DeanBeat/OnLive

The always-insightful Dean Takahashi wrote a long piece on The DeanBeat yesterday about the fall of OnLive. As the Series A investor in one of OnLive’s rivals, Gaikai, I was a pretty active observer of OnLive and of the cloud gaming market generally. I think Dean provides a thorough – if somewhat gentle – overview of the facts of OnLive’s collapse and his piece is totally worth reading.

That said, I want to take issue with two often-repeated conclusions that appear in Dean’s piece (and others) drawn from the OnLive fiasco. The first, more narrow one is that “OnLive failed because it was too early for cloud gaming.” I think this is nonsense. In my opinion, OnLive failed for three reasons, none of which include being “too early”:

1. OnLive chose a consumer-facing, “console in the cloud” strategy that initially required customers to pay a subscription at a time when subscriptions were going out of favor in gaming under pressure from free-to-play models (they later went free for demos but paid for premium games) and which required publishers to pay a platform tax and let OnLive own the customer relationship. Normally, publishers will only consent to this kind of enforced aggregation and high tax when they are getting something meaningful in exchange that they couldn’t get elsewhere (access to closed iOS devices, or to Facebook’s billion eyeballs, for example). Contrast this with Gaikai, who offered publishers the cloud platform as a metered service, and let them determine how they wanted to monetize their customers, if at all.
2. In order to be a viable consumer-facing business, and satisfy the implied and explicit quality of service promises that they were making to customers, OnLive had to over-build the network in advance of proven demand. This put tremendous strain on their treasury – cloud gaming can be a capital-intensive business during the network build-out. To me, this reads as “too aggressive” not “too early.”
3. OnLive’s CEO, Steve Perlman, was a relentless and extremely successful fundraiser. He was able to raise more money at higher valuations than any other company in the space. Unfortunately, that success was a double-edged sword, as he had raised money from investors at valuations which far exceeded the short-term M&A value of his company. He couldn’t salvage OnLive in a sale for a modest premium to the price Sony acquired Gaikai, for example, because he had raised money at two and half times that value. Perhaps high-valuation fundraising would have made sense long-term as an equity preservation strategy for founders and employees, but it severely compromised OnLive’s ability to maneuver short-term.

The second conclusion that Dean makes is that the OnLive collapse will have a chilling effect on investments in games companies. “The rest of the game industry may suffer along with OnLive, particularly if funding for daring ventures dries up,” he writes. He then tries to connect the dots between OnLive, 38 Studios’ bankruptcy, and Zynga’s recent poor stock performance. I think that’s a stretch.

Without question these are unfortunate events for the games business. But, by analogy, no reasonable person looks at the troubles at Nokia, RIM and Palm and thinks that mobile is a bad place to invest. Instead, they look at the management decisions, governance and strategic choices made by those companies and see them for what they are. The overall momentum in games, like in mobile, is bigger and more powerful than the foibles of any particular company, and certainly not a general indictment of “daring ventures” in the gaming space.

Sony acquires Gaikai for $380MM

Today Sony announced an agreement to acquire Benchmark portfolio company Gaikai for $380MM in cash. In just four years, Gaikai built a revolutionary cloud technology platform for gaming. To see console-quality games streamed from the cloud to browsers, tablets and TV is truly magical. Congratulations to Gaikai on this tremendous achievement, and congratulations to Kaz Hirai and Andy House at Sony for their vision and bold action to make Gaikai a part of Sony, and cloud gaming a part of Sony's strategy in the future.

Benchmark was privileged to lead Gaikai's Series A financing back in the fall of 2009 and to participate in both subsequent rounds alongside Rustic Canyon and NEA. We were early believers in both cloud computing (Rightscale, Eucalyptus, Engine Yard) and next-gen game distribution (Riot, Meteor). We saw Gaikai positioned squarely at the intersection of these powerful trends.

Thanks to the great team at Gaikai for their creativity, diligent work and strategic nous. I had the opportunity to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the senior team on site in Aleso Viejo when I served as executive chairman, and I saw Rui Pereira, Robert Stevenson, Brendan Irbe, Nanea Reeves, Mark Anderson and, of course, David Perry in action. They are all true professionals and fully deserve their success.

I particularly want to thank David Perry, Gaikai's CEO. I first met David when he was making the ground-breaking console game Aladdin and I was at Disney. While we crossed paths over the intervening years, Gaikai was our first opportunity to work closely together. Like all great entrepreneurs, David believed that his idea could change the world, and he went out and made it happen. He has been a relentless ambassador not just for Gaikai, but for the whole category. David saw a future for gaming in the cloud, and his leadership both at Gaikai and now at Sony is going to see that future realized.

NaturalMotion

Today Benchmark announced an $11MM investment in NaturalMotion, a publisher of 3D games for mobile devices.  I am joining NaturalMotion's board of directors.

Many people in the packaged-goods games business know NaturalMotion from their Euphoria and Morpheme 3D animation engines, which have been used in high-end console games to produce incredibly realistic character animation (if you've played Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption, for example, you've seen this in action).  Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, recognized that he could port a substantial subset of these technologies to the surprisingly-capable iPhone and iPad platforms, and in so doing leapfrog existing assumptions about what gaming could be on those devices.

The early results, My Horse and CSR Racing (which Apple recently demonstrated on stage at the WWDC keynote), show the incredible promise of console quality and production values matched with the successful free-to-play business models that have taken root in mobile gaming.  NaturalMotion is in production on a slate of innovative products that will stretch the boundaries of some existing genres, as CSR has done with iOS driving games, and also create some exciting new genres we haven't seen before on the platform.

I'm looking forward to working with NaturalMotion, and with an incredibly talented entrepreneur like Torsten Reil, on this exciting endeavor.

Euro 2012 Group Stage Recap

Ok, you can't deny this has been a very entertaining tournament so far.  All of the final games of the group stage had stakes, and every pair of final matches in the groups had real drama. There was even some decent football.

There has been positive play and goals have been plentiful (not a single nil-nil draw in the group stage), including some real gems like Ibrahimovic's or Welbeck's or Ballotelli's (you could put Di Natale's in the mix, or Silva's, or Schevchenko's brace, too). Unfortunately, many of the first-round goals went in against the Irish, whose -8 goal difference and 9 goals conceded in repeated pastings were an embarrassment -- and not a great advertisement for the expanded 24-team format in 2016. Apart from Ireland, there were three 5-goal matches and five 2:1's, a welcome absence of play-acting and diving, and few major complaints about the officiating (save the Ukraine non-goal vs. England).

The fact that every group went down to the last match (and in several cases, down to the last kick in injury time) made for some excellent TV. The final matches went on simultaneously, with the mood of the fans rising and falling as news came into each stadium from the other match in real time via text and Twitter. There were several moments when a single goal could (and did) upend a group.

