FanHouse Presents FIFA's World Cup Technical Report Distilled

Not everyone affiliated with FIFA spends the World Cup sipping champagne in a luxury suite, angling for a photo with Bill Clinton or Mick Jagger or telling people where they're not allowed to go. Some are supposed to actually watch the games.

Those people comprise the Technical Study Group, a collection of 15 soccer experts who know far more about the sport than the rest of us and who are charged with identifying the important tactical trends and nuances that shaped the 32-team, 64-game tournament. The TSG also is supposed to tell us why the good teams were good, why the lousy ones were lousy and why World Cup referees can't tell if the ball has crossed the goal line.

Among the TSG's members this time around were former France and Liverpool (and perhaps future Aston Villa) coach Gérard Houllier, newly-appointed Australia coach Holger Osieck (who led Canada to its improbable 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup title), 1998 World Cup and two-time UEFA Champions League winner Christian Karembeu, Peruvian legend and famed Fort Lauderdale Striker Teófilo Cubillas and former Scotland coach and UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh.

Together, along with the help of a few editors and translators, they put together a 289-page report on the 2010 World Cup that was released last week. FanHouse has painstakingly poured through the document and pulled the most interesting pieces, especially those featuring opinions on the U.S. national team and referees who can't tell if the ball has crossed the goal line.

Those nuggets were buried under mounds of statistics and gems like "The most successful teams also boasted fast, tricky attackers who were dangerous in front of goal," and "The teams that were particularly successful were those with excellent technique and passing."

But, it's always interesting to see what the rest of the world thinks about American soccer, and whether FIFA shared the opinions of the billions who were watching with instant replay. So, here's FanHouse's review of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Technical Report.

The U.S. National Team

The TSG was relatively complimentary, and even went so far as to imply that the Americans were well coached and possessed a modicum of soccer intelligence.

The most successful teams were flexible and able to adapt their style of play to the match situation. It was this flexibility, together with the teams' healthy aggression and the players' excellent technique, that paved the way to success. Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Uruguay, Brazil, Ghana, Argentina, Chile and the USA all provided the best examples of this."

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An increasing number of teams are now able to adapt their tactics according to the state of play and the scoreline. In doing so, they stay in control and never lose their composure. Good examples of this were provided by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Ghana, the Netherlands, Spain, Uruguay and the USA. To play in this manner, teams require intelligent and highly perceptive players who are able to play in a variety of ways. This trend will probably become even more pronounced in the years to come as it will ensure that successful coaches have a "new" tactical weapon up their sleeves depending on how the match is progressing.

As far as the round-of-16 loss to Ghana, the TSG came to a similar conclusion that we did -- the U.S. fell behind one too many times.

Both teams then had chances to win the game in normal time but were unable to do so. Ghana found new energy reserves in extra time, and (Asamoah) Gyan quickly scored what proved to be the winning goal as the USA did not have it in them to come from behind once again.

The U.S. and Italy each earned two draws after falling behind, the only teams in the tournament to do so. Only three times did a team yielding the first goal come back to win (Denmark over Cameroon, Greece over Nigeria and Netherlands over Brazil. In addition, Uruguay eliminated Ghana on penalty kicks in the quarterfinals after going down).

"The USA impressed through their excellent team spirit, which enabled them to equalise after falling behind on three occasions," the TSG said.

The committee also noted that the U.S. was one of 10 teams that played in a traditional four defender, four midfielder, two forward formation. Uruguay was the only one of those 10 to advance to the semifinals. Spain, Netherlands and Germany all played a 4-2-3-1, using two holding midfielders and one striker up front.

The U.S. never held the possession advantage. It held the ball for 45% of the game against England, 48% vs. Slovenia, 50% vs. Algeria and 49% against Ghana. In contrast, Spain enjoyed possession advantages of 63% (vs. Portugal), 66% (vs. Paraguay), 55% (vs. Germany) and 57% (vs. Netherlands) in its four elimination-round games. No other team had more than 60% of the ball in any of the 16 matches following the group stage.

