Onward!

By Ben Knight

On the morning of the opening of the third go-round of opening-round games, all five South American nations are leading their groups at World Cup 2010.

Uruguay is up on goal-difference.  Paraguay and Brazil are up by two clear points.  Argentina and Chile up by three.  All five are clearly favoured to advance to the round of 16. 

At a time when the six-team African challenge has all-but-pancaked.  Ghana is leading Group D, but is far from safe.  Everyone else save Cote D’Ivoire in last place, and Didier Drogba’s Elephants need Portugal to lose to Brazil, and have nine whooping goals worth of goal-difference to overcome.  If Ghana falls to Germany, and the Serbs get a result against Los Socceroos, the entire African contingent could be extinct by Friday.

Africa’s woes have been well-discussed by now.  But what is up with the South Americans?

Could it really be as simple as they are all well-used to the Southern-Hemisphere winter, and play at high altitude more frequently than their European cousins, who tend – in general – to play less well away from the home continent?

In the tournament’s largely sleepy opening 16 matches, caution ruled.  Only Germany consistently dashed forward and tore it up.  The South Americans, in general, weren’t that far behind in their desire to run and push the ball, but were largely unable to connect with the enemy net.

The whole tournament changed, I feel, when Brazilian defender Maicon tore home that goal-line screamer to finally breach the North Korean defence.  Since then, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina are practically scoring at will.  Chile looks very dangerous, and Paraguay are working their butts off to go forward.

And though it’s quite possible Uruguay and Argentina could yet be drawn against each other in the round of 16, a lot of oddity would have to occur for Chile and Brazil to find each other.  Which is a windy way of saying we could yet see five South American flags still flying in the quarterfinals!

On the European side of the coin, Germany’s attacking flare fizzled out in their 0-1 loss to Serbia, and Portugal’s seven-goal avalanche against North Korea may or may not actually prove anything.  Yes, the PRK held Brazil off the board for 55 minutes.  But anytime you do something globally unexpected in the World Cup, the entire world is – of course – watching.  That means the Portuguese had several days to gauge the Northerners’ defensive weaknesses, which they had to because this is the group of death, and if they hadn’t ripped the Koreans for seven, it’s still very possible that Cote D’Ivoire would.

Overall, I find the South Americans far more convincing so far.  They look brave, clever – and comfortable.  That’s a winning combination, and I’m not really seeing it – for any bankable stretch of time – from really any of the European sides thus far.

Onward!

By Ben Knight

Into the second batch of World Cup matches, and random thoughts rule. 

As the matches blur by, and every clearer pattern could turn out to be a murkier one by nightfall, here’s an early list of things I love – and don’t love – about whatever in the blessed name of heck is actually transpiring on the sacred soccer pitches of South Africa.

LOVES:

- Goals!  Suddenly, they’re coming.  Get the opening-match jitters out of the way, and now we’re seeing some real attacking mastery.  Uruguay!  Argentina!  Germany (who didn’t wait)!  … Greece?  The first rack of games taught us, basically, that every team in the tournament can play defence.  Yeah, the Aussies got shred-ripped, but the Germans were exceptional against a side that generally takes better-than-decent care of its own fishnet.  No surprise, really.  Goals-against kill you dead in World Cup qualifying, and every team except the hosts qualified.  The telling moment, for me, came when Brazil were held off the board for an eternity by the game and enigmatic North Koreans.  They couldn’t find any space to run stunts, and were basically caught standing around, waiting flat-footed for the ball, for the entire first half.  But then Brazil’s Maicon ripped home the first marker – from down the goal line, beside the goal!  I think this entire World Cup is going to come down to open runs, brilliant passes, and odd-angle bomb jobs.  The team that can be most creative in attack – Brazil?  Germany?  Argentina?  … Chile? – could easily be the one that wins it all.  I truly hope so – because good, grim defence is everywhere, and the human spirit is always better served by brilliance. 

- The opening match: Not the best match of the tournament by any stretch, but South Africa and Mexico served up a game both gritty and soaring, perfectly in keeping with the elated, hype-soaked atmosphere.  Could South African goalie Itumeleng Khune be the second coming of Fabian Barthez?  Like the famously eccentric French legend, there seems no way to tell which body part the lightfooted Khune will deploy to knock down the next shot.  And then, in the second game, he gets red-carded on a letter-of-the-law but dreadfully soft professional foul.  The entire Barthez bag of tricks, and I’m enjoying him tremendously (or I was, because he’s unlikely to be back).  Despite being an eternally grim Canada fan, I found myself very impressed with both the patience and craft of the Mexicans.  And then they turned it loose on Fraudulent France (see below).  A joyous start, which the remainder of the opening 16 games really didn’t much live up to.

- Kontrasting Koreas: The South Koreans roared into the fray with joy, heart and hustle, and buried Greece in their opener.  The North Koreans were stern, tough and tireless, and just about bagged what would have been a superbly earned result against Brazil.  Unfortunately for the southerners, they made the mistake of taking the field for their match against Argentina.  In a game where they absolutely had to control and run the ball, they didn’t.  4-1 loss.  The North still has Portugal and Cote D’Ivoire to survive.  If they can hold their initial intent better than their peninsula-mates, they may yet have a chance.  At this point, it looks bad at both ends.  But both Koreas have certainly created some moments here.