In Group A, the Czechs beat Poland and the Greeks miraculously beat previously dominant Russia by equally-tense 1:0 scores, sending the match winners through to the quarterfinals against most predictions.  In B, Portugal stylishly beat the floundering Dutch 2:1 to advance (pre-tournament favorite Holland lost all three group matches); Germany beat Denmark by the same score and won the Group of Death. In C, the big favorite Spain won the group, but barely beat Croatia 1:0 in a game they could easily have lost but for Casillas' save of a diving Croatian header (which, had it stood up as the winner, would have knocked Spain out of the tournament).  In the other match, Italy beat the hapless Irish to advance. Finally, in Group D, England gutted out a win over the hosts Ukraine 1:0 and won the group, while Sweden manhandled a lifeless France 2:0 and left the tournament with some pride.

I can't move on from the group stage results without mentioning the utterly baroque tie-breaking rules for the UEFA tournaments. I've read the commentary on both sides of this issue, and I appreciate the potential unfairness of the UEFA rules. It's lame that most fans couldn't figure out the various permutations for advancement in a major tournament without a computer.

That said, the mini-leagues and UEFA coefficients produced some unexpected results, and I would argue that the net result was a meaningful forcing function in favor of winning the final matches rather than drawing (and the fact that there were no draws on Match Day 3 seems to support that -- despite the fact that draws would have been just fine for many teams). I think that made for a better viewing experience. By the way, the best and simplest fix for this that I heard was to use UEFA rules for two-way ties (head-to-head) and FIFA rules for three-way ties (goal difference).

As good as the group stage has been, the tournament looks set up for a great finish.  On one side of the bracket, Germany play Greece and Italy play England. On the other side, Spain play France and Portugal play Czech Republic. I'd love to see a Portugal-Spain semifinal, with Ronaldo going against his Real Madrid teammates, and a Germany-Italy grinder. But I can imagine England getting past Italy to face Germany, and I wouldn't be surprised by a Czech victory over Portugal in a low-scoring game.

The Spain-Germany final looms. They are clearly the two most in-form teams in the tournament so far, and I can't really see any of the remaining teams beating them if they play at their best. But there may be a lot of twists and turns left in this tournament before we get there.

thatgamecompany

If you've played Journey from Jenova Chen's thatgamecompany (TGC) you know you have experienced something strange and magical, something that feels totally unique and yet fun and full of the pleasures that games can deliver (and if you haven't played it, and you own a PS3, stop reading this post and go download it). If you've also played Flower and Flow, you know that Jenova is one of the most ambitious and creative forces in games.

I first encountered Flow seven years ago as a PC game Jenova made when he was a student at USC. At that time, the company I worked for was trying to figure out how to make a mobile version of EA's Spore, and we were struggling with the design. The simplicity, logic and depth of Jenova's game just shamed us. It was beautiful -- meditative but tense in the perfect way.

Today, I'm delighted to report that Benchmark Capital invested $5.5 million in a Series A financing for TGC.  I will be joining TGC's board of directors.  The intent of the investment is to provide the resources for TGC to remain independent, so they can innovate with complete autonomy from the pressures of platforms and publishers. I am really excited about getting to work with Jenova and his team to help build TGC into a global entertainment company.

We believe fundamentally in TGC's vision for interactive entertainment: to bring to games a little of what Pixar films brought to animation -- emotional depth, engagement with fully-realized worlds, and a strong sense of authorship.  In the modern, hyper-connected games market, we believe TGC can reach the broadest possible audience if that vision can be fully controlled by the company.  We're excited to be able to help to make that happen.

Investing in Content

The other day, a friend sent me an introduction to a game company with a note saying, in effect, "I thought you might be interested in this since you invest in content."

Certainly, looking at some recent investments Benchmark has made, you might get that impression. Riot Games, Meteor/Adhesive, Red Robot Labs, and two as-yet unannounced new investments [subsequently announced: Jenova Chen's thatgamescompany and next-gen mobile publisher NaturalMotion] are all companies with core competencies in game design and development.  Yet, in none of these instances would our investment properly be characterized as an investment in content.

Why the misunderstanding? A lot of it has to do with the changing nature of publishing in the video game business in recent years.

In the past, publishers played four key roles in the video game value chain:

1. Product development capital. Until recently, publishers were the sole source of development dollars for the creation of new products (unless a studio had the resources to self-fund development). Large, expensive development teams, often working for years before seeing any revenue, required lots of deficit spending.
2. Marketing reach.  Publishers not only spent millions of dollars on conventional media buys (magazines, television) but also managed a ton of channel marketing, spending on merchandising (end caps, marketing circulars), co-marketing with platform providers, and point of sale promotion.
3. Physical goods distribution. Publishers provided the capital and logistical support necessary to build the retail inventories of packaged products. They pre-paid platform licenses (which often required letters of credit to the tune of millions of dollars before a single disk was sold at retail). They organized the shipment of packaged goods to stores, and managed returns of unsold or defective inventory.
4. Intellectual property management. Often publishers managed "franchises" -- video game brands deployed across a number of platforms, requiring a number of localized versions. Generally, the core development team would concentrate on one or two key platforms and the publisher would manage development of ports and localizations, and control sequels. In addition, publishers could pay for and manage the substantial costs associated with major brand licenses (like sports or movies). 

All of these publishing services benefitted from economies of scale, and publishers had incentives to aggregate products in order to spread cost and risk across a portfolio. Publishers with lots of good product flow got better treatment from platform providers and from retailers, too, further reinforcing the benefits of aggregation. The supply-chain nature of the packaged goods business created an environment in which these services could demand a substantial premium, both in revenue share and, ultimately, in equity value.

Think about what has happened to this model in the last seven or eight years. Capital is now more readily available for game development than ever before, and, further, modern games (and not just mobile or social games) require much smaller teams and much shorter development cycles, and therefore far less pre-revenue capital expenditure. The internet profoundly alters the nature of marketing reach, frequently to the disadvantage of incumbent publishers, and certainly changes the nature of channel marketing. Games are increasingly delivered as services rather than goods, and even when they are delivered as goods they are delivered electronically with a distribution infrastructure that can be rented from cloud providers like Amazon.

So, what is a modern video games publisher? What is the new set of skills and assets that a modern publisher must possess? The new paradigm of online, free-to-play gaming based on virtual goods sales has completely invalidated most of the old value-creation mechanisms (this should be obvious to anyone who has looked at market cap as a multiple of sales for EA or Activision vs. Zynga or TenCent).

