White Suburban Punk

I have heard exactly zero voices in support of the referee from the US/Slovenia match.  Not only did he disallow the winning goal, but he had several other calls against the US, including giving an erroneous yellow against Robbie Findley for a nonexistent hand ball that will cause him to miss the Algeria game.  This ref’s bank account needs to be closely audited — I wonder if FIFA does that.  Anyway, the US got the draw, and after England’s lackluster performance against Algeria ended in a 0-0 tie, the US and England will go through with wins in their last match.  A big if, however.  The games will be played simultaneously Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands continues to roll.

Liverpool defeated West Ham United, 3-0, at Anfield yesterday to keep their slim hopes alive for a top 4 finish and Champions League football next year.  After starting out somewhat lackadaisically with some sloppy play, Yossi Benayoun got Liverpool on the scoreboard at 19 minutes when a Steven Gerrard free kick was steered by his midsection into the goal.  That turned out to be a typical play in the game.  The third goal, which was credited as an own goal by the West Ham keeper, was also a result of poor defending off a free kick, and Liverpool had other chances in similar circumstances.  The second goal was a thing of beauty, however, off lightning quick passing by Yossi Benayoun to Maxi Rodriguez to David Ngog.  Ngog finished nicely after badly blowing a chance early in the game.  The score actually could have been a lot worse, but the referee missed three West Ham hand balls in the penalty box during the game, as well as a couple of takedowns.  All in all, a comfortable win for Liverpool, who now sit in sixth place, five points behind fourth place Tottenham Hotspur. 

The truly great news for Liverpool fans this week was the announcement by owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett that they will sell the team.  Their three years of ownership have been close to disastrous, and the club is clearly heading in the wrong direction.  They promised and failed to deliver on a new stadium and they are universally reviled by the fans.  We should probably wait before being too happy, however, as a delusional Hicks stated in an interview that he believes the value of the club has tripled under his stewardship!  Bewildering.  If that’s his thinking, it could be some time before the Yanks are finally run out of town, even though time is of the essence.  This is a huge summer for the club.

All Liverpool good news this season has been tinged with bad news.  This time, the bitter dose is that Fernando Torres, El Nino, will be out for the rest of the season with knee surgery.  He is expected to be recovered to play for Spain in the World Cup, but even that could be in some jeopardy.

Liverpool’s next match is scheduled for Thursday in Spain against Atletico Madrid in the Europa League semifinals.  Given the flight restrictions in Europe, the team’s trip to this game will be epic.  It’s 2,600 miles, and the team plans to take a train to London and then the Eurostar train to Paris, where they will spend the night.  They will then take another train to Bordeaux and a bus to the airport, where they will jump on a short flight to Madrid, all taking more than 24 hours.  UEFA has dithered badly about whether or not to postpone the match, and the fans who wanted to travel to the game have been screwed as a result.

In the Premiership, this weekend’s games are huge for Liverpool.  They play at Burnley while fourth place Tottenham play at Manchester United and fifth place Manchester City play at Arsenal. 

In the League Championship, Newcastle has clinched the title and will be promoted, and it looks like West Bromwich Albion has also clinched promotion.  There will be four team playoff for the final spot, which right now would be between Nottingham Forest, Cardiff City, Leicester City, and Swansea City, with Blackpool lurking just two points back in seventh place.

After losing the first leg in Lisbon, 2-1, Liverpool bounced back in a big way with a sound 4-1 thrashing of Benfica yesterday at Anfield.  Fernando Torres scored two goals, becoming the first Liverpool player to score two goals in four consecutive home games.  Here in the US, I was able to watch the game on Gol TV, who had an American announcer (who actually wasn’t that bad).

The game started out a bit ragged by Liverpool, but the crowd was in full throat and finally, at 28 minutes, Dirk Kuyt scored off a corner that was initially ruled offside, but fortunately the head referee correctly overruled the linesman.  Barely over five minutes later, Lucas went in alone after a tremendous pass by Steven Gerrard, and Liverpool led, 2-0.  However, the players knew that this lead was precarious, and Benfica reinforced the notion by nearly scoring before the end of the half.

