5 Things We Learned in SwissAustria, June 14

June 14th, 2008 | by: Ian Rose | Comments Off

1. The Fantastic Four : With David Villa’s injury-time winner for Spain, we now have confirmed winners of all four groups, after only two rounds. Spain, Croatia, Portugal and the Netherlands will all win their groups regardless of the results in the final round. Good for them. Bad for their groupmates, who now have only four quarterfinal spots to choose from, all of them leading to an immediate matchup with one of the leaders.

2. We’re Out of Words That Mean “Boring” : Sometime early in today’s Greece v. Russia matchup, I realized that I had run through every way I knew how to describe the mostly defensive play of Greece, and the series of long balls forward from the Greek defense, to no one in particular. I take full credit for this, and my lack of a more flexible vocabulary should in no way reflect upon the fine people at World Cup Blog, our parent company, or the great state of Oregon.

3. Spain Can Win Ugly : We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. Holland is hearing it all the time now. In order to win a major tournament, it takes more than winning pretty. Inevitably, at some point in the proceedings, every team will hit a point where they are not playing at their best. Passes are dribbling harmlessly out of bounds. Shots are scaring fans more than the opposing keeper. Iker Casillas seems mortal. Today, Spain followed up their dominant opener over Russia with a pretty mediocre performance against Sweden. But thanks to David Villa, they still got the win. One more indication that Spain might not break fans’ hearts again this year. Until they do.

4. Half a Zlatan is Better than None … But More Would Have Helped : When the tournament started, Sweden knew they were playing with one slightly damaged Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Their other starting striker is a legend, but unfortunately you don’t really get to be a legend and young at the same time, so Zlatan is pretty important. In his second match today, he didn’t make any Greatest Goals videos, but his finish was enough to beat Iker Casillas and equalize the match. When he came off at halftime, he still looked pretty good. Could he have stayed on another twenty minutes? Not being the Sweden trainer, I can’t say for sure. But right or wrong, as soon as Villa’s strike bulged their net, the Swedes started regretting their choice.

5. It Doesn’t Pay to Hold or Host : There are two sides statistically eliminated from advancing to the quarterfinals after two rounds of play. One is a co-host, Switzerland. The other is the defending European champion, Greece. Austria, to the surprise of everyone except the hardest-core supporter, has a chance to move through, along with nine other sides, and we’ll find out in the next four days who will round out our last eight.