World Cup Day 3: Messi Comes Up, Well, Small

6/16/2018

Bad day at the office

Bad timing by Leo. On the day after Cristiano Ronaldo made three goals to draw against Spain, Messi had to take a penalty kick against Iceland, the smallest nation ever to play in the World Cup.

It was the same day that my friend Jeffrey Marcus, in his World Cup site called The Banter, picked up an article from Bleacher Report that explained http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2764081-why-leo-messi-is-so-good-at-free-kicks-but-so-average-at-penalties.

It was only a few days since I was questioned by the son of an American friend now living overseas about my general feeling that Messi is not the great transforming player like, well, I could name Ronaldo or Maradona or Zidane.

All that was floating around Sparta Stadium in Moscow when Messi stepped up to take a penalty in the 64th minute. Wearing his lime-green shoes and his humble stare, he plopped the ball well within range of the Iceland keeper, who swatted it away.

Everybody – the fans, the American broadcasters, and chubby old Diego Armando Maradona, holding a cigar in the stands – knew the deal. Leon is 30. (Of course, Ronaldo is 34.)

Maradona would have done something. Feigned a cyber-attack by Iceland. Fell clutching various parts of his body. Demanded a do-over. Punched the ball -- harder now with the unobtrusive and useful VAR instant replay.

Messi is a beautiful player and strategist, gliding through traffic, seeing the flow, emerging from nowhere to uncoil like some exotic tropical serpent.

But from the penalty line, not so great. Other great players have hated to take penalties – Roberto Baggio and Mia Hamm, to name two.

In the soon-to-be-discarded four-team group format, Argentina lives, and so does Iceland, which has a magnificent point from its first World Cup match, ever. Its players were sturdy and intelligent and incessant, schooled in the leagues of Europe.

Argentina has had bad openers before. A leaper from Cameroon beat them in the first match, as defending champions, in 1990. But they mauled and clawed and dove their way to the final, anyway.

The World Cup is a long haul. The first match, the group stage, a familiar pace, is for charming outsiders, while superstars struggle to establish themselves. I stand by my evaluation of Messi a week or two ago. Onward.

John McDermott

6/16/2018 12:10:41 pm

Spain outplayed Portugal last night. But Ronaldo carried what is a decent but not special Portugal team to a higher level and an important result. Messi today did very little, and when he should have put away a simple penalty kick to win the game he choked and placed the ball within easy reach of the Iceland goalkeeper. Messi is a brilliant player. Just not today. This result could come back to haunt Argentina. I could see Iceland or Croatia winning this group with Argentina fighting for second place. That said, remember how many times Italy went on to play in the Final-and even win the World Cup twice-after struggling to get through a dismal the first round.

Mendel

6/17/2018 01:00:31 am

Your overseas friend, and his son, are without rebuttal for now. Time will tell.

AndyTansey

6/17/2018 12:50:16 pm

There's a man who posts intelligently about soccer here, a former goalkeeper (Jamaica? Hofstra?) who still teaches kids. I am sorry I am unable to remember his name and too lazy to look.

A friend whose soccer expertise I admire once cited a statistical study that 'keepers who do not guess but rather wait and react are more successful than those who guess. The study went on to suggest that, yet, most still guess because, if you don't and the kicker scores, you look really lame.

De Gea guessed. I don't think that Halldorsson did. Who is Halldorsson? He's the Island 'keeper. However, this tournament is all about Messi and CR7, after all. I find myself enamored of the northern European relative underdogs who play with steadfast intelligence. The Island story is so much fun. One of my clients is going hiking there, and she and her companion may well have the place to themselves. What are the statistics about the proportion of the country at the tournament?

And take good care of your teeth. With 100% of humans now belonging to that cohort known as the aging population, we only get two sets of those for which Suarez is known.

I will struggle to keep caught up, as I must avoid spoilers until I watch, rarely live, almost always via DVR. However, it is pleasure to read and a privilege to be able to post here!

George

6/17/2018 05:26:31 pm

Andy, thanks so much. That would be Alan Rubin, ex-keeper for Lehigh, still teaching his craft to youngsters. GV

Brian Savin

6/18/2018 08:01:32 am

Well, there goes the Altice endorsement contract. Not sure his tattoos work so well in underwear in comparison to Rinaldo's current add, anyway.)

Alan Rubin link

6/18/2018 10:34:13 am

Messi also hit the wall on most, if not all of his free kicks. He is terrific when he moves, creates space, draws defenders and opens opportunities for teammates. However, he seems to have difficulty with initiating a set piece.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

World Cup Day 3: Messi Comes Up, Well, Small

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