Heroes and Villians - edition 1

The good, the bad and the Robert Green from the first weekend of the tournament

Heroes

Siphiwe Tshabalala

And not just because of his great name. Tshabalala (not the easiest to type) has hopefully been the man to set the tone of the tournament, with it being imperative for the hosts to get off to a great start. Running onto an inch perfect through ball, the South African Number 8 crashed a rocket of a shot past the flailing Mexican keeper straight into the top right hand corner of the goal. Cure the raucous celebration and the realisation that the World Cup had truly kicked off.

Mesut Ozil

The mantra that we’ve always tried to pedal, rather self-indulgently, is that this blog is about trying to get past the lazy clichés and generalisations that populate football punditry, and so, after yesterday, can we get rid of this notion that Germany play ‘boring’, ‘controlled’, and ‘robotic’ football? Similarly someone was also saying to me that the German team is always full of too many old payers; um, hello, this Germany squad is the youngest they’ve taken to a World Cup for 76 years.

On Sunday evening, they absolutely tore through Australia, displaying verve and attacking intent that a number of other teams in the tournament could take a lesson from. The strikers Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski, always far more prolific for county rather than club continued to show themselves as men who never let their national team down, but the real star of the show and the man at the heart of most of the goals was the young and electrifying playmaker Mesut Ozil.

Coming of a season when he’s been fairly average for his club Werder Bremen, the player of Turkish descent was effervescent and exuberant in all that he did, committing opposition players regularly and driving his team forward quickly and directly. So far, the stand out performer of the tournament.

Lionel Messi

No, he didn’t score but he did enough in Argentina’s opening win of the tournament to suggest he will be able to replicate his Barcelona form onto the highest stage. It wasn’t for the want of trying that he didn’t find the back of the next, thwarted as he was on several occasions by flying saves from the excellent Nigerian ‘keeper Vincent Enyeama. Elusive, if not yet completely explosive, the Nigerian defenders at times found it impossible to get near to him as he teased and tormented them, with a Messi shot leading to the corner from which Argentina took the lead.

Coming off two sensational campaigns for his club, a lot of people have been waiting to acknowledge Messi’s arrival into the highest echelon of the sports names, if, he turns it on, just as his manager did in a winning World Cup effort. Clearly there is more to come, but the signs were there that we could just be seeing his ascent to greatness in front of our eyes.

Park Ji-Sung

One of Alex Ferguson’s favourite, and most trusted lieutenants at Manchester United, Park is often used as something of an advanced fullback by his manager, employed to stop others playing through his combination of tenacity, energy and high tactical intelligence. Whilst not an exceptionally gifted player, the South Korean captain is still highly proficient and with his country given far more licence to attack and create. He took the game against Greece by the scruff of the neck on Saturday, constantly driving at a creaking Greek defence and finishing a well taken goal to clinch his sides opening group match victory. His and his teammate’s performance suggest that Korea have their eyes firmly and perhaps realistically set on qualification for the knock out stages.

Villains

Greece

For every winner, there inevitably has to be a loser, and for as impressive as Park Ji-Sung and South Korea were, they weren’t have helped by an absolutely woeful performance from their opponents. Greece shocked the World in 2004, where their ultra pragmatic, but highly effective and indeed at times underrated performances brought them the European Championship trophy. Six years on, and several of the names, and indeed the manager still remain and it doesn’t look as if time has been kind.

Otto Rehhagel deserves a knighthood for the work he’s done with the Greek national team, and at 72, he becomes the oldest man ever to coach at a World Cup finals, and yet it looks like for a number of players this is a tournament too far. You know what you’re going to get with Greece, dour, defensive, yet effective and organised defending, but even that seemed to desert them at the weekend. Put plainly, they were nonexistent going forward, uncreative in midfield, shaky at the back, and no player looked like he had any pace to beat a man, whatsoever. For the Greeks I’m afraid, you might want to be booking those flights back home already.

Robert Green

Not sure I really have to expand on this one do I?

Raymond Domenech

This man must have some real special abilities. Not only has he somehow managed to remain in post as coach of the French National team since 2004 despite several awful and dismal performances, not only has he managed to turn a whole country against him (that’s his own by the way) but as Friday night proved, he’s still got that special knack of being able to get a bunch of talented players, lay out a decent looking team, albeit on paper and enable them to play so incredibly poorly.

I was listening to Patrick Barclay of the Times who seemed to sum things up quite well, France under Domenech look like a joyless team, where representing their county is a chore. France have some exceptionally good players, and yet whenever they step onto the pitch, it turns to lethargy and pessimism. Every game they play they set out to hold the opposition, never going on the front foot, often employing two holding midfield players for games against the likes of the Faroe Islands at home.

What’s more the coach’s prickly personality seems to do nothing for creating any sense of harmony in the squad. Florent Malouda has been in sensational form for Chelsea this season and yet Domenech decided to bench him, allegedly after a training ground row between the two. Then again this should probably come as no surprise given that Robert Pires was meant to have been dispensed with several years ago because his star sign didn’t fit.

ITV’s commentary Team

This honestly may say more about me than it does about them, and getting to worked up about something that isn’t really important, but already, barely three days into the tournament and Messer’s Tyldsely and Drury are annoying me beyond belief. There’s been a lot of debate about the monotonous drone of the vuvuzela’s but if they were able to drown out ITV Sports gruesome twosome then that would be fine with me.