In my opinion, the four traditional publishing values have collapsed down to two completely new ones:

1. Customer acquisition leverage. Selling games-as-a-service, generally free-to-play and actualized by the internet, has more to do with traditional e-commerce than with traditional packaged goods distribution. A key component of e-commerce is funnel management. You need to find or create demand, aggregate that demand through downloads and activity, and direct a portion of that engagement and activity to sales. The key skill in this new environment is leveraged customer acquisition -- i.e., a competitively advantageous ability to get customers into the top of the funnel in hopes of selling them something along the way. And, by the way, I don't consider the ability to buy traffic slightly more efficiently than your competitors as a sustainable competitive advantage. CPI marketing is like SEM -- good for a short-term arbitrage and cash-flow generation, but bad for long-term value creation. To foster true organic customer demand, content must be at the core. It is both the honey-pot attracting new users and the motor for on-going engagement.
2. Integrated merchandising and game design. In the old packaged goods days, development teams made games, and sales and marketing teams figured out how to get people to buy them. If customers played them a lot, that probably generated some good reviews and good word-of-mouth for marketing, but ultimately publishers only really cared about generating enough buzz to get a customer into an EB or Target to plunk down $50, whether that customer played the game or not. Now, not only do the games have to be engaging enough to get customers to want to buy virtual goods to enhance the play experience, the games themselves need to be created with the merchandising of virtual goods as a core design value (as well as all the e-commerce instrumentation and analytics). Again, content is central; the store and the game are, in the best sense, one.

The companies that figure out next-gen publishing will create the greatest venture capital returns. Whatever you think about its current stock price, Zynga has clearly validated this concept, and scores highly against my two core next-gen publishing values. Conversely, companies that develop next-gen content alone can produce cash flow (look at just about every successful company selling one-off games on iOS, for example), but rarely high-multiple equity value. By way of example, look at the recent large acquisitions in the mobile games space, where companies sold for between 2-3 times annualized revenue run rate; versus over six times run rate for a company like Riot, that had deeper control over commerce and audience.

So, in a round-about way, this is why I back games companies that develop content. I am really backing platform-based publishers, and my goal is to see them scale to multi-product powerhouses.  But I don't believe you can create publishing leverage by starting with the platform. I think it fundamentally starts with great content.

As much as I admire and appreciate pure game development platforms, I think they will struggle to cross over from tools companies to publishers or distributors without creating partner friction. Meanwhile, companies like Valve are using must-have content (Half Life, Portal, Counterstrike, DotA) to aggregate large audiences (on the Steam platform); those aggregated audiences then create customer acquisition leverage for future Valve titles and also for titles from third parties who pay a toll for access to that highly-qualified audience.

That, for me, is the essence of value creation in the games business, and that's what's guiding my investments in these great and diverse companies in the Benchmark portfolio.

Sports Analytics: MIT Sloan Conference Impressions

The fascinating MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which took place in Boston this weekend (and which I had the privilege to attend) is known affectionately by its attendees as "Dork-palooza" -- a celebration of the number crunchers and obsessive compulsive fans of sports statistics. Panelists, researchers, and attendees discussed a wide variety of topics with a very ambitious goal: to change the way we watch and measure team, individual, and business performance in sport.

The presence and influence of the great Bill James cast a warm glow over the proceedings. James' hugely influential work in baseball statistics, and the Society of American Baseball Research's "saber-metricians" remain the best case study of how the geeks can influence a sport. In panels, research papers and hallway conversations many conference participants talked to the broader project of replicating in other sports James' revolutionary success rethinking how baseball is measured and discussed.

A couple of themes stood out for me in the small subset of the conference I got to sample:

New Data Collection Methods. A couple of research papers on the NBA showed how promising the STATS SportVU 3D positional data will be for future basketball analysis. Data mining the 3D positional information of players and ball can provide some intriguing insights. Several panelists and companies talked about re-introducing context to measurement -- think, for example, about the problem of NFL receivers dropping passes when measuring a quarterback's completion percentage. A hockey panelist talked about "contextual +/-" in assessing the influence of a player's time on ice. And a promising company called StatDNA, which presented in the startup competition, uses trained experts to visually analyze soccer matches, coding events with remarkable fidelity and perhaps some interesting predictive power. I didn't attend any of the bio-metrics panels, but it seems equally interesting work is being done with acquiring granular medical data and using it to enhance athletic performance.

New Methods of Communicating. In a remarkable panel called "Box Score Rebooted," the participants talked about the need to focus on, for lack of a better word, poetics, the languages we use to communicate deep, data-driven concepts. For example, Bill James talked about the decision to name the arcane Blown Save Win concept in baseball "BS Wins" to preserve the double entendre. Muthu Alagappam tried to expand the concept of "positions" in basketball beyond the five traditional ones with data analysis and visualization, revealing 13 actual behavioral groupings that were much more evocative of observed play (I got to see an early preview of this research when his company, Ayasdi, presented to us at Benchmark a few months ago). Kirk Goldsberry developed a visual language of NBA players' shooting efficiency -- point production per shot attempt -- at 1,200 relevant positions on the offensive end; he produced a series of heat maps which allowed delightfully intuitive comparisons of the capabilities and tendencies of the league's stars.

Modernizing Old-School Methods. Obviously, the human mind is amazing at visual pattern recognition, and sports are filled with phenomena that are intuitively obvious to people both inside and outside the sports who pay close attention to games, but which would be hard to quantify through statistics or machine learning. Several panelists reminded the audience of the continued vitality of film analysis to players, coaches, and scouts. The ability to digitize and add metadata and search to video clips, as well as the ability to personalize the film session and distribute game film on iPads, may ultimately be more important than whiz bang  innovations like USC's Voronoi Tessellations (cool as they were).

"Fanalytics", Social Media and Business Intelligence. Sports is a business, and cash money rules. While a lot of analysts justified their work because it could theoretically add efficiency to drafting, trading, transferring, and managing salary for players, there was an equally compelling movement to bring data to bear on the customers -- sports fans -- to study their tendencies, behaviors, and spending patterns to better serve them (and get them to spend more, of course).  From the CEO of Ticketmaster, to Mark Cuban and other team owners, to Vegas bookmakers, there was a consensus that data mining and analysis could provide meaningful uplift, and that social media engagement was crucial. The growing importance of social media to the experience of sport cannot be overstated. In particular, the degree to which Twitter is connecting audiences, athletes, clubs, and even the analysts themselves, is astonishing. It would not be a stretch to call Twitter the deus ex machina of modern sport. [Disclaimer: Benchmark is a significant venture investor in Twitter].

In a broader context, the SSAC is further proof of the revolutionary and disruptive business impact of big data, business intelligence systems, and advanced statistical and marketing analytics. These tools have transformed entire market segments -- think about what data and analytics mean to the book selling business after Amazon, or to the video game business after Zynga, or the advertising business after Google, not to mention oil drilling, or inventory management, or Wall Street investing. Several Benchmark portfolio companies like Hortonworks (Hadoop), Domo (BI and visualization), New Relic (application performance monitoring), and others are helping customers solve data/analytics problems, while many, many portfolio companies are using data analytics fundamentally in their businesses to create competitive advantages and enhance customer experiences.