Liverpool started the second half extremely aggressively, attacking at every opportunity.  At 59 minutes, goalie Pepe Reina gathered a corner kick and passed it to Javier Mascherano, who got the ball to Yossi Benayoun on a beautiful counterattack.  He passed to Dirk Kuyt, who then sent an incredible cross to Torres for the all important third goal.  Four passes up the length of the field - beautiful.  Of course, this started Benfica diving and hammering Liverpool players.  The color commentator on Gol TV even called one Benfica player “gutless” and said that he should be wearing a dress after a particularly egregious dive in the box.

At 70 minutes, Benfica was awarded an extremely questionable free kick and Oscar Cordozo scored through the wall (Gerrard moved) to make it 3-1. There was another scare soon after on another free kick, but Liverpool escaped that one and Benfica soon got caught too far up, with Torres ending it by going in alone and chipping the ball over the keeper.

It was a very solid performance after the disappointment at Birmingham and the controversy surrounding Torres’ subtitution in that game.  Liverpool will play Torres’ former team, Atletico Madrid, in the two leg semifinal starting in two weeks.  They play Fulham at home in the Premiership Sunday and then next week is when they can hope that Man City and Tottenham start dropping some points.  Tottenham plays Arsenal next Wednesday, Chelsea Saturday, and Man U the Saturday after that.  Man City plays Man U next Saturday and Arsenal in two weeks.

In other Liverpool news, goalie Pepe Reina signed a six year contract extension.  He is undoubtedly one of Rafa Benitez’s best signings, and will be going to South Africa with Spain.

Albert Riera, who was suspended by Liverpool after publicly criticizing Rafa and calling the club a “sinking ship,” had wanted a transfer to a Russian team, where is wife is from.  But the Spartak Moscow coach said that a deal fell through because of Riera’s outrageous salary demands.  What a colossal, delusional idiot.

Photo from Liverpool Echo

In the wake of the Mike Cameron signing, rumors persist that the Red Sox would consider sending Clay Buchholz and Jacoby Ellsbury to San Diego in exchange for Adrian Gonzalez.  I can understand Padre GM Jed Hoyer asking for Ellsbury, but I seriously doubt Theo would bite.  Ellsbury is the only legitimate speed on the team and should continue to progress into a consistent lead off hitter.  The only move Ellsbury should make is to left field.

According to FanGraphs.com, 36 year old Mike Cameron was the third best defensive center fielder in baseball last season, based on Zone Rating, or UZR, at 10.0.  This measures the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs, and error runs combined.  Jacoby Ellsbury was last in baseball, at -18.6. 

Offensively, Cameron may not be as much as a drop off from Jason Bay as the media projects.  2009 statistics:

Admittedly, Cameron’s stats are from the National League, but it’s not as big a discrepancy as one would think.  And Bay’s 2009 zone rating was -13.0.  It looks like he’s going to disappear into the abyss that is the New York Mets.

Meanwhile, what the hell is happening to the Disney Angels?  They’ve lost their ace, John Lackey, their sparkplug, Chone Figgins, and apparently will lose their aging superstar, Vlad Guerrero.  They did sign Hideki Matsui, so I guess all is well.  Their division rivals, the Mariners, have taken Figgins from them and added Cliff Lee to King Felix.  And the Mariners led the AL in ERA last year. 

Liverpool beat Wigan yesterday at Anfield, 2-1.  Once again no clean sheet, after Wigan scored one minute into second half added time.  Liverpool goals came from David Ngog and Fernando Torres, who came off the bench.  Ngog is looking better and better every game.  The team played with much more spirit and verve, unlike the seemingly indifferent play in the Arsenal game.  It was a very entertaining game, pretty open, chippy, and lots of scoring chances.  Torres now has 35 goals in 37 league games at Anfield.  Next up is at Portsmouth on Saturday.  Liverpool still sit in sixth place, 13 points behind Chelsea.  By the way, Fox Soccer has “upgraded” their website, and it’s a total disaster.  It was obviously done by people who have never surfed a sports website in their lives.

The US will play Honduras in January in a World Cup tune up.  Fine, but they would be much better off playing teams they haven’t played before, non-CONCACAF teams.