(I’m interested to note, by the by, that my adopted bandwagon lads – Cote D’Ivoire – didn’t make my love list.  I found it pretty easy to break my chronic habit of decades by not cheering for England this time around.  But the team I’ve adopted for the month – Didier Drogba’s fleet-footed African Elephants – just aren’t yet grabbing my heart.  I think I know exactly why (not their fault at all), and I’ll write it up sometime next week.)

UNLOVES:

- What Switzerland did to Spain: Yeah, it was a ringing upset, they worked their arses off all day and I have at least one Swiss friend who is over-the-moon ecstatic about offing the Euro ’08 champions.  But I’m still miffed at Los Switzers for their spirit-crunching negativity in Germany four years ago, and that crease-crunching kamikaze clobber run they scored on yesterday must – I deeply, pleadingly hope – remain the ugliest goal of the entire tournament.  Also, the Swiss win hugely cranks up the likelihood that pre-tourney favourites Spain and Brazil will actually have to face each other in the round of 16 (but that’s not Switzerland’s fault).  It was an ecstatic day of cheese and cuckoo clocks, but more fault Spain for not putting at least a half dozen more of their open shots actually on goal.

- France: “Do you ever feel like you’ve been cheated?” a demoralized Johnny Rotten famously asked a jeering, hostile audience at one of the Sex Pistols’ final gigs in the United States.  They should have played that clip through the loudspeakers for every minute of Les Bleus’ first two matches in South Africa.  No, I’m not especially talking about Thierry Henry’s awful handball that beat Ireland in the final hurdle of qualifying.  Truth is, that shameful moment only robbed the Irish of a fifty-fifty penalty-kick-shootout chance of making the dance.  But given that the French got here under a cloud, could they not, at least, brew up any tiny semblance of positive football once the bell rang?  The Uruguay game was the worst since the Swiss-Ukraine snore-off in ’06.  And the Mexican game wasn’t any better – until the Mexicans started scoring.  The only good that can come from this – aside from the public tar-and-feather firing of French manager Raymond Domenech in the Place Concorde at dawn a week tomorrow – is if the French continue their dreadful play, and let the host South Africans earn a historic triumph on both teams’ way out the door.  Failing that, France has been an utter waste of everybody’s time and good intentions.

- The damn plastic horns: I know, I know – easy target.  Way back in the early days of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club, there was a brief flirtation with plastic horns in the north grandstand of Exhibition Stadium.  I freely admit I was taking myself far too seriously as a baseball fan back then, but I continue to believe my considerable level of annoyance was entirely justified.  I’m feeling it again, now – but for a very different reason.  Back then, I wanted some reverential quiet for a rather thoughtful sport.  Now, I want to hear the real noise.  The fans – from all over the world.  Their songs, their chants – heck, just their voices since I wouldn’t even be able to understand most of their languages.  Okay, the horns are colourful and trendy, and we all knew this was going to happen this time.  But it is pollution.  Not BP vs Louisiana pollution, but all-pervasive and damaging nonetheless.  I did actually hear Mexican fans chanting near the end of the France game.  It sounded wonderful!

I’m spending the weekend out of town, at a wedding in my new and suddenly extended family.  Back Monday!

Onward!

By Ben Knight

Well, that turned into work in a hurry, didn’t it?

I’m so lulled and dulled by most of the soccer I’ve seen over the past two days, I don’t even remember the circumstances of Slovenia’s winning goal against Algeria yesterday morning. 

I was eating French toast in bed in Peterborough, and was about 15 minutes away from driving back to Toronto.  I know I’d spent the better part of two hours watching what looked for all the world like a Portland Timbers intrasquad game from 1976 – both for the uniforms and the quality of play.

I saw the goal, reacted to it, explained the bit about the selfish red card against the Algerian to my sweetie, finished eating, grabbed my bag, fired up the Honda and hit the 115 – leaving all memory of the actual scoring play behind me at the big house in the Kawarthas.

It was far from the only forgettable incident to saggily unfurl on these lackluster third and fourth days of World Cup 2010.

Serbia and Ghana cooked up some passion, bless them.  But the game sounded far more exciting in the occasional radio updates on the highway than it turned out to be when I watched the late replay at home last night.  Another red-card act of selfishness (Serbia), and another late 1-0 win (Ghana).

In between, of course, was Germany.  More on them in a few grafs.

This morning, the Dutch burped out a 2-0 win over Denmark, on a deflected own-goal and a dead-ball sitter off the post.  Full credit, but neither of those scoring plays was exactly planned.

Japan and Cameroon put in some effort, but there was no genius at all on display in a 1-0 Japanese win that could – and possibly should – have gone the other way late.

We actually had news and incident when Italy fell behind late in the first half to a brilliantly headed-in free kick from Paraguay.  But the Italians – playing with their usual lack of opening-round urgency – were content to wait for the Paraguayan ‘keeper to completely miss a corner kick, allowing for an open-net nudge-in to split the game – and the points – 1-1.

