All The Wold's Stage Part 1

As promised, I would be unveiling a new blog post concept this week.  Without further ado, I would like to welcome my good friend MJ Gunner to First and Den.  I regularly get texts, emails, Facebook messages, smoke signals, telegrams, telegraphs, etc. from MJ praising and bemoaning the performance of his beloved Arsenal.  So I figured who better to talk World Cup with?  MJ and I have been exchanging emails for about a week now, a la Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell.  Here are a few of them, with more to come.  Pay attention ESPN, this could be your midnight to 3am team on ESPN Radio, you can have us for really cheap.

Me: So I would think we would start with the US Squad then move to the big picture.

Right now I think Uncle Sam's Army is in a very precarious place.  Injuries have wreaked havoc, especially on the back line, which is usually our strength. Oguchi Onweyu is coming back from a big knee injury and looked slow and as earth-bound as a fat man in a rascal scooter in the two friendlies here in the US.  Carlos Bocanegra just had hernia surgery.  Jay Demerit is recovering from a nearly career ending eye infection and is having depth perception problems, kind of an important thing in sports.  This can't be good because these guys haven't been playing a lot lately.  That being said, with Tim Howard back there organizing, and they have played a lot of minutes together in the past gives me hope.

Without Charlie Davies, and now that Jozy Altidore sprained his ankle, I worry a little about the front line.  Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey are our two best offensive players, but they come from the midfield, and if no one up front can occupy the opponent's defenders it could be hard for those two to find space.  I am very interested to see how Herculez Gomez plays.  He not only led the Mexican league in scoring, but he has two Zs in his name!

How do you think these injuries will play out?  Have any other concerns?

MJ Gunner:  First I just want to say I am a full service member of Sam's Army and rightfully so am drinking 2-3 glasses of the team Kool-Aid daily. Ever since the Confederation's Cup when we beat Spain and went up on Brazil in the final I realized we have finally made it on the international scene. In 2006 there were high expectations (and a generous power ranking from ESPN, thanks for the jinx) and Bruce Arena and the boys came up short but I believe what Bruce started has been aptly transitioned and progressed with Bob Bradley. No, we are not a top 6 or 7 team internationally. But we have proved that we can beat top teams, any given Sunday (Saturday) right?  No, our team's starting 11 club payroll is not $1 Million a week like Spain, Brazil, Italy, England, but we have the international experience up and down enough of our roster which is a large factor in player growth at the international level.

That puffy intro aside, as a full service member of the Army I also am a full serviced pessimist and fear the worst for our boys. Of course, the worst is failure to progress through the group stage. This starts with injuries you noted. Altidore is practicing again and his participation in our opener against those limey Brits is all but guaranteed. This is crucial to fielding our strongest team against our hardest group opponent. That said, England, our hardest group opponent, will also be the team that hammers our backline the most. Bocanegra and Onweyu recovering and not in top form could bury us. Names like Cherundolo and Jonathan Spector come to mind of people that have the club or international experience and can step up to help cover England's inevitable onslaught of offense. We will miss Davies, and our thoughts have been with him, but our attack minded midfielders and forwards is where I have the most confidence (outside of Timmy in goal of course) in our squad, especially for taking care of Algeria and Slovenia. Altidore is all but guaranteed to be involved for the opener against England. Herc Gomez has a little [Carlos] Tevez in him and now Edson Buddle is our super sub and after Saturday could get the nod for a start. Midfield, with Dempsey pushing forward, and Bradley and Donovan playing more traditional roles, is going to be our nucleus of the team. We will not beat England and maybe the other teams if this nucleus is not on script. When you think great teams yes they have the playboy strikers but their midfield and wingers are just as impressive and arguably more important from a team's perspective. So yeah, we have a world class keeper, fingers crossed for a healthy enough backline, and 5-6 attacking midfield and striking options that have proven they can beat and hang with the best.

