inconsistency was laid bare again last night in the space of 90 minutes against a Bayern side that was aiming to win its 10th straight Champions League match.

A second string City XI was torn apart multiple times in the opening 20 minutes, and fell behind to goals from Thomas Muller and Mario Gotze before striking back in the most unexpected manner through David Silva, Aleksandar Kolarov and James Milner.

As if to underline City's capriciousness, Milner's man-of-the-display was in stark contrast to his past 18 months of gradual slipping down the pecking order for club and country, with the former Aston Villa midfielder winning the penalty converted by Kolarov and striking the decisive winner.

Contextualising the performance and the result by a City side missing the likes of captain Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure, Sergio Agüero and Alvaro Negredo, especially on the back being outclassed by Bayern in Manchester earlier in the group phase, is bordering on impossible.

Throw in the fact that Pellegrini's side have already lost four times on the road against Premier League sides this season - at Cardiff, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Sunderland - and the conundrum is complete.

Of course, City's unpredictability has been glaring in the past two seasons, too.

Under Roberto Mancini two years ago, they needed to close a seemingly impossible gap on rivals Manchester United and rely on a last minute Agüero winner against Sunderland to claim their first Premier League trophy.

The mediocrity of their title defence last season then led to Mancini's sacking.

Pellegrini has maintained that his focus remains on finding a pattern of play that suits his talented squad.

"We felt we needed revenge for what happened in Manchester because we played very bad. Winning here after being two goals behind is very good, I'm very happy," the Chilean said last night.

"It’s important for the team. I am trying to find a style of playing. I know some of the results in the Premier League playing away have not been what we want but it is more important we find a way to play.

"I thought this was the chance for players to demonstrate why they are in the squad so it was important to win without Kompany, Yaya, Agüero and Negredo."

Despite the numerous defensive lapses and the frequent high-profile mistakes of goalkeeper Joe Hart, City remain a potent threat going forward.

Their home form in the league is rampant, and has already included huge wins over Norwich (7-0), Tottenham (6-0), Manchester United (4-1) and Newcastle (4-0) this term.

Given their vast armoury in attack, maybe Pellegrini's so-called blunder at not realising that his enterprising side could top their Champions League group ahead of Bayern was actually a cunning plan to take just enough gloss off the side to keeping fooling the pundits.

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Fifa World Rankings May 2013

Fifa's World Rankings for May 2013 were published today at FIFA HQ in Zurich, Switzerland. The Fifa World Rankings are now published on Thursday and not Wednesday as before.

Euro 2012 winners Spain are once again on top of the FIFA rankings followed by Germany, Argentina, Croatia, Portugal, Colombia, England, Italy, Netherlands and Ecuador. Copa America champions Uruguay are 17th, while Brazil are still in their lowest ever position of 19th. A newly-strong Belgium are in 15th position. The Republic of Ireland are 39th, Wales stay 49th, Scotland are 79th and Northern Ireland are in 119th position.

Ranking Team
1 Spain
2 Germany
3 Argentina
4 Croatia
5 Portugal
6 Colombia
7 England
8 Italy
9 The Netherlands
10 Ecuador
11 Russia
12 Côte d'Ivoire
13 Greece
14 Switzerland
15 Belgium
16 Mexico
17 Uruguay
18 France
19 Brazil
20 Denmark


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Greece bails out as Germans advance

The markets don't lie. Germany holds the whip-hand over Greece. And despite a heroic comeback straight out of Euripides, Teutonic willpower triumphed and the odyssey ended in Gdansk.

Georgios Samaras' unlikely equaliser came courtesy of a cheeky shirt-pull, an infringement all too visibly unpunished throughout Euro 2012.

4-2 was a convincing result and Germany's 15th consecutive competitive win, although let us not get carried away about the DFB. Greece had a straggly defence and were probably waiting to be exposed by a good team after surprisingly edging past Russia in the group stage.

If their game-plan was based on defending in deep and hitting Germany on the break and at set-pieces, they did not play the counter-attack well enough and allowed their opponents too many scoring chances. Croatia by comparison, did a far better job of trying to beat Spain, frustrating La Roja's superiority for most of the game and almost nicking the game with timely raids, foiled by bad finishing.

