COULD THIS BE THE WORST WORLD CUP IN HISTORY?

[jenni_blog]

I've just read this very interesting blog in soccerlens.com:

http://soccerlens.com/is-this-the-worst-world-cup-ever/47528/#comment-125999

It really brings up a lot of issues that could be a factor in preventing teams from scoring goals, and in causing fans to lose interest.

Some of them:

- the FIFA seeding
- too many teams?
- player fatigue

And I'll add one of my own: the Jabulani ball. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but the only league that has used this ball for the last year is the Bundesliga. Those players have had almost a year to get used to it. The result: Germany's performance compared to all the others. Most of the players on the German NT play their club football in Germany.

Comments

[just-jenni.livejournal.com]

OK, this is all hindsight now, of course. But thanks for the excellent reply to this post!

You're right about the hype. There's always hype! And it's like the journalists are always looking for something to write/talk about, so this WC it's the ball, the vuvuzelas and anything else they can dredge up. Apparently there were only 25 goals scored during the first round of matches compared to 39 in 2006 and in fact, I think you have to go back 40 or 50 years to find a WC that had so few goals scored in the first round. So the pundits were looking for a reason and the ball was thought to perhaps be the problem, simply because some of the players were complaining about it. But yes, I know a new ball is introduced every World Cup - it is a way to make lots of money off sales of the new ball.

And with everyone trying to analyze the possible cause for the 'poor' showings at the WC in the first round of games, a lot of theories are thrown out and then discarded one by one as they are proved wrong.

I don't think that the ball will be a problem anymore. Some of the players...possibly a lot of the ones you listed...seemed to have no problem with it at all. If anything, I think it may be more of a problem for the goalkeepers to handle, and video evidence would seem to support that argument, at least so far.

Oh, and the Jabulani ball was also used in the Argentine league for the 2010 Clausura and also in the MLS (so the Argentine and American players who play in those leagues would also be used to it.) :)

I think everyone will just get used to the vuvuzelas. And the TV broadcasters are trying to tune the noise down and turn up the sound on the announcers' mikes. It seems to be better now than it was in the beginning.