What all these contests lacked was real inspiration.  Too much caution.  Too much waiting for the other side to make a mistake.

Remember, folks, when Senegal hugely upset France in the opening match of World Cup 2002?  What I loved most of all about that game was that the African team – made up almost entirely of unheralded players from the French second division – had the cheek and nerve to go into that match with a plan for winning.

Yeah, the goal was scuffed home, and was even worse than the ones the Dutch and Italians scored today.  But there was a plan.

Except for the Germans, I’m not seeing much of that right now.

What the heck?  These teams qualified to be here.  Only a small number have any realistic chance of lifting the trophy on July 11.  Why not come out and play your best?

France and Italy are half-assing it, like they always, always do off the top.  The Dutch looked ordinary, and England — surprise, oh soggy surprise! — underachieved.  Heck, the only team I’ve seen play with all-out joy, desire and hunger so far are the South Koreans.

… And the Germans.

THAT was brilliant.  Ripping up a pretty decent defensive Australian side 4-0, with a dizzying series of timing patterns, laser passes and carefully disguised, impossible-to-defend runs.  And even when a German actually got in alone on the Aussie goal (Thomas Muller, to make it 3-0), the player executed an outrageous spin-o-rama to shred what little resistance the Aussies were already positionally unlikely to offer.

Maybe it was just the way the teams matched up, but the game was very reminiscent of that unheralded German side of four years ago, who ripped the spit out of Costa Rica with sudden, brilliant goals and a 4-2 triumph in the lid-lifter.  And the Aussies weren’t bad, you know.  This one could have been 4-2 as well.  There was never any doubt, though, once the balls started flying in, that the youthful Germans were going to win this one going away.

If only that match weren’t utterly out of keeping with the dull, dour, defensiveness that is drowning this tourney in the early days.  I’ve seen five better-than-okay matches out of eleven (RSA-MEX, KOR-GRE, ARG-NGA, ENG-USA, GER-AUS), and the England game only captivated me because I did 1,500 words of surgery on my own psyche whilst it was unwinding.

We desperately need a Group of Death.  Right now.

And we’ve got it – as soon as New Zealand and Slovakia quit kitten-fitting each other at dawn.  Portugal needs very urgently to show up for its opening match against Cote D’Ivoire, and your guess is as good as mine what Brazil v North Korea is going to look like.

Certainly, tomorrow has to be better.  We’re only four days in.  I deeply hope that what we’ve seen isn’t what we’re going to get the rest of the way.

Onward!

By Ben Knight

And so, for the first time since I fired England as the team I always cheer for in the World Cup, it was time to settle in and watch them play.  And of all the sides they could be opposing on this achingly overdue occasion, wouldn’t it just have to be These United States?

This blog charts the match’s emotional ups and downs – and not because I seriously think anyone really cares who I’m cheering for.  It’s more an examination of the whole issue of unconditional soccer support, and whether one can actually free oneself from an unhappy association with a team that drives you asinine, and diminishes your will to live.

Ing-er-land, Ing-er-land, Ing-er-land.

It’s a life sentence, they’ll tell you – and I desperately want that not to be true.  I feel driven down and diminished by England’s narrow view of the world game.  I’m tired of never being fully free to support bolder, more creative sides.

I could have done without it being the Americans on the other side.  But on the other hand, Major League Soccer is the league I directly cover.  The thought that a briefly over-achieving upstart like Edson Buddle of the L.A. Galaxy could actually be in position to dent England’s World Cup dream is ironic – funny, actually.  Buddle doesn’t start.  Oh, well.

Odd how the universe can set you up, sometimes.  Two days after I fired England, I actually encountered my long-lost ex-wife in St. George subway station in Toronto.  Hadn’t seen her in eight years.  She looked happy and well, and we had a very pleasant little chat.  Quite gentle, given the huge emotional range that can be in play in such a situation.

Ah, but that was just real life.  This is soccer.  And here we go.

My girlfriend sticks her head in to ask me if I’m cheering for the Americans.  “I’m not cheering for England,” I answer.

Right out of the chute, England benches David James, a goalie I adore watching.  That would have been a disappointment in my former life.  It still is, actually, but it’s because I’m a fan of a particularly edgy brand of soccer, and James is rarely dull.  From an England point of view, I feel neutral.

Bang!  1-0 England.  Steven Gerrard on four minutes.  How’s that for a test of the human heart?

Well, it didn’t make me happy.  Sincerely.  I just feel blank about it.  No surge of joy or adrenalin.  No running around the living room, screaming like a crimson goofball and high-fiving my sweetie’s dog.  The cameras show the cross of St. George, flying a thousand times in the South African night.  I, who was born on St. George’s Day, ain’t feelin’ a thing.

On 13 minutes, the dreaded “go you Americans” thought crosses by brain for the first time.  Comes after a tight closeup on young Yank striker Jozy Altidore, whom I really enjoy, and feel got a raw deal when he went off to Villarreal in Spain a year early, and hardly played at all.