Analytics has become a key business practice across industries. But it's cool to see it flowering in sports, where it uniquely functions both as management tool and a component of the fan experience -- a unique form of content separate from, but enhancing, the core product.

Meteor, Hawken, and Free-to-Play Gaming

Benchmark Capital has announced an investment in Meteor Entertainment, the publishing company that will bring the amazing mech shooter Hawken to market, together with Adhesive Studios, later this year.

This is going to be fun. First, I get to work with a remarkable new talent, Khang Le, and his team at Adhesive Studios in LA. I discovered Adhesive the same way everybody else did -- through their YouTube gameplay demo for Hawken. My brother sent me a link along with a simple message: "Find these guys!" I've been looking at games for 20 years and Hawken is one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen.

Second, I get to work with my good friend Mark Long. I first met Mark early in his career in the video game business, when he had just started Zombie in Seattle. Mark is a pro's pro, and I was honored that he agreed to come on as our CEO at Meteor. He not only brings recent experience creating free-to-play games, but also a deep understanding of the marketing power of transmedia. Mark is an accomplished graphic novelist (Shrapnel, The Silence of Our Friends) and has worked closely with Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment developing leading-edge film and television concepts.

Third, I get to join Meteor's board along side Rick Heitzmann from FirstMark Capital in New York. Rick and I were the Series A investors in another well-known free-to-play company, Riot Games, a startup studio that had a monster, worldwide hit with their first title, League of Legends. Riot was acquired by the Chinese internet giant Tencent early last year. Rick and I had a great experience together on the Riot board and have been looking for something interesting to do together ever since. I can't think of a better project than this to reunite the team.

Free-to-play is the future of core gaming. Every month we hear the dire reports from the front lines of the packaged goods business, with sales off 10-30% year over year, a trend that we've seen continue unabated for the last couple of years. The packaged goods business is undergoing the disruption that we've witnessed in many other media businesses (music, newspapers, TV) as the internet, free-to-play models, and micro-transactions erode the traditional brands, retail bundles, and price points. This is a huge opportunity -- perhaps up to $8 billion of core revenue is at stake in this migration to free-to-play/virtual goods in the next few years.

If the other media businesses are any guide, this will happen fast. Some of the incumbents, like EA and Valve appear to understand what's happening and are taking action, but the opportunity is enormous for new entrants built from scratch for free-to-play design and publishing. Riot was able to come out of nowhere and, with a single great title and a deep commitment to customer service, reach over 35 million players around the world (and growing), while generating outsized revenues and profits. They did this without the "reach" of the incumbent publishers, without access to their distribution channels, and without their massive conventional marketing budgets. That was simply not possible in the past.

I think Meteor has a great chance to build a really big business in this space, and that's why we invested. I look forward to getting to work with this great team to make it happen.

Riot Games & Tencent

As was widely reported yesterday, the Chinese internet giant Tencent has agreed to acquire a majority of the capital stock of Los Angeles-based Riot Games, a Benchmark portfolio company. The transaction is a huge validation of Riot's meteoric rise to prominence in the online game business. CEO Brandon Beck, his co-founder Marc Merrill and the team at Riot have executed their business plan brilliantly, and the Tencent transaction now gives them a global platform to continue to disrupt the video game business for years to come. Congratulations!

For those unfamiliar with the company, Riot develops and publishes high quality, online, session-based games aimed at the core video game audience. The games are free to play; the company makes money by selling virtual goods to enhance the play experience. Riot's first title, "League of Legends," was an instant hit in the US and Europe, and will launch in Asia this year. The game has attracted a passionate audience, and by the strictest measure of video game engagement -- peak concurrency -- only the multi-billion dollar "Call of Duty" franchise does better than LoL among session-based games.

Benchmark Capital was privileged to invest in both Riot's Series A and Series B financing rounds. We were attracted by three key ingredients: the team's maniacal commitment to product quality and user experience; their belief that they could create sustainable customer acquisition advantages by delivering modern, upgraded versions of well-established play patterns (i.e., DotA); and the inherent benefits of the free-to-play, virtual goods business model. It worked like a charm -- the company delivered remarkable usage, revenue and profit growth. Hat's off to the team for executing so well against the opportunity.

One quick word about Tencent. I've been lucky to know the company since before their 2004 IPO (Tencent distributed some games from my last startup, JAMDAT Mobile, in China). I have immense respect and admiration for Pony Ma, Martin Lau and David Wallerstein. They are smart, honorable business people. I could not be prouder to see the combination of these terrific companies, and I look forward to great things from Riot and Tencent in the future.

World Cup 2018 & 2022 Bids

Well, the mandarins at FIFA, one of the world's most venal and corrupt bureaucracies, have selected Russia and Qatar, respectively, as the sites for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic and so horribly, shockingly wrong for the sport. Let's just parse this for a minute. First, Russia. As a Spanish diplomat put it in one of the Wikileaks documents, essentially a mafia state. Terrible travel infrastructure. Will need billions of dollars in new stadium construction.

But worst of all for a global football tournament, Russia is home to perhaps the world's most unabashedly racist sports fans. When Dick Advocaat was coaching Zenit St. Petersburg, he was instructed not to even recruit black players; when a half-Russian, half-Nigerian player at Lokomotiv decided to leave for England, the fans unfurled a huge banner thanking his new club for taking him and prominently displaying a banana, their preferred racist slur for their only black player. Several African players in Russia have admitted to carrying guns for self-defense. FIFA, which likes to see itself as the champion of the developing world and in particular Africa, clearly has no problem selling out its "values" to get on the gravy train of some utterly corrupt plutocrats from Moscow. Disgusting.

Then, Qatar. Again, awash in oil money. Ruled by a totally corrupt oligarchy. No concept of women's rights. Long history of essentially enslaving South Asians as guest workers. Hot as fucking hell in summer. Roughly the size of a large US county, with nothing of interest for visitors outside football. Oh, and really no football tradition to speak of. Did I mention the oil money?

Look, arguably Russia ought to get a World Cup at some point, but one would hope as a reward for cleaning up their disgusting club football at a minimum, and perhaps even for cleaning up their actual country. Qatar is perhaps credible as a joint bidder with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who at least have a good football culture and a bigger canvas to paint on. But they are never credible as a sole bidder, absent the massive graft which almost necessarily accompanied their bid.