Germany obviously were a good bet to win the tournament going into Euro 2012 and they remain so. But however clinically they finished their chances last night, it is premature to etch their name on the trophy. Spain, Portugal, England and Italy are all still in the competition and none of them will submit so feebly as the Greeks did in Gdansk.

Their elimination came as no surprise but was still a big disappointment for the European nation in the direst straits right now. Success on the international stage can inspire a nation, or at least dull the pain for a while. Greece has more pressing matters to deal with at home now, and may have to look to its illustrious past for inspiration.





- Sean O'Conor


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U-17 giants knocked out in semis

The tournament's two most impressive teams, Brazil and Germany, who had netted a total of 30 goals between them, will be playing for third place after being knocked out of the FIFA U-17 World Cup in the semi-finals.

Brazil were not at the races in Guadalajara, falling 3-0 to Uruguay, while the German juggernaut came off the road at last in Torreon, losing 3-2 to hosts Mexico having led 2-1 on the hour.

16 year-old Julio Gomez was the hero of the day, opening the scoring in the third minute with a well-placed header and bandaged up like Mr. Bump, scoring the winner from a bicycle kick in the final minute.



FINAL: Sun 10/07/11 Mexico City, Midnight GMT (18h local time)
MEXICO v URUGUAY
3rd Place Play-Off: Sun 10/07/11 Mexico City 21h GMT (15h local time), Brazil v Germany

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Tiki-taka halts Teutonic march to the final

FIFA World Cup semi-final - Spain 1:0 Germany

So in the end the Germans were human after all.

After a double demolition of England and Argentina which sent shockwaves throughout the soccer world, Joachim Low's lions were mown down by raging Spanish bulls.

Yogi was lost in the woods as Spain revived their Euro 2008 glory to hand him a sobering football lesson in Durban. Germany, so awesome in the knock-out stages that they had begun to acquire an unbeatable whiff, were cowed by the defiantly intricate passing of the European Champions, who persisted with their Beautiful Game in the face of the tournament's most dangerous outfit.

It was indeed a victory for football as the winners delighted at times and never resorted to a route one approach or launched the ball aimlessly out of defence. The Spanish allegiance to one-touch passing to feet rarely placed them in danger and ultimately had the desired effect of tiring out the chasing Germans physically, while their taking the game to them won the psychological battle.

Scoring first was key in the end as it prevented Germany playing their counter-attacking game which had speared England and Argentina so successfully. When the Germans did play on the rebound, Spanish bodies scuttled back and Gerard Pique and Carlos Puyol held up the 'No Pasaran' banners.

After proving such a razor-sharp attacking force in previous rounds, the Germans were a blunt butter knife last night, limited to a single shot on target from substitute Toni Kroos. The suspension of Thomas Mueller had removed the Mannschaft's right-wing menace, but Bastian Schweinsteiger also failed to exert an influence, pinned back from advancing by the red shirts buzzing around him, while Mesut Ozil's rising star waned for a second match in succession.

Vicente del Bosque's tactical plan triumphed. Painfully aware how lethal Germany were on the break, he shrewdly dropped the sluggish Fernando Torres to add an extra body in the middle, with a twin shield between defence and midfield of Xabi Alonso and Sergio Busquets to block any German advances. Busquets in particular watched Ozil like a hawk and the passing in midfield from Alonso, Iniesta and Xavi was so crisp that Germany were left to chase.

In the event it was Spain's taking the game to Germany which handed them victory. They refused to be scared by Germany's previous results and their quick passing and commitment to possession in all areas of the field zapped their frightening opponents' venom.

"They are the masters of the game. You can see it in every pass. They can hardly be beaten," admitted Low ruefully.

German sub Marcell Jansen concurred: "Spain's organisation and tactics are in a different league," he said. "When they attack, the whole team comes forward, and when they defend, they all work together to keep it tight."

So many critics had hailed Germany's youth as the key to their winning, but the young guns of Deutschland were handed a footballing lesson by some old masters in Durban and put back in their place as a promising team of the future.

The spirit of 2008 breathes again. A beautiful team winning at the Beautiful Game. What is not to celebrate?