I really don’t want to be a U.S. fan.  I’ve chosen to bind my heart to Cote D’Ivoire for this World Cup, deeply appreciating their fire and creativity, and the fact that they’re really up against it in a group with both Brazil and Portugal.  But it’s the Yanks on the field today, and apparently my apathy to England is curdling into disdain.

That’s how it is when you encounter an ex.  Never quite know what emotions are going to bubble into play.

19^th minute!  Altidore just wide for the States!  That was a giddy thrill.  No question.

Well, fair’s fair.  This isn’t dour, depressing, anti-soccer England.  The Lions look serious, and are working well enough to create things.  Hard to gauge the chronic self-superior mindset thing, because they went a goal up early and are presently entitled to it. 

On 27 minutes, a good free kick from All-American pretty boy Landon Donovan gets headed just high and wide by Oguchi Onyewu.  I feel a twinge of disappointment.

35 minutes, and the TV announcer makes his first aching mention of the chronic controversy over whether Gerrard and Frank Lampard can function together in the centre of the same England midfield.  I am mortally sick sideways over this, because it’s so freaking obvious that they SHOULD, and it’s still never really been sorted whether they can.  The endless British tabloid obsession with never solving such subscription-boosting non-stories is part of reason I decided to let England drift away.

Oh my great hairy goodness!  Clint Dempsey equalizes for The Colonies!  “Is that good?” my girlfriend asks.  “I don’t know,” I answer. 

It’s another in an endless string of high-profile English goaltending gaffes.  Young Robert Green of West Ham United completely forgets to catch a shot that wouldn’t even qualify as a fair man’s half chance.  This would have been teeth-gnashing agony for me a week ago.  Today, I’m intrigued to say I’m fine with it.

Halftime.  England threw a lot of emotional bait at me in the opening 45.  And it didn’t seem hard at all to let it all sail by.  The premise has always been that you can’t break up with a soccer team.  That whatever pain and frustration they send your way is simply part of the contract – and none of it will matter if they actually win it all someday.

But, see, I don’t settle for stuff like that anymore in any other part of my life.  I’ve quit jobs, walked out on girlfriends, ditched old habits, shut down aching attachments – all in the name of the pursuit of some tangible version of happiness.   And England just hasn’t been a carbon-atom full of fun for me in years.  The more I learn, the more I see that England doesn’t.  The happier I am, the less I want to play that game.

Quit preaching, kid.  Watch the damn game.

On 48 minutes, the ball rolls clean through the American six-yard box.  My gut clenches.  England pressing hard now.  Interesting not to feel my hope engaging.

A moment later, a Wayne Rooney wonk-bouncer for England gets cleared off the American goal line.  I enjoyed it, but it was waved out for offside.

Emile Heskey now for England, head-on against U.S. goalie Tim Howard, who dives to save and hold the ball.  One-way traffic on the field.  This, too, is classic England emotion-wracking behaviour.  Manufacture a chip-truckload of chances, and not score on a one.

I hear myself yell “Yes!” three times as Altidore burns past a lead-footed Jamie Carracher and just misses scoring. 

By 75 minutes, it’s again all England, with Howard making save after save.  Edson Buddle enters the game for the States.

A moment later, here comes Peter Crouch.  This is a pull to my heart, because I love watching Crouch.  So awkward, so unconventional, so very, very good.  There’s something in the English psyche, I contend, that simply cannot accept that a man who moves so clumsily can actually be one of their very best goal scorers.  England or no England, I freely give myself permission to continue enjoying Peter Crouch.

Five minutes left and the British announcer calls the game a stalemate.  25 scoring chances!  It might be a tie, but it sure ain’t a stalemate!  (That has nothing to do with being or not being an England fan, of course.)

On 88, Donovan tries to do too much and the shot goes over the bar.  I notice myself groaning, but it could just be chronic frustration with Donovan’s act.

The match ends 1-1.  England clearly could – and should – have won.

So – what does any of this prove?  (Thanks if you’re still reading, by the way.  I know this has been an odd ride.)

It’s only one game, but I’m going to say it is, in fact, possible to cure yourself of a soccer team.  This was the entire England bag of nagging stuff, and except for liking Peter Crouch, I didn’t feel the need to bite on it.  The draw is a bit of a setback, of course, but shouldn’t be fatal because I don’t see either Algeria or Slovenia causing any serious problems for the Brits.

I certainly had a very different emotional journey than I would have had my England fandom been intact.  That howling goaltending gaffe would have dropped my off a cliff.  Why does that ALWAYS happen to promising young English ‘keepers?

The next step in this experiment comes Thursday, when I find if I can, in fact, get passionate about Ivory Coast in their do-or-die opener against Portugal.

If you’re tired beyond tired of the team you cheer for, I hope this experiment helps.

Onward!

By Ben Knight

Nothing much worth saying about that scoreless France-Uruguay tiff. The French sleep-farted their way through it, and the South Americans didn’t have enough game to call them out. Awful waste of everybody’s time and good intentions.

So thank the stars for South Korea this morning. All-out heart and hustle in a well-deserved 2-0 shutdown of the Greeks. Greece’s smothering possession tactics can’t work if they can’t get the ball. And their defence can’t keep them in it if they get burned for a goal in the opening moments.