With 2014 in Brazil and with China a virtual lock for 2026 or 2030, I'm not sure I'll see another Cup in my lifetime in a place with both a great football tradition and great domestic travel and stadium infrastructure. Glad I made it to Germany in 2006. For the good of the next generation of football fans, let's wish Sepp Blatter and his cronies in Geneva a speedy demise.

MLS Cup Final

At one point late in the second half of the dreadful MLS Cup Final, with both of these mediocre teams protecting the 1-1 scoreline and heading to extra-time, I was actually tempted to flip over to watch the LA Lakers-Golden State Warriors NBA game, despite the fact that LA was up by 30 at the time. Seemed like it might be more compelling.

It's rare to get to use the words "scintillating" and "final" in the same sentence -- you expect both teams to play cautiously and the nerves to rattle. But, with two exceptions, this was an unwatchable match, between two forgettable teams, played by mostly second-rate players. But don't take my word for it: ESPN's ratings were down 44% year-over-year, and BMO Stadium in Toronto looked, from the camera pans, to be half empty or worse.

From a match perspective, after a mind-numbing first 20 minutes, Colorado had a semi-legitimate penalty appeal when the slow, bull-headed Connor Casey was tripped up, but it was marginal. Then there was a moment of brilliance in the 35th minute from the Colombian David Ferreira, the league's MVP for 2010, who braved an on-rushing keeper to finish an inch-perfect Marvin Chavez cross on the low volley. This was followed by another 20 minutes of poor play and boredom on either side of halftime. Finally, Casey scored a garbage goal to equalize and it looked like the match might come back to life, finally, but things quickly settled and by he 80th minute, I was begging the football gods not to let this horror show go to penalties.

Fittingly, the match was decided in the second half of extra time by an own goal. Macoumba Kandji drove down the right wing for Colorado and aimed a tepid strike at the near post, which the Dallas defender, John George, turned into goal with his knee. Kandji injured himself on the play, so Colorado played the last 12 minutes a man down, and actually those 12 minutes were the best of the match, as Dallas threw everything they had at Colorado, and nearly sent the match to penalties on several occasions.

So, there you have it, two undeserving teams playing for the cup, with the champion scoring a complete garbage goal and an own goal to win the match. Yuck. To add insult to injury, the idiot presenting Connor Casey with the man of the match trophy afterwards called him "Casey Connor." It was a laughable spectacle, and the perfect end to the idiotic MLS playoffs.

Fuck you, Don Garber. If you can't fix this, forget about the casual fans, the core like me are off to watch Kobe and Pau blow out the Warriors.

MLS Conference Finals Set

It was a bizarre weekend in the MLS playoffs. With the exception of LA (more on that later), every higher seed lost their first round series. New York Red Bull crashed and burned against San Jose. Columbus went down on penalties to Colorado after a regular time stalemate. And Dallas convincingly held Real Salt Lake to a draw at Rio Tinto, allowing them through on aggregate after their 2-1 win at home last week.

This means that we are guaranteed the presence of either Colorado or San Jose in the MLS Cup Final, the lowest seeds in the playoffs and the #5 and #6 teams in the Western Conference table, respectively. Oh, and one of these teams will be representing the "east." It's a repeat of last year, when 5th position Real Salt Lake made a run through the east to get to the cup final against LA.

I'm sure Don Garber can make an argument why this is good for the fans, but it's hard to see this as anything other than a massive fail for the league. I have nothing against San Jose or Colorado, but neither of them belongs in the MLS cup final. Had the league seeded the playoffs from a single table, you'd have seen #1 LA vs. #8 San Jose, #2 RSL vs. #7 Colorado, #3 New York vs. #6 Seattle, and #4 Dallas vs. #5 Columbus. Tell me that wouldn't have produced a more interesting set of possibilities for the conference and cup finals.

One team didn't succumb to the higher seed curse this weekend, and that was LA Galaxy. Against most predictions, LA didn't park the bus and try to protect the 1-0 lead from the first leg; instead, they attacked Seattle right from the start, and once again used the set piece to tremendous advantage. This seemed to take Seattle somewhat by surprise, and they were on their back foot from the start.

Sigi Schmidt protested the first goal because Beckham was allowed to take his corner from his favored right side (although the replay I saw suggested that was the correct call), but Schmidt's whinging obscures the fact that Seattle conceded four corners in the first 18 minutes, and Beckham was dropping dangerous balls exactly in the same place that Buddle connected. You can't concede multiple free kicks against a team that set a league record with 13 set piece goals in the regular season and expect not to be punished.

The second goal, also off a set piece, was pure training ground as Beckham's sharply curled ball fooled the defenders into letting Gonzalez lose his mark at the near post for a spectacular diving header. Beckham came close again with a free kick just outside the area, and LA had a number of other chances.

The result sets up an LA-Dallas conference final at Home Depot Center next Sunday, and you have to like LA's chances to get through to a second consecutive MLS Cup Final. With either Colorado or San Jose coming out of the other bracket, the winner of next Sunday's contest in Carson has a great chance of lifting the silverware.

Seattle Sounders 0:1 Los Angeles Galaxy

So, LA Galaxy went to Seattle, into one of the best (and, for LA, most hostile) atmospheres in the history of MLS playoffs, and came away with a one goal victory. Despite all of the pre-match hype about Seattle's pace, and midfield possession, and wing play, and how hot they were down the stretch, as I predicted, the Galaxy dictated the flow of the match and go back to Home Depot Center in the driver's seat.

Certainly, the LA wing-backs couldn't keep up with Zakuani and Nyassi, but their midfielders cheated back (Donovan and even Beckham were very helpful in defense) and by the end of the match LA were effectively playing a 4-5-1 with sometimes all eleven in their own half clogging up the pitch and frustrating Seattle's offense. Seattle had a couple of meaningful efforts on goal -- Ricketts' reaction save of the Montero header in the first half after injuring his shoulder a few minutes earlier probably saved the match for LA -- but nothing suggested they were prepared to take over the match and win it.

LA on the other hand easily could have won this one 2-0 or even 3-0. The winning goal came from a phenomenal individual effort by Edson Buddle, who chested down a long header about thirty meters from goal, turned, and volleyed a perfect ball to the far post and into the net. It was reminiscent of Clint Dempsey's wonder goal at Craven Cottage for Fulham in the Europa League against Juventus. In addition, Donovan had a rocket from well outside the area that forced a punch save from Kasey Keller; and Juninho just missed wide off a great one touch-pass build up, that showed in a nutshell why LA is so dangerous in post-season play.

All of this makes the pundits' dismissal of LA going into the playoffs even more inexplicable. Christo­pher Riordan on the majorleaguesoccertalk.com podcast expressed "shock" that people on the internet were still picking LA. He and co-host Richard Farley both picked Seattle, Riordan saying it was an "easy choice" to pick them, predicting a 2-0 first leg. Heh.