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Amid the embers

Germany 4:1 England

Forget the Lampard goal. That debate is for another day. What matters is the worst finals result from the inventors of the game.

England's collapse to a competent, spirited but hardly exceptional German team was embarrassing, with some of the most amateur defending yet seen at a World Cup. That lone Anglo hoisting of the trophy sails farther away in the mind the longer the latest crop keeps falling short, and as the sixties celluloid grows grainier, then expectations will revise, rather like those of Uruguay, who have come to accept 1950 took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 1966 has been a millstone and a false totem in the English football psyche for too long.

The loss of Rio Ferdinand on the eve of the finals could well have been the straw which broke the camel's back, the undermining of a defence which had previously been a reassurance. After three gentle tests, England's back line cracked against a quality vanguard. Ferdinand's replacement Matthew Upson was at fault for Germany's first two goals, and his jaw-dropping lack of telepathy with John Terry carved vast spaces open in which Mesut Ozil and pals ran amok.

Germany's Polish-born strikers Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski were lethal on the rebound, but that was also down to horrendous positional play by retreating Englishmen. The first goal was a banal route one strike seen in schoolboy soccer, with two centre-backs committing the cardinal sin of letting a striker slip between them to toe-poke a punt past their goalie. Then there were about nine red shirts on the wrong side of the ball when Thomas Mueller broke away to score their third and close a chapter in the match in which England were dominant.

It was not all gloom as Fabio Capello's men had begun smoothly while the Germans stood off and waited. For a spell at the end of the first half they were clearly on top, scoring twice but having the second goal wrongly disallowed. Yet over the 90, so much of England's offering remained below par - Upson bafflingly picked ahead of Matthew Dawson or Ledley King, Glen Johnson out of position for two goals, an unfit and labouring Gareth Barry a pale shadow of the electric Owen Hargreaves in 2006, a midfield gifting acres of space away and an attack of Jermain Defoe and Wayne Rooney almost invisible.

Capello's substitutions - Emile Heskey and Shaun Wright-Phillips, were as ineffective as his changes have been all tournament. Picking Scott Parker and Adam Johnson instead of Barry and Wright-Phillips could have made a difference, but it is too late to speculate now. All England can do is rebuild with youth and usher the so-called golden generation gently out the door after a decade of misadventure.

England are all played out again, Champions League winners unable to perform in other shirts. At times against Germany, England looked interested and ready to take the game by the scruff of the neck, and at others a sluggish and aging band of brothers knackered by another gruelling domestic season. Franz Beckenbauer was right – the extra games of England's domestic calendar cannot have helped the national team, and they were stupid not to have won one of the easiest groups.

England's near-perfect qualification campaign now looks devalued, with the double-demolition of the waning Croats and defeats of Andorra, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine far less impressive in the light of today’s tragedy.

The Three Lions never roared in South Africa, but this time is was not a common case of first-round nerves. The team was stuck in first gear from Rustenburg all the way to Bloemfontein.

What went wrong? The truth will out over the next few days and weeks, perhaps with the publication of a diary or two or a whispered snippet to a journalist. But the management team of Capello and Stuart Pearce clearly failed to organise their defence or motivate their charges. I have been trying to avoid WWII references, but was the boss' struggling English and insistence on Italian-style discipline just a bridge too far?

The final scoreline is stark, though the stats show England came top on possession and shots and had an identical passing accuracy to Germany: It is goals that win games. While the Germans never had England on the rack and their goalkeeper Manuel Neuer often looked calamitous, the Mannschaft had a creative ace in Ozil that England lacked and had clearly done their counter-attacking homework to coolly exploit the glaring errors of their sub-standard foes.

Just as their opening mauling of Australia was followed by a defeat by Serbia, a quarter-final meeting with Argentina will provide a sterner test of German mettle than the English wooden spoon they tossed aside today.

England has been here before - a depressing elimination triggering frenzied soul-searching with no denouement. But it has come before in qualifying - Poland in 1973, Holland 1993, Croatia 2007. To lose this badly in the World Cup finals, and in a tournament England had a sniff of winning not too long ago, is devastating all round.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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