Wonderfully refreshing to see the sheer energetic passion the Koreans bring to the big bash. I’ll never be a Manchester United man, but Park Ji-Sung was brilliant, both with long, searching passes from the back, and a thrilling steal-and-scoot finish on the second goal.

The issue was always going to be their endurance, and it did seem to flag notably in the last 20 minutes. Greece rallied as Korea drooped, but never found a coherent combo of attacking moves.

Korea-Argentina is looking like a delicious match-up. All-out speed both ways? I can’t see the Koreans being cautious. The best way to deal with Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez is to run the ball deep and forever into Argentine end. Could be a track meet, and this time the Koreans will have to run hard to the finish line.

And speaking of Argentina, they also got the early goal, and held on a down a gritty but unfocused Nigeria 1-0. Could have been a landslide, but for the straining fingertips of Vincent Enyeama in the Super Eagle goal.

But all of this is but distraction for me. I’m quite a bit on edge leaning into this afternoon’s huge clash between my ex-favourite team (England) and my ex-team’s bratty cousins (the United States).

How are you guys doing?

Onward!

By Ben Knight

For the longest time, World Cup South Africa has been a wild, approaching hypefest. Build the stadiums, sort the security, hire the bands and dancers.

It’s been going on extra long, in fact, should you remember that South Africa had all but landed the 2006 World Cup, before lead FIFA cheque-casher Sepp Blatter suddenly and shadily dealt the world’s biggest bun feed out the side door to Germany.

And after all that, what a lovely scene of colour and joy in the big bowl in Jo’burg this morning! A continent can only ever stage its very first World Cup once. And toss in the still-very-short bits of history that have tip-toed past since South Africa was freed from the awful lingering spirit-kill of apartheid, and this was a long-time-coming and achingly needed party.

But there also comes a point where a World Cup ceases being a multi-year nightmare of logistics and knock-kneed finance, and actually turns into a soccer match.

In South Africa’s case, it quickly became a one-way survival job against a cagey, gritty, clearly superior Mexican opponent.

The opening five minutes looked really, really bad for the home side, but they managed to tough it out to halftime nil-nil. Mexico had a very healthy share of the ball, but didn’t seem all that interested in finishing.

And then, into the second half, the upstart Bafana Boys shrugged off the run of play, and scored what will surely still be one of the goals of the tournament after all 64 games are in the books a month from now. A good run of possession and passing in the midfield, a gorgeous diagonal downfield ball from Kagisho Dikgacoi, and a singing no-spin knuckleball of a top-shelf finish from Siphiwe Thsabalala.

Ah, but if you’re going to be Cinderella, you need to have enough pumpkin for a good getaway carriage. Mexico regrouped, shuffled its lineup, kept pressing, and called shenanigans on the South African pumpkin supply. Cinderella was caught short, and Rafael Marquez equalized from off the right post with 11 minutes left to go.

The Mexicans kept pressing, at their own considerable defensive peril. It almost killed them, when Bafana ‘keeper Itumuleng Khune fired a route-one longball to Katlego Mphela, who seeped into Mexico’s floorboards and ripped what could have been the game-winner off the base of the left goalpost.

1-1 on the day, and perhaps a lucky escape for both teams. Mexico survived some occasional Bafana Bafana brilliance, while the home side were unable to escape with their glass slippers intact.

A fine, entertaining opener. I’m ready for some serious soccer now.

Sidenote: Because I know very little about goaltending, I take every chance I can to talk to those who do. Former Canadian national backposter Craig Forrest talks all the time about “body shape,” and how crucial it is to making good and consistent saves. The body shape of Mexico’s Oscar Perez on Mphela’s late-game post plunk – hopping blandly with hands limp at sides at a blank, baffled look on his face – did not, in this reporter’s eyes, at least – inspire confidence.

Onward!

By Ben Knight

So, now that my heart has divorced and disowned the English national soccer team, I am free to follow the 2010 World Cup without the ancient, aching anchor of anxiety being an England fan used to impose upon me.

Certainly, it will be intriguing to see how my heart responds to seeing my former passion in action – particularly when they open the tournament this Saturday in a brawl-for-it-all showdown with the upstart United States.

I think some of you who read my “England, you’re fired!” piece the other day believe I have transferred my allegiance Stateside. I haven’t. I can’t – even though I would love to see the Yanks down the Brits, once and one time only. It would be a deeply significant upset, with all kinds of future implications, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

My search for a new team didn’t actually last very long. Part of being strapped to England is that you see other countries having much more fun that you are – playing ecstatic, lovely, daring, risky football, and to heck with the consequences.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that, the second my heart was free, it floated almost instantly to Africa.

Africa and I go way back. I spent my grade one year in Ibadan, Nigeria, where my university-professor father was teaching for a time. I vividly remember the sounds and colours of the place – so hugely different from the then-cold and terribly, dourly Scottish mid-sixties Toronto I grew up in.