A final note on the atmosphere and support for the Sounders in Seattle. It was unbelievable, breathtaking. I've never heard or seen a crowd like that for an MLS match. Beckham reportedly said afterward that it was the first time he felt like he was playing in a European venue in North America. Seattle has the greatest supporters in the league and they showed their spirit in amazing fashion on Sunday night.

MLS Playoffs

With only a couple of games left in the MLS season, the playoff picture is relatively clear. And a large part of that clarity is just how fucked up and unfair the MLS playoff format truly is.

The continued weakness of the Eastern Conference will lead to six of the eight playoff teams coming from the Western Conference (last season, it was five of eight). In fact, if the tables were combined (as they ought to be by any measure), the first place team in the east, New York Red Bulls, would currently occupy the fourth position, behind LA, Salt Lake City and Dallas. Yet, the playoff format will have the top western teams that are arguably the best teams in the league as a whole eliminating each other in the west.

This is quite a harsh penalty for the teams with the best regular season records, LA and Salt Lake City, and even for the surging FC Dallas. As it stands right now, LA will play Seattle while the two teams with the best current form, Dallas and Salt Lake, will face off. On the other side of the bracket, New York will fly across the country to play a weak San Jose, while sagging Columbus will make a somewhat shorter trip to Colorado.

The pundits seem to be favoring FC Dallas and New York Red Bulls to go the distance, with 2009 champions Real Salt Lake as the clear number three. I've watched a fair number of MLS matches this season, and in my opinion these so-called "power rankings" are complete bullshit.

Whether the experts' darlings FC Dallas have the chops to take out Real Salt Lake in the first round and make a deep playoff run should get a hard test in the last three matches of the regular season, as Dallas must overcome playoff-bound Colorado at home this weekend, and then away matches at RSL and LA Galaxy. We'll also get a look at New York Red Bulls at home against RSL in the last match of their season, although with the playoffs looming, it's unlikely we'll see a full complement from either side.

Lost in the shuffle are last years runners-up and current points leader LA Galaxy. Most pundits currently rank them fifth (!) behind Seattle, RSL, New York and Dallas. With Beckham inching back to fitness, the Galaxy have won four of their last five matches. Bruce Arena is playing Beckham together with Juninho in the central midfield, with Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle up front. Sure, the defending has looked a bit shaky at times, but when goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts is on form and their attack is flowing, they are going to be a force, and they have the experience of having made a run to the final last year. And, with the best record in the MLS going into the playoffs (at least as of this writing), they'll get home field advantage through to the final in Toronto.

That said, it's unlikely that the best team will win the MLS Cup, and even more unlikely that the best two teams will meet in the final. And that's a problem for the league. There's a home & home aggregate goal series in the first round, so some likelihood that quality will bubble to the top -- but against that is the ludicrous seeding process, that rewards the better Eastern Conference teams with weaker opponents out of the west. After that it's one-and-done in the conference finals and the MLS Cup final, so a hot team can put four decent matches together and win the cup even from a "wild card" position, as Real Salt Lake did last season (fifth in the west; re-seeded in the east as the wildcard; upset LA Galaxy in final on penalties).

Lame.

But I'll watch anyway. I'm pulling for an LA/New York final.

Plate o' Shrimp

Sometimes, you see an idea and suddenly you start seeing it everywhere. Sometimes that synchronicity is so sharp, it's kind of uncanny.

While I was on vacation, I finally got around to reading a couple of books that had been sitting on my nightstand for a while. The first was a remarkable near-future science fiction novel called The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. This wildly imaginative and original book is set in Thailand in a future where the earth is depopulated by plagues, where food and energy are so scarce that calorie efficiency is a constant concern. Like the best speculative fiction, you finish this one with a lingering fear that this could really happen. It's an impressive first novel by Bacigalupi, well-paced and literary.

I'd been struggling for a while to get through Deleuze and Guattari's two volume Capitalism & Schizophrenia, when a friend suggested Manuel De Landa's A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History as kind of an introduction/distillation of the ideas.

It is an incredibly thought-provoking book on its own, but read immediately after Bacigalupi's, it's a revelation. De Landa offers a materialist re-interpretation of modern history as the movement, trade and governance of matter and energy that provides a philosophical Rosetta Stone for The Windup Girl's imagined world. These two books are like a great art-house double feature -- each one informs and enhances the other. Worth a look.

Fulham 2:1 Wolves

It's kind of an odd year for a Fulham supporter. After last season's magical run through the Europa League -- and believe me, as a Fulham fan it was truly magical -- there's an air of let-down about the team this year.

The crafty old codger Roy Hodgson is off to greener pastures at Liverpool. Who could fault him. He did yeoman's work at Craven Cottage, engineering the Great Escape, getting them to 7th place in the Premiership and the Europa berth, and then wiling his way through a tough Europa group stage with AS Roma and FC Basel, dusting off the holders Shaktar, then Juventus (in dramatic fashion), Wolfsburg, and Hamburg, before losing in the final (the final!) to Athletico Madrid and World Cup golden ball winner Diego Forlan, 2-1. Meanwhile, they comfortably avoided relegation concerns in the Premiership, finishing a respectable 12th. They even made it to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, before getting bounced by Spurs in a replay.

After that embarrassment of riches for a Fulham fan, there was bound to be a Fulhamish return to planet Earth. But, after beating a nasty Wolverhampton Wanderers at home on Saturday, Fulham are 5th in the table on 6 points, and undefeated. They fought back to draw Manchester United 2-2 in a great match. They also gutted out draws away at Bolton and Blackpool. They are playing really attractive football under their new manager Mark Hughes. There's even a new swagger in the home support.

But I wouldn't be a Fulham fan if I wasn't feeling a bit fragile right now. Zamora's broken ankle is a horrible thing. He was really coming into form, having finally gotten his well deserved cap for England, and now he's out until February. There's still uncertainty whether Fulham can retain Schwartzer, Hangeland, and even Murphy. Konchesky is gone to Liverpool with Hodgson. While Hughes is trusting Dempsey more up front, while Gera and new signing Dembele look sharp, the Johnson's Eddie and Andy are no Bobby Zamora. And worst of all, they have a nightmare schedule until March/April, totally front-loaded with tough fixtures. Ugh.

Still, it feels like Fulham, particularly at home, are becoming a tough fixture themselves for the rest of the Premiership, and that's kind of cool. Great to see them continuing to develop American players like Dempsey and Johnson (and before them McBride and Bocanegra and even Seattle Sounders keeper Kasey Keller, who, by the way, had a monster penalty save midweek to deny Real Salt Lake three points away). They have two winnable fixtures away at Blackburn and Stoke coming up, and they are fun to watch -- skillful, positive. Let's see what they are made of.