Wisconsin basketball beat Cal Poly 90-42 last night.  Not quite like in football in 2008, when Cal Poly took UW to overtime and only lost because they missed two extra points.

More Randy Moss analysis: From Merril Hoge, via Michael Vega at Boston.com: 

The World Cup Draw went down today in Capetown, with Charlize Theron hosting.  Because she’s from South Africa.

Here are the groups, with each team’s FIFA world ranking.

Group A:                                                                 

South Africa 86

Mexico 15

Uruguay 19

France 7

Group B:

Argentina 8

Nigeria 22

South Korea 52                                                          

Greece 12

Group C:

England 9

USA 14

Algeria 28

Slovenia 33

Group D:

Germany 6

Australia 21                                                                   

Serbia 20

Ghana 37

Group E:

Netherlands 3

Denmark 26

Japan 43

Cameroon 11

Group F:

Italy 4

Paraguay 30

New Zealand 77

Slovakia 34

Group G:

Brazil 2

North Korea 84                                          

Ivory Coast 16

Portugal 5

Group H:

Spain 1

Switzerland 18

Honduras 38

Chile 17

Host South Africa will kick things off on June 11 v. Mexico. 

England is reportedly thrilled with their draw, and the US v. England game will be great to watch, the first game for each team, on June 12. 

Group G is clearly the Group of Death, with Brazil, Portugal, and Ivory Coast, three teams in the top 16 in the world. 

Italy looks to have the easiest road through of all the seeded teams. 

The top 2 in each group advance, so if the US can get second place, they would play first place in Group D, probably Germany, in round 2. 

But that’s getting a bit too far ahead of things.  188 days until the first match.

I was able to watch the first hour of the Portugal – Bosnia-Herzegovina game until it was decided before switching over to Slovenia – Russia.  The first half in Sarajevo was pretty sloppy for both teams.  Neither team looked particularly comfortable and their were lots of starts and stops without prolonged possessions.  The pitch looked to be in pretty rough shape, which may have contributed.  The stadium is apparently not very big, but it was certainly very loud and smoky.  Bosnia was missing four players from the first leg due to suspensions, so referee Roberto Rossetti was determined to keep control of the game.  Bosnia tried to press forward and got a couple of chances from outside, but Portugal stayed strong. 

Things started opening up a bit in the second half, and Rossetti seemed to let the players play more.  There were chances for both teams early in the second half from in close, but Raul Meireles scored at 56 minutes for Portugal off a defensive blunder and that was it.  Bosnia started falling apart after that and the fans apparently started throwing objects onto the field, even hitting an assistant referee.  Portugal won 2-0 on aggregate and advanced to the World Cup.

When I switched to the Slovenia – Russia game, Russia trailed 1-0, and I was just in time to see Russia go down to 10 men due to a straight red card that actually looked kind of weak.  This series was at 2-2, with Slovenia ahead because of away goals, so Russia played desperately.  They did have a couple of chances, and Slovenia missed some easy chances on counters, as Russia played everyone up.  A Russian player then received a second yellow, putting the team down to 9, but Russia continued to press forward and nearly scored late, but it was not meant to be.  Slovenia had an emotional celebration of their upset in front of their home crowd.

The controversial game was in Paris.  France beat Ireland in extra time when Thierry Henry hit the ball with his hand not once but twice, and then knocked a pass that William Gallas headed in for the winner.  Not only was there a double hand ball, but replays showed the play was offside, anyway.  Ireland had tied the series earlier on a nice goal by Robbie Keane, but they ended up getting a totally harsh result and deserved better.  There really needs to be some sort of limited replay in international soccer, maybe by utilizing coach’s challenges.

In the other games, Greece advanced over Ukraine and Algeria advanced over Egypt, both with 1-0 wins, and Uruguay advanced over Costa Rica after a 1-1 tie.  Costa Rica was literally seconds from advancing in group play before they gave up a late goal to the US at RFK Stadium that salvaged a tie, and now they end up staying home.  Brutal.

The US got thrashed by Denmark in a friendly, 3-1, giving up 3 goals in the first 10 minutes of the second half.  The next US tune up is not until March, at the Netherlands.  With the 32 team field set, all eyes turn to South Africa for the December 4 draw.