The heat of the high, overhead noonday sun. The clamour and colour of the local cloth market. Boiling thunderstorms that could materialize out of literally nothing in short, scant minutes at the height of the rainy season. And the guns. And the civil war. Not always the happiest of memories, though I’ve been blessed all my life my having seen such a different world when I was still so young.

I’ve flirted with cheering for Nigeria, but it doesn’t stick. Dazzling success in youth football seems to wreck on the harsher realities of the top-flight game. I adore the passion of African soccer. I just wish the Nigerians had a bit more fun playing it.

Cripes, Ben! This “fun” thing burns bright with you! What’s the big hairy deal about enjoying yourself?

Well, we only get so many World Cups in our lives. As a former England fan, I found myself feeling rising frustration every time the Three Lions strode the stage. Negative tactics, false pomposity, cruel and often self-imposed fate. When England wasn’t around, I felt freer and had a lot more fun.

Yes, England gave soccer to the world. But the world didn’t wait around, blithely taking England’s word for how the game should be played. Yes, the English Premier League is spectacular. But limit it to native sons, and it’s basically Belgium.

Any World Cup is an all-you-can-eat soccer smorgasbord. Why limit myself to bangers and mash, and toad in the hole?

Looking at the draw, there is one utterly spectacular group in World Cup 2010. Group G is a certainly Group of Death.

Just for starters, Brazil and Portugal – drawn together at last. There’s a passionate debate in Toronto about whether the city’s vast numbers of Portugal and Brazil fans are, in fact, the same people, simply flying the car flags of whichever of these two great soccer lands is still standing at the end. The debate enflames people on both sides. Have no doubt, when the two Latin giants clash on June 25 in Durban, that will be an epic day of horn-honking in Toronto – and we shall know at last, and for certain, who supports whom.

Now, just for yoks, let’s toss Cote D’Ivoire into that group. Only their second World Cup appearance, but what wonder, flash and dazzle rises off of these lads come game time. Yes, they just suffered a huge blow when their finest player, Didier Drogba, busted a wing just before takeoff. They also have disgraced former England (and Mexico) manager Sven-Goran Eriksson calling the shots on the sidelines. Sven has had a very strange career, due to both a compelling success rate and his curious ability to utterly lose his mind at any given strategic moment.

And then – to fill it out – howzabout North Korea? What’s a Group of Death without a crazed, megalomaniacal dictator and his mysterious, enslaved people? One of the real benefits of the World Cup, is that it is played by real people. National stereotypes abound, but there are so many vivid, different versions of humanity in any starting soccer side. In the rest of the world, we never get to see North Koreans operate. Now, for at least six hours in three soccer matches in the global spotlight, we do.

This group electrifies me. So I’ve decided to take a routing interest.

For at least the next couple of weeks, Onward! is passionately rooting for the Elephants of Ivory Coast.

And that’s without Drogba, and that’s with Eriksson. This was never about backing a side that has a better chance than England to actually win the freaking tournament. This was about finding a starting point, and throwing all the joy and passion I can muster into an entirely new footballing experience.

I know how it feels to be an England fan. I don’t want to be one anymore.

I’ll take the wild, expansive passion of Africa over the brooding, lingering misery I have endured for far too long. I will watch England, and closely chronicle whatever conflicts arise in my seeking, searching heart. And then I will turn around and savour Group G.

Cote D’Ivoire has a chance to survive, people! An African side, playing in Africa, should be a lot less stiff than we’ve seen them in so many off-continent World Cups. Brazil looks unassailable, but Portugal has that eternally dangerous tendency to get lulled off their game. If the Portuguese don’t come at the Elephants with their absolute A-game in Tuesday’s group opener, they could find themselves a long way from safety right out of the chute.

Yes, I’m jumping on a band wagon. One with a busted wheel and a strange, strange driver – but a bandwagon nonetheless.

An African World Cup is no time to be mired in the past. We’ll see what odd and delicious stories emerge from this strange new perspective I’m adopting.

May we all have a sensational tournament! Nothing else in all of life is anything like – this!

Onward!

By Ben Knight

It is the thing no soccer fan can ever do.

Picking a team to root for is not only a lifestyle choice, it’s a lifetime one. And often, we don’t pick. It’s done for us, by ancestry, birth or some other large and insurmountable circumstance.

And so we cheer, and so we suffer, and so it goes. The one thing we are not allowed to do is call it off. Our team is our team, and we must accept whatever woe and pointlessness they chronically inflict on our yearning souls. Especially now, with the World Cup less than one short week away.

Five or six generations ago, somewhere in Surrey, England, south of Ye Olde London Towne, lived a member of the local constabulatory whose surname was Knight. All I shall ever know about Constable Knight is that he existed, and that I am his straight, direct, blood-line descendent.

In truth, I have relatives all over the British Isles – in England, Scotland and Ireland. But my people have been in Canada (or the States) for at least four generations on all sides. I am as Canadian as one can be – but that doesn’t help me, of course, come the World Cup.

I spent a few summers in London as a kid. I adore the place – and I discovered soccer there. The idea of every town having a team, big leagues and little leagues, and the same game being played everywhere was irresistible to me. Yeah, I know Canada has basically the same set-up in hockey. But hockey doesn’t have promotion and relegation, and cup competitions where you, me and a nine-piece rhumba band could theoretically earn a match with the Stanley Cup champions. Soccer does, and I love it forever for that.