Final Thoughts

Well, the World Cup is over and Spain are champions. Good. Balance is restored to the universe. The best team playing the best style managed to win.

The final itself kind of sucked. Holland avoided any semblance of trying to play with Spain. Instead, they must have decided that Germany lost because they were too deferential to Spain's midfield, and therefore that the proper strategy to counter that tendency was to foul like motherfuckers for the entire match. It started just 45 seconds into the match, when Van Persie raked the back of Busquets' knee with his cleat and barely avoided a yellow card; and it didn't even end when Heitinga got sent off with a second yellow for dragging Iniesta down from behind when he was through on goal in the 109th minute -- hell, they got two more after that for good measure, a total of nine (!) cards in all.

The English ref Howard Webb handed out a record 14 cards in the final, and he is going to get a lot of stick from the Dutch fans for favoring Spain. But believe me, he did a reasonably good job responding to an utterly cynical Dutch strategy, and while he missed a couple of calls both ways, he basically got it right. I was pissed that he kept slowing the game down with his constant whistles, but to Webb's credit, he really did his best to keep this 11v11 for the full 120 minutes in very difficult circumstances. He could easily have sent De Jong off after half an hour for his WWE move on Alonso; probably could have sent Van Bommel off a couple of times, and probably should have sent off the histrionic Robben, who, at one point, chased him halfway up the pitch to complain because, for once, he didn't go down when Puyol fouled him on a break and Webb let the play continue. The Brazilians must have loved that one.

Holland were just awful. But, to their credit, the brutal hacking strategy did disrupt Spain's rhythm, and, it almost -- almost -- got them the win. Had Casillas not gotten a foot on Robben's first break-away strike (as he dove the other way), had Robben taken his chance when he stayed on his feet after beating Puyol, you could have seen the Dutch steal this one 1-0. Their goalkeeper was excellent and kept them in the match. But for the fouling, they had a pretty interesting tactical response to Spain, pressuring them, interfering with passing lanes to break up Spain's short passing game, and they really neutralized Xavi. Pity they couldn't do it without eight cautions and a sending off.

Spain were not brilliant, not by any stretch. I thought they came out brightly, but lost their edge under the weight of the Dutch negativity. The early second half sub of Jesus Navas for Pedro was inspired, and he managed to get a lot more movement on the right wing. But I thought the 87th minute sub of Cesc Fabregas for Alonso won the game for Spain. He provided a Xavi Hernandez-like spark to the Spanish attack, and created at least three good chances in extra time, including Iniesta's winner.

Anyway, Spain won, and they celebrated emotionally. This is a very big deal for Spain. It was cool that they changed into their red jerseys for the cup presentation. Here are two of my favorite YouTube vids, first, Spanish TV announcer Camacho on the goal call:



And, a little cute, but a choked-up Casillas interrupting his insanely hot girlfriend's attempt to conduct a professional interview with him:



When the dust settles, and I've had a chance to reflect, I'll do a summary of the tournament. But for now, I'm really happy with the result. Espana, campeones!

Good Reads on Eve of Final

The New York Times has a piece on the Cruyff connection.

Jonathan Wilson at The Guardian dissects the prevalence of the 4-2-3-1 formation at the World Cup, and contrasts the two examples of the formation on display in the final.

Zonal Marking has their preview of the final up (well, part one of it), and it's as thoughtful and detailed as you'd expect. Full of interesting links.

For a little homer nostalgia, here is Grant Wahl interviewing Landon Donovan on his World Cup experience. Happy to see him give props to Clint Dempsey.

And finally, Gawker's hilarious look at World Cup winners and losers.

By the way, that third place match between Uruguay and Germany was fantastic. Pity we probably won't see a game that open in the final. The lead changed three times, and Forlan almost equalized on the last tick of added time, his direct free kick striking the crossbar. His 51st minute goal, struck high on the volley, skipping off the wet grass and into the net, demonstrated his unbelievable quality at this tournament.

The Final

While I am delighted that Spain and Holland are in the final, I'm personally a bit conflicted about who to support.

On the one hand, for familial reasons, I'm for Spain. My wife's parents -- now naturalized US citizens -- came to the US from Spain in the early '60s. My son is a big Spain supporter. I've heard so many stories about Spanish football in the '50's from my father-in-law, and we watch a lot of Barcelona and Real Madrid during the club season together. I'm going to Spain in a couple of weeks to visit the family, and it would be great if they were riding the euphoria of winning the Cup.

[Just an aside -- I was visiting the family in Tenerife in the spring of 1993. That year, Real Madrid and Barcelona were coming into the last day of the La Liga season positioned 1-2 in the table, Real Madrid 2 points ahead of Barca. Real Madrid played Tenerife away; I can't recall who Barca played. I couldn't go to the match, but I listened on the radio out on the balcony of my apartment. Tenerife surprised Madrid 2-0, denying them the title (Barcelona won their match), and further, the three points for Tenerife put them in the UEFA Cup, just pipping Athletico Madrid by a point for fifth place. It was pandemonium. The whole city exploded. They were fishing people out of fountains in Tenerife for days. Unforgettable. I went to Game 7 of the NBA Finals at the Staples Center in LA a couple of weeks ago, and was out on the streets of downtown LA after the Lakers won the title, and it didn't hold a candle to the celebration in this small, provincial town when their long-suffering team came in fifth place in La Liga.]

I picked Holland to make the final, and I have a soft spot for their swashbuckling football history. They should have won a title during the Cruyff years. They had an undefeated run through 2010 qualifying, and an undefeated run through this World Cup. I watch a lot of English football, and so I've seen a lot of Holland's World Cup squad play in England -- Van Persie at Arsenal, Kuyt at Liverpool, Robben formerly at Chelsea, Heitinga at Everton, De Jong at Man City.

Ironically, modern Spain are playing like the historical Dutch, and for good reasons. Johann Cruyff came to Barcelona as coach and implemented Dutch total football tactics, which persist today. The current Spain team is dominated by Barcelona players: Pique, Puyol, Iniesta, Xavi, Busquests, Pedro, and even new signing Villa. I've heard people joke that Barcelona are going to win the World Cup. Spain are the spiritual successors to the 70's Dutch style that revolutionized football. The current Holland team, on the other hand, are almost playing like the Germans of old -- efficient, physical, individually talented.

What can we expect on Sunday? The pundits' consensus seems to be another 1-0 win for Spain. Spain getting 60% of the possession again, wearing down the Dutch back line with their sharp tiki-taka passing game, and scoring just one goal while clamping down a weak Dutch attack.

I'm not so sure, and it kind of depends on two thing: 1) will the Dutch play the same style or will they vary their tactics?; and 2) will there be an early goal?

