Internet soccer: How was it for you, dear?

Dupin sheepishly paid out his £4.99 last week to have access to the internet streaming of England’s penultimate World Cup qualifier against the Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk and graded the experience a D.

After the collapse of the Irish Broadcasting company Setanta, the UK rights for live coverage of England’s away qualifying games were up for grabs; none of the terrestrials seemed interested (probably due to England having already qualified), so the International Agency, Kentaro, originally appointed by the Ukrainian Football Federation to broker the deal, gave the rights to the digital sports specialists ‘Perform’, to set up an exclusive internet stream of the match. The subscriptions were to be limited to one million to avoid congestion problems; the match would also be shown in a few Odeon cinemas around the country.

That was the broadbrush picture but the situation sparked a fierce debate amongst football fans over proprietorship - shouldn’t England Internationals be free-for-all? This was certainly the view held by old St. George stalwart Stuart Pearce, who said that these games should be televised live as “crown jewel” events. The pro camp were of the opinion that this was a reactionary stance and that such transmissions would be the norm in the future as international digital media enterprises would inevitably compete with the traditional television networks.

What of the event? Without going into too much detail - the analysing the analysts reductio ad absurdum - the studio faces were host James Richardson, familiar to viewers d’un certain age from Gazetta Football Italia in the 90s, and special guest Sven Göran Eriksson. It wasn’t good. Richardson is a clever guy, perfect for transitory, quick-stepping coffee table sporting overviews but too glib to anchor this sort of occasion. There was no chemistry with Eriksson, who obviously has managerial gravitas, but is next to useless as a pundit because his language skills are so poor and his analytical insight wretched. The biggest error was in not appointing two summarisers to get some natural banter going. In the commentary box were Tony Jones and safe pair of lips, David Pleat. I had no problems with the feed albeit there was a slight time-lag between the visual and the audio and the graphics were a bit blocky (admittedly, this might have been due to my player).

Ukraine  1 England  0

The match itself was pretty boring, largely due to England goalkeeper Robert Green’s sending off in the 13th minute for bringing down Dynamo Kiev striker Artem Milevskiy. It was the first clear chance of the game, arising from the returning and slightly rusty Rio Ferdinand’s schoolboy error in letting a lofted long ball bounce over him into the path of the attacker. However, I would attach just as much blame to Green. Given that it is an automatic red card offence to prevent a clear goalscoring chance (by the by, I believe that a 10 minute sin-bin would be a much more suitable, readily administered, and dynamically exciting, punishment), it should be hard-wired into modern ‘keepers that it is a no-no to put in a risky challenge in a one-on-one situation; the best to be done is to stay on your feet and hope your presence and reflexes are enough.

Capello, perhaps wrongly, sacrificed winger Aaron Lennon in order to get David James on. The golden-boy of Ukrainian football, Andrei Shevchenko, who, although boasting an historic one in two international strike rate, is in the team largely as a totem these days, tried to be too precise with the resultant penalty, side-footing it against the right post and wide, after James had dived the wrong way.

Ukraine needed the victory to edge out Croatia for the play-off spot in the group (their last game against Andorra being a gimme) and, despite missing the spot-kick, their man-advantage gave them the immediate impetus they needed. Their best player, Tymoschuk, the Bayern Munich defensive midfielder, began to regulate the play and the goal duly arrived in the 29th minute. Ashley Cole committed another defensive cardinal sin in trying to beat a man on the edge of his own penalty area, got dispossessed and the ball eventually came out to local favourite Serhiy Nazarenko, who sent in a powerful left-footed shot, which Cole, trying to atone, could only deflect past a stranded James.

Ukraine had a couple more chances in the first half, an opportunistic half-volley from Milievskiy beat James but struck the post and a nicely worked corner should have brought a better headed end product.

Sterile half-time analysis from Kentaro / Perform.

The second half was dominated by England. How much of this was down to renewed desire from England and how much down to the Ukrainians thinking “what we have, we hold” was difficult to say. Either way, the excellent performances of Glen Johnson and Wayne Rooney alone merited an equalizer, which didn’t materialise. The latter was instrumental in England’s best moves, showing lovely touches with both feet and some gorgeous passing; unfortunately he just didn’t have his shooting boots on.

Many still take José Mourinho’s sceptical view of Johnson, that for all his obvious attacking talent, he will cost teams too dear through defensive lapses. The issue is clearly one of net benefit (pardon the pun). Without having any relevant stats to hand, from the matches I have seen with Johnson, for club(s) and country, he almost always creates more goalscoring opportunities or dangerous situations in a game than he concedes. This game was a case in point, wherein he served up four or five moments of serious attacking threat and two moments of defensive weakness. Contrast this with, say, former England right-back Gary Neville, whose average net benefit was (0 – 0) = 0.

David James, 39, had earlier in the week stated his desire to play past the age of 40, and he did himself no harm in the competition for a World Cup finals starting berth with a couple of superb saves. It’s difficult to place anyone above him at the moment.

Desultory full-time analysis from Kentaro / Perform.

Kept under wraps until the eleventh hour, the good old BBC managed to secure late evening highlights of the game. It was a far more comfortable experience having Gary Lineker take us through proceedings with a couple of regular pundits and I couldn’t really get too precious about things.

So, the bad news for the neutral football lover, is that Ukraine will pip Croatia to the play-off place.

Next up for England is the dead rubber against Belarus at Wembley on Wednesday, which I’ll be watching in person rather than through a dodgy or even high-class simulacrum.

 

 

Comments

[The Worm]

Describing David Pleat as "a safe pair of lips" is perhaps the most uncomfortable imagery I have come across since Alex Ferguson graced us with "squeaky bum time"