So I picked an obscure team in the English Fourth Division to cheer for (Forza Port Vale!), and settled into a happy and largely soccer-free life in the colonies. Until Toronto FC came along, I was actually a paid soccer writer who didn’t have a stadium to go to.

So I support Port Vale, Toronto FC, Canada … and England.

Oh, England. Sigh.

A lot has changed in my life these past few months. In recent times, I have made a conscious move away from grinding frustration, choosing to embrace the things I love in life – regardless of how broke or out on my own that can frequently leave me. I feel done with struggle in my life. I have a new love, a second home town, and a huge amount of joy and inspiration I want to share with anyone who gets within ten feet of me.

And, despite whatever rules of fandom have bound us all to misery since time and the game began, I find my heart no longer includes any link at all to the team that usually wrecks my dreams when World Cup time rolls ‘round.

To paraphrase Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he looked out at the ruins of 1968 and could no longer stomach being the most powerful man in such a terrible world:

“I will not seek, nor will I accept, another World Cup as a fan of the English national soccer team.”

England! The nation that gave the world soccer, and never learned a thing about it since. A place that feels it rules by right, and is stuck hopelessly behind the global soccer curve. A place that did actually win one World Cup, and took the triumph as confirmation of everything it had actually been wrong about, before, during and ever since.

Yeah, I know. They went abroad and hired Fabio Capello as coach, and the guy is the goods, and he’s not buying into the old crap, and they’re a real soccer team now. Too late and sorry, guys. It’s still too much of the same old same old for me.

I am so tired of watching you bozos half-ass your way past Paraguay and Trinidad, only to get iced by Portugal on penalty kicks. If I’ve got to go through all that, let me at least do it with some guys my heart can believe in.

One more round of “Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard can’t play together in the centre of midfield,” with the gawdamn tabloids inventing scandals and the WAGS (wives and girlfriends) flaunting and flutzing their way across an impoverished African nation? Pass.

In the past couple of days, I’ve actually come to realize I hope you get pasted by the States in your opening game on Saturday. The soccer fan in me – who is less and less patient with the England fan in me – sees huge benefits for the global game if the Yanks drop the Brits. A changing of the guard, if you will. A desperately needed echo of revolutionary times.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d be an Englishman over an American any time. But English soccer needs an almighty kick in the caboose, and I don’t see their other first-round opponents – Algeria and Slovenia – packing a big enough boot for that much butt.

On a more selfish level, I want to have an exultant, life-affirming month of soccer. Chaining my heart to this same, grinding, overly self-important bunch of overrated under-achievers feels, frankly, like abuse.

So – I’m out. Breaking the chains. Releasing England’s footballling finest to find their fate without me.

I know. Big hairy deal, right? Who actually gives a sideways squid in a sluggish sea what team the Knight kid is cheering for? Some of you, I hope – and I’ll tell you very soon.

The deeper point is – maybe being a fan doesn’t have to be a life sentence after all. Maybe there actually comes a point where the same old same old is simply too unsatisfying to be sustained.

I do not want England to win this World Cup. I want England to be embarrassed in their opening game.

I am no longer an England fan. I … am … free!

Any of the rest of you sons of St. George want to come along?

Onward!

By Ben Knight

It’s never just about scoring goals, of course.

As this free-flowing, fast-firing Toronto FC side of oh-ten pushes forward and starts actually creating goals, they’re doing so with a confidence rarely seen in these parts.

But that confidence, I would suggest, is based only slightly on the fact that DeRo is hitting from everywhere, Chad Barrett looks confident and competent, and O’Brian White is playing more and more like a pro.

I think the real reason this crew is literally firing on all cylinders is not because they know they can score – they also know they’ve got help and support at the back.

The back! The defence! Goaltending!

It’s tough enough to score goals in soccer . No one needs the added pressure of having to bang home a couple of beauts because your back four is going to kack away a brace by halftime.

Well, suddenly – and it’s hard to admit this, because leaky defence has been a festering fact of life at BMO Field from the get-go – TFC strikers have had a significant chunk of their burden removed. They know they can try something daring, have it come up short, and not be at undue risk of going a goal down off the restart.

Coach Preki has, as promised, got this team playing smart, hard-nosed defence. Pretty’s not the issue. De Guzman and de Rosario can provide plenty of that going forward.

It’s the emergence of three young players – central defenders Nana Attakora and Adrian Cann, and sophomore goalie Stephan Frei – that is keeping the Torontos in match after match after match.

For three years, supporting TFC has meant having two loops playing over and over and over in your head – constantly! “I hope we can score” and “I hope they don’t get a good shot.”

It’s not that Toronto goalies have been horrible. Frei – and Greg Sutton before him – have put in plenty of fine, valiant efforts. But far too often, they were left stranded and victimized by insane beer-league miscues in the back four.