You have to expect the first 20 minutes are going to be very cagey and tentative. These are both pretty patient teams. If the Dutch try to replicate the strategy of Switzerland, or Paraguay, or even Germany and hang back, conceding tons of possession to Spain, trying to steal a goal, Spain will indeed beat them 1-0 or 2-0. Holland have to create some high pressure on the Spanish midfield. Germany dropped back into their half too quickly against Spain, which allowed Busquets, Ramos, and even Pique to bring the ball forward, giving Xavi, Iniesta and Pedro time to find seams in the German midfield in threatening positions. This is suicide against Spain. If you give Xavi and Iniesta space to play around the top of the area, they will kill you.

I think the Dutch have to attack early to try to get an early goal to stretch the dense-packed Spanish midfield. An early Dutch goal will totally open this match up for the good. An early Spanish goal would also open up the match, but very much in Spain's favor. I think if Spain score in the first 20 minutes, this might look like France-Brazil '98.

The Dutch can score goals. They know how to play attacking football. They put in two against Brazil and played brightly. Put in three against Uruguay, one of which, the Van Bronckhorst strike, is a candidate for goal of the tournament. They have good attacking players. Van Persie has been absent, but Kuyt has been excellent, Robben has looked good, and Sneijder has poached a bunch of goals. However, you could have said the same thing about Germany, and Spain just shut the Germans down and toyed with them like a cat in their half of play.

They key for me is Dirk Kuyt on Holland's left vs. Sergio Ramos on Spain's right. If Kuyt has to play deep to counter Ramos, the Dutch attack will be neutered. If Kuyt pins Ramos back, it will be a much different match.

The World Cup final can often be pretty dull -- teams playing not to lose, rather than to win. In '90, '94, and '02 there were no first half goals in the final. In '98 the French scored two and won 3-0 (three goals is the most scored in a final in the last five cups). In '06, it was 1-1 at the half, but there were no second half goals. This one looks like it's either going to be a super-tight 1-0 victory by Spain, or a wide open 3-2 match that either team could win. God, I hope it's the latter.

World Cup Up For Grabs?

I'm very excited about the semi-finals, because I think this World Cup hangs in the balance. There's less inevitability about these four teams than any cup I can remember. Any of these teams could win it. I'd put the Germans first on current form, fitness, and national football character; the Spaniards second on talent and guile; the Dutch third on efficiency and good luck; and the Uruguayans fourth, well, for a lot of reasons.

Germany absolutely dismembered Argentina in the quarter-finals. Crushed them. Argentina over-relied on individual dribbling and Germany just closed them down. Schweinsteiger was huge, both defending Messi et al., and coming forward. Despite what some lazy commentators have said and written, it wasn't a cliched "well-oiled German machine"; it was something much more fun to watch than that. They move off the ball incredibly well, so there is always someone in space ready to receive a pass. They create space with their pace and good ball skills. They have a number of excellent finishers. And they are really young and bright; one of the youngest teams in the tournament. They are scoring a lot of goals.

Coming into their semi-final with Spain, they are going to be without Muller, who has been awesome. They probably have multiple adequate replacements for him, but I think they will miss something psychologically and also tactically. He's been making a lot of chances in front of goal and finishing with confidence.

Spain, meanwhile, looked pretty ordinary against a tough Paraguay they barely beat. You could argue that Paraguay beat themselves, with the missed penalty, the conceded penalty, and several missed chances in front of goal. Once again, as against Portugal, they got one moment of brilliance (Xavi springs Iniesta, who finds Pedro on the right), and Villa once again gave them the slimmest of victories. They have a tactical choice to make: do they play Fabregas on the left instead of Torres, and move Villa in toward the center; or do they bring in Llorente as a straight swap for Torres? In any event, they have to get Torres out of there -- Spain have looked much better when he's out.

Germany won't have the same advantage against Spain they had against Argentina -- Spain have much better midfielders and much better wide defenders, and they pass rather than dribble. I think this comes down to some key matchups: Lahm and Ozil vs. Capdevilla and Pujols; Podolski counter-attacking on the left when Ramos comes forward; and Xavi/Iniesta vs. the German central defense.

On the other side of the bracket, the Dutch have to be very confident going into the Uruguay match. If anything, they may be vulnerable to thinking ahead to a juicy rematch of the '74 final won by the host Germans with Beckenbauer 2-1 against Johann Cruyff's total football Netherlands. Certainly, they believe they have a great shot at the final. Contrary to a lot of the punditry, I thought the Dutch played pretty well against Brazil. Brazil dominated the first half, but after the own goal (now credited to Sneijder) they fell apart and Holland threatened them multiple times. After the second goal, the Dutch dominated. Brazil's strategy of hacking Robben down backfired -- Holland got multiple free kicks and ultimately, got Melo sent off.

[There has been a hue and cry about Robben's "simulation." I think this is bullshit. He sold it when he was legitimately fouled -- he wasn't diving. This is a daily activity in the NBA. Ok, he made it seem like he was getting killed, when perhaps he was just the victim of some physical play, but it wasn't cheating. ]

That's not to say Holland are without flaws. Their back line looked really old and slow at times, and without De Jong (out on suspension) there to win balls upfield, they will be vulnerable to Forlan charging forward from his deep positioning. They still haven't fully involved involved Van Persie in the attack.

Who knows what is going on with Uruguay after that crazy quarter-final against Ghana. I didn't give a shit about either of these teams, and I was freaking out at the end of that match. The 120th minute surge by Ghana, the sending off, the missed penalty, and then the shoot-out ending on that cheeky chip. It was nuts. By the way, Suarez didn't cheat, either. He intentionally handled a ball in the box, and got sent off for it and a penalty awarded. That's the rules. Now, should he have gotten a long ban to avoid incentivizing others in the future? Absolutely. If I ran FIFA, I'd ban him for the rest of the tournament and maybe more.

Uruguay are playing much better than it looks. They are tight at the back and creative up front. I just think they are really going to miss Suarez against Holland. They need someone to complement Forlan up front. But Forlan himself is probably one of the best strikers in this tournament. He provides something that Holland doesn't really have in this tournament.

I think Germany beats Spain 2-1, but I'd actually be sad if that happened, since I don't want to see the Germans in the finals, despite how attractively they are playing. I want to see a first-time champion, and the Germans in the final complicate that possibility. Regardless, I think this is going to be a total chess-match.

I think Holland beats Uruguay 1-0. This could be a very negative match if the Dutch don't have a strong cutting edge in attack. I could see this one going to extra time. The wild card for me is that I think Uruguay are playing with the house's money at this point in the tournament -- they'd go home to a hero's welcome even if they lose. The Dutch public is smelling the cup -- a chance to reverse their historical legacy as the best team never to win a World Cup. They are under a lot more pressure. I think that will even the odds considerably for Uruguay.