No More Onion Bags

Darkness Awaits, But First There’s Xavi

// July 8th, 2010 // Uncategorized

Sunday will be the last happy day in our lives until June 2014.   For three years and 11 months we will have to pretend we care about things like club soccer, our real jobs, and our social lives.  We might even get all pseudo-worked up about an election or an upcoming vacation (“We are going to Iceland next week — I am so excited!”  No you’re not, stop lying.  You’d rather be watching Japan-Denmark with the the Albanian building maintenance guy  in your office’s lunchroom.  Even if all he does is endlessly repeat ”Brazil is da best.  No one plays like Brazil.  You see what I mean?”  Sigh.)

But we still have  a couple games to live for.  There’s the strange game for third place, in which my Uruguay will take on the Germans, and more importantly, we get the culminating joy of the World Cup final on Sunday.  This year, we get Holland, and team that is solid and dangerous on the counterattack, against Spain, the team closest to Holland from the 1970s and late 1980s-early ’90s, all lovely touches and flair.  Yes, I know it’s not a perfect comparison (Holland don’t just counter, and Spain have a much tougher spine), but it’s close.  It seems like everyone loves Holland because of who they used to be.  And hey, they used to be great.  Really great.

But this team is different.  Obviously, I’m biased because they beat Uruguay, but they feature a real nasty player in Mark Van Bommel, and three complete jerks in Arjen Robben, Wesley Sneijder, and Robin van Persie.  I know, their personalities, shouldn’t matter, but they do.  Just look at Holland’s second goal against Uruguay.  Regardless of whether it was offside, the way Sneijder takes it off the foot of Kuyt, is just kind of ugly.

Then look at Spain.  You liked Marco Van Basten, then you’ll love David Villa.  Into Ruud Gullit?  Spain has Iniesta.  Fond of Frank Rijkaard?  Well, I can’t help you with the porn moustache (Holland’s Nigel De Jong is the only one keeping this alive), but Spain’s got Xabi Alonso. 

Oh, and did I mention that Spain have the best midfielder in the world?  That’s right, there’s also Xavi.  Xavi used to get no credit whatsoever, then he got a lot of it in the two year period beginning with Euro 2008, and now I think we are back to underestimating him.  (Admittedly, I had not put him in any of my 17 iterations of World Cups XIs.)  I heard a lot of garbage about how Bastian Schweinsteiger and Mesut Oooeeeziil were the best midfielders in the tournament.  Puh-effing-lease.   When they were all on the field together yesterday, Xavi was dominant.   He hasn’t run the most overall at this World Cup, but he’s run the most distance with the ball at his feet (over 16 miles — yikes).  He completed 106 passes on Wednesday, 20 more than anyone else.  But more importantly, he looked in complete control of the proceedings at all times, whereas Schweinsteiger (which means “pig mounter” in German”) looked like someone who just recently started playing soccer, and Mesut Oooeeezziiil looked like a lost little boy at a mall who couldn’t find his mommy (that is actually what his name means in Turkish — weird, I know).

I used to enjoy just watching players like Zidane, Francescoli and Riquelme run around and make their touches – I could not have cared less about what else was going on in the game.  Those guys just touched the ball differently — they kind of caressed it.  Xavi’s the man for that now.  Do yourself a favor and just watch him alone for a few minutes on Sunday.  His actions look effortless, but it’s really just efficiency and a very close, personal relationship with the ball.  (Here’s a nice clip of all of his touches from the Euro 2008 final to see what I’m talking about.  There’s only about 76 other related clips on Youtube.)

Enjoy the game, and don’t get caught up in history or the big names.  Holland, Schmolland.  People joke that rooting against Spain is rooting against all that is good in the world.  Well, it’s true.  So support Holland if you want.  But what will you tell your children?

As for Monday, I’ll be back here in some feeble effort to provide a semblance of hope to the world.  It’s the least I can do. 

Posted by Lazar