Sometimes, they rallied spectacularly. Sutton, stopping London Donovan on multiple breakaways as TFC stole a win in Los Angeles in ’08. Other times – well, what exactly are you supposed to consistently do when your teammates cough up death balls at the opposite post, or forget to rise for headers the other team gleefully heads home?

Frei looked frantic off the start of the new season. Screaming orders constantly, and trying way too hard to get to everything. But then, Preki’s lineup came together, and things … settled.

Toronto FC – as they check out their reflections in their second-consecutive Voyageurs Cup this morning – are a much harder team to take shots on, with a goalie who is in fine form, getting to almost every ball that tries to get past him.

Nothing’s perfect, nor ever will it be. But de Rosario doesn’t have to press so hard now. He doesn’t have to try to force home every half chance from anywhere on the field. The man has the luxury of options – and the considerable comfort of knowing his mates will stop the enemy and get him the ball back if this particular attacking foray goes south.

Attacks do, after all. You spend the huge majority of your time on a soccer pitch not scoring.

And, of course, it’s early. This has been the time of year where TFC teams – if they’re ever going to do well – have their best runs of success. But there’s a real sense of construction and design with this roster, something Preki must have brought with him, because lord knows GM Mo Johnston cannot get there on his own.

It’s at least possible now to watch the other team line up a shot without thinking it’s all over.

And that takes a lot of pressure off the fans, as well.

Onward!

By Ben Knight

Author’s note: No, I can’t really explain to your dear, patient people why it should ever take this many days to get a breezy little blog item out of my head and onto the Internet.  Some combination of work, lack of work, exhaustion, romance, living in two cities, covering Juve-Fiorentina for CP, a heatwave, car woes, dental distraction, a doctor’s appointment and One Other Thing ©.  With all that said – and before we all watch the Venezuela match tonight – let’s go back to Buenos Aires:

They’re so fast – relentless.  They leap on mistakes like pumas on a wounded bratwurst. 

In a packed park in Buenos Aires, World Cup-bound Argentina laid a 5-0 sledgehammering on a game but exposed Canada, in their final tune-up game before next month’s World Cup in South Africa.

Canada didn’t play all that badly overall, I thought.  But any margin they’d usually have – that half second before the tackle, that yard of space you’d normally have to work with – was simply gone. 

Relentless Argentine ball-hawking and layered, almost rugby-style fast breaks rendered Canadian intention and strategy irrelevant.  The lads in red did what they could.  What was done to them could not be reasonably withstood.

So – a disaster?  An embarrassment?  Honorary mention at the world avalanche-eating championship?

I’m going to take the minority position – that this was actually a useful exercise.

I mean, we’ve finally got a Canadian Soccer Association that actually gets the men’s team playing in the run-in to the World Cup.  An away match with Argentina would have come along negative-once in a lifetime up until now.  Everyone from the players to the coaches to the fans knew Our Lads could be in for a freight-training. 

That was never going to be the point.

Canada’s players got to see something very few professional players ever experience: the full flow and fury of the Argentines – up-close and live – in a gigantic stadium filled with roaring, passionate South American fans.

It’s one thing for you and me to watch the match on television.  We see pretty much everything that happens out there, but that’s just the surface stuff.  Canada’s players, were they in the stands watching Argentina dismantle someone else, would see more – the way a slight hesitation here turns into a bad result there. 

But from the seats, they would see the Argentine ballhawks swoop.  When Andre Hainault got his pocket picked on one of the goals, he never saw the predator’s approach.  Dwayne de Rosario, harried to the sidelines, knew he was badly outnumbered, and tried to play the ball to safety down the wing.  I doubt he ever saw the opponent who stormed out of nowhere, and buried the ball with an outlandish outside-of-the-foot long volley deep into the Canada net.

What Canada saw last Sunday afternoon was How It Is Done.  They understand, better than ever before, how suddenly and fatally the counterthrusts can come.  If that makes anyone on the roster sharpen his game, that’s good for everyone.  If any of the Canucks found a flaw in their thought patterns or assumptions, maybe that saves us a goal-against in a game that matters down the road.

You don’t play a game like this to win, folks.  You play because maybe it’s the only chance you’ll ever have – short of actually qualifying for a World Cup – to play the very best, on their turf, on their terms.

In that sense, a 0-5 paste job is likely more beneficial than a tight loss, or even a draw.  And while it would have been sensational if Canada’s attack-oriented formation had actually magicked home a goal, that gleaming moment of success might have overshadowed the deeper, more urgent lessons of this rare and scarce opportunity.

Argentina took Canada apart with speed, deception, tenacity, toughness, off-the-ball movement, vision, skill, passion, fury and joy.  If the Canadian players went south with any holes in any of those parts of their game, they know it much clearer and better than they ever did before. 

For the older players, this match was both a reward for service rendered, and an ultra-intense footballing reality check that should serve them very well in future coaching days.  The youngsters – the ones who may, one day, tread a World Cup pitch in real World Cup matches – just got the best view possible of how the best do business. 

There’s nothing about playing the Houston Dynamo, or grinding out midwinter matches in Scotland or Norway, that will ever, ever look like that.  It was a bad loss on the afternoon – but an excellent set of lessons for the future.

Onward!