Yes, I just finished another glass of the Kool-Aid there. I really do love our team, but what of our group opponents?  We've caught three breaks with England, albeit little breaks we still need to draw positives from their negatives. (1) Everyone hates John Terry, (2) Rio Ferdinand their captain and best defender suffered a WC ending injury, and (3), their GK David James, relegated Portsmouth…? Well sure he is dubbed great and a team's atrocity can't be blamed on one player but I wonder how many Brits share confidence for their man in glove. With these breaks there is one name that keeps me up at night, Rooney. He is an amazing player with foot and head and can single handedly put us to the sword. England comfortably won their last three friendlies scoring 8 goals with a +5 Goal differential; they are ready, hungry and want this for their country not just themselves. Their last win in 1966 might as well be 1866. Algeria qualified in last ditch fashion and have proven their hunger but a little run in with Ireland and losing 3-0 in that friendly has exposed their frailty at the back and inability to produce. Slovenia, hmm what do we know about them? I know little. What have we learned from their friendlies recently? Nothing, they played Qatar and New Zealand a pair of pushovers if you ask me. So Matt I turn it to you, what do you see happening in these group stages? How do we matchup? Are you praying for a tie against England like I am or have you put a little extra coin on the offering plate in hopes for an epic upset and victory a la Spain in the Confed Cup? Dare we lose to England can we overcome and still progress?

Me: I'm not quite sure what to make of our group.  I feel a lot better about facing England than I did when the groups were first announced.  Losing Rio Ferdinand is a big, big hole for them.  I'm not sure the John Terry debacle hurts as far as his performance.  I think that story has lost its legs a little bit.  Where it does hurt them is not having Wayne Bridge, who wouldn't have started but would have been a great man to have coming off the bench.  I also love the fact they are now relying on Ledley King, who can't practice because chronic knee problems.  They will have their keeper problem sorted out.  James, Joe Hart and Robert Green are all three Premiere League quality starters (even the best keeper in the world wouldn't have kept Pompey up this year).  Luckily for us they probably won't have it figured out by the first game.

All that being said, they have too much talent and pace in the midfield and too much Rooney for us to pull the complete upset.  I think it would take our best game and their worst to get a draw.  Look I know we're the only team to beat Spain in the last 45 games, but that was in the Confed Cup, this is the World Cup.  It's like comparing the NIT to the Big Dance.

As for the rest of our group, I really don't know.  You can't take Slovenia's thrashing of New Zealand lightly.  The All-Whites are a WC side (even if they qualified from the equivalent of the Big Sky Conference), and they put in 4 against Qatar, that's got to give them some confidence, and in this tournament that matters.  They will play a very rough game with a strong defense.  As we saw last time around that can take you places, it got them through European qualifying, which is not a cake walk by any means, just ask Euro 2008 darlings Russia (who the Slovenes beat in a play-off) and Turkey, who won’t be joining us in South Africa.  Those are really the only things they have going for them.  There isn't a star we know of yet, and not many players play in any of the major European leagues; this team might suffer from a little stage fright and a little bit of a just-glad-to-be-here syndrome.

What to say about Algeria?  Well they beat the most consistent African side, and hated rivals Egypt in a one game play-off.  It was ugly.  Check it out on YouTube sometime.  Algeria should have been down to 6 men by half-time (same with their final in the African Cup of Nations.)  They are going to foul to try to slow the game down.  I'm pretty sure their coach Rabah Saadane studied under Jose Mourinho at some point.  They like to flood the midfield and have defenders who can get forward.  Overall though, it's a young team that just had a very disappointing loss in the African Cup of Nations that shook things up a bit.  I don't know if they can get organized enough and play with the chemistry needed to do some damage.

Getting out of the group is certainly doable, even if we lose to England.  It would be best not to lose to the Three Lions by more than 2 because it may come down to goal difference.  We looked really good on Saturday against an Australian side that isn't as strong as it has been in the past, but certainly has a history of frustrating us.  We looked well organized at the back, and our counter attack looked ready to score every time we go the ball; we played much of the last 30 minutes on the back foot and still managed a goal in that time.  We will need to play 3 great games in a row if we want a chance, because no one in our group is soft.  I think we will progress, but not as easily as some think.  If we don't, that might be the end of soccer in America.

MJ, what are your thoughts on the rest of the field?  Who do you like?  Who do you think is destined for an embarrassing early exit?  Who could surprise us?  What will Maradona do next?