By Mark Vincent Lincir
What the hey is going on with France? Do you think that Anelka still deserves some playing time in their next game? Hope you don’t, because he should be on a plane right now to where ever it is he’d like to vacation, because he’s certainly not interested in playing soccer this summer.
How does Henry not get any minutes? How big of a joke has France become? Is anybody going to do anything about it? With their hopes of advancing all but gone, they need to let their coach go explore whatever he would like to explore and give the reins to Lauren Blanc for the rest of the tournament.
Believe me, it doesn’t break my heart that the French aren’t doing well, it’s just sad to see so much talent go to waste. Give Mexico credit for taking it to the French and taking advantage of some horrible French defending. Was Hernandez offside on the first goal? No, he wasn’t. Even if he was by a half step, the advantage should go to the attacker and defenders need to start playing defense instead of stepping up and just hoping that the assistant referee does your job (defending) for you!
Gotta love Blanco’s massive run up to the ball for the penalty kick too, I thought for sure he was going to try and chip it. Argentina looked awfully good in their 4-1 drubbing of South Korea and maybe Maradona isn’t going to “do in” Argentina after all. How much of a mess can he make of a lineup loaded with that much talent…I mean, at least he’s not French.
It was good to see Greece get some points against Nigeria, but how about Nigeria buckling under the pressure? That’s a team that a lot of people thought would go somewhere in this tournament.
PREDICTIONS – tomorrow is a huge game for the United States. My bet is that despite some bonehead tactical changes by Coach Bob Bradley, the U.S. will win 1-0 on a goal by Clint Dempsey. Landon won’t do anything, but everybody will still think that he’s the greatest. Tim Howard will play and will play well. Michael Bradley will lumber around the midfield for 90 minutes like he always does doing nothing. It will be your basic U.S. victory. Nothing terrible, but nothing great and just enough to beat a team that they should beat.
Germany will send Serbia home with a 2-1 loss and zero points after two games and England will dismantle Algeria 3-0 so that English fans everywhere can feel at least a little bit better about themselves for the weekend (England still won’t win the Cup).
Mark Vincent Lincir is the Editor-In-Chief of 90:00 Soccer Magazine. He can be reached at editor@90soccer.encoreskydev.com.
