George Vecsey has a very interesting post in today’s New York Times about the difficulty of non-premier teams to make it to the finals / final four in the World Cup.

The “Latin America” scenario of my last post remains in effect. Of course the four teams that I picked there could also go in a European direction, but I found it interesting that neither of the two early contender teams — Costa Rica or Belgium — could rise to the challenge and make it into the quarter finals.

Columbia met an energized and rather violent defensive team in Brazil — 50’ish fouls by Brazil in the course of the game suggest a mass mugging rather than a football match. As unfortunate as the Neymar injury is, the pace and physicality of the Brazilian team’s play almost demanded a response in kind. We shall see if that has any effect on the play of Brazil in its match with Germany, or the absence of Neymar and Silva, assuming that today’s desperate bid by Brazil to have Silva’s yellow card overturned is not successful.

As for Argentina, it channeled its inner Italy to play Belgium to a 1 – 0 win. The Belgian had opportunities, Messi had a great chance blocked the end of the game, but it was basically Argentina playing very strong defense after the initial goal, and otherwise staying at home. Ditto Germany vs. France. The Germans played a little more offense, but at the end of the day defense was the name of the game.

As it almost always is in the crucial games in football. Simply look at the differences in scoring between the divisional matches and the knock-out round. There were 4 goals scored in 4 games last weekend, and one round of penalty kicks. In the first round (admittedly twice as many games), we saw 16 goals scored. Backing up into the divisional rounds, we saw the greatest number of goals ever scored in that round.

So while many of us may have expected to see this offensive trend continue, it did not because at its heart football is a game where a good defense will almost always find it possible to keep a great offensive team in check. The Netherlands/Costa Rica game is a good example. The Dutch were far the superior team, had many more chances in full-time, and yet came up empty, in large part due to off sides traps (10 against, I believe), and very good goal keeping. Penalty kicks is a brutal way to lose a game, but so it goes. FIFA has never been able to find another suitable alternative.

I will stay with my Germany / Netherlands final because I believe they are the better teams at this point in the tournament, but would not be surprised at all to be wrong. Yet again.