Overall Asessment

The TSG said that winning in the modern international game depends on being able to field "outstanding individual players who can make their mark in one-on-one situations" both down the center of the field and on the wings. Other than Landon Donovan on a good day, the U.S. clearly is not producing players who match the description. As we've said several times, that's hardly coach Bob Bradley's fault.

The first round eliminations of 2006 finalists Italy and France and the round-of-16 departure of England were called "the major shocks of the tournament." Perhaps they expected just one African team to escape the group stages and had put money on Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney and Fernando Torres to go goalless.

The performances of New Zealand (the World Cup's only unbeaten team), Slovakia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Ghana were dubbed "pleasant surprises."

One theme touched on several times by the TSG was youth.

This World Cup showed that the outstanding youth development work of many associations is beginning to bear fruit at the highest level. If the four semifi nalists from 2010 are compared with those from 2006, the average age of the players was nearly two years lower in 2010 than in 2006. It should also be noted that three of the four semifinalists in 2010 are also regularly among the leading teams in youth competitions at confederation level and at youth World Cups.

There were 123 under-23 players at the World Cup, 99 of whom played. Germany fielded the most at nine, Ghana had eight, Argentina seven and Spain six. "All of these teams played a successful, refreshing brand of attacking football," the TSG said.

In contrast, Italy, France, Honduras and Japan did not put any under-23 players on the field. Those four teams won a combined two games (both by Japan). The U.S. had three U-23s see playing time: Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley and José Torres. The American team's average age of 27 years, four months was just below the tournament average of 27 years, five months.

Winners Spain averaged 26 years, five months, but the runner-up Netherlands came in at 28 years, two months (with just two U-23s), proving that age doesn't matter if you have Wesley Sneijder.

There were 145 goals scored in South Africa (not counting the two stolen from the U.S. -- see below). The average of 2.27 goals per game was the second lowest in World Cup history, just ahead of the 2.21 recorded in Italy in 1990.

The Controversies

FIFA likes to shape the message, but even the TSG couldn't ignore the fact that there were some disgraceful decisions made by the men in the middle at this World Cup. But statistics can be used to prove any point, and the TSG did their very best in the report. But first, as honest an admission as you'll get from the governing body:

It is clear that errors – some of them serious – did occur in the hundreds of often very difficult decisions taken over the 64 matches. These errors are neither covered up nor justified but are meticulously analyzed to learn from them and improve future training plans. The challenge is to work towards improvements.

Certainly the most egregious was the failure to spot Frank Lampard's goal against Germany in the second found. But Koman Coulibaly's mysterious annulment of Maurice Edu's potential game-winner against Slovenia received just as much play in the U.S. According to the TSG, however, mistakes like that were the exception rather than the rule.

It said that just three of the 145 goals scored during the World Cup should not have counted. Two good goals were ruled out for incorrect offside decisions (Clint Dempsey's first-half strike against Algeria perhaps?) while the 13 goals called back for offside violations all were correct. "Of the 663 shots at goal, only five were goal-line incidents. Of these, four were correctly judged and one (Lampard's) incorrectly," the TSG said.

Five penalty kicks should have been awarded that weren't, but all 15 that were given were good calls. The TSG did not provide details.

As for the adidas Jabulani, the TSG admitted the ball may have played a factor in what it called a "not very consistent" World Cup for the goalkeepers.

Excellent performances were followed by inexplicable errors. They not only struggled to boss their penalty area and communicate with their teammates but also experienced difficulties with shots from long range. Many of these errors led directly to goals. There are a number of explanations for this, from the quality of the shots on target, to the goalkeepers' positional play and possibly also the ball itself, which picked up incredible speed. The latter explanation was indeed confirmed by many goalkeepers, but that said, it is hard to understand as every single team was given the opportunity to train with the new ball in the months leading up to the tournament. Instead, there were many instances of goalkeepers failing to get their body fully behind the ball, and in doing so, they risked seeing the ball gather speed and slip out of their grasp and over the goal line.

See: Green, Robert.

The Players

The TSG isn't out to criticize, and it loves a famous name. How else to explain how Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo appeared in their respective country's lists of most influential World Cup players? Rooney's inclusion is laughable -- the TSG described him as a "hard-working, energetic striker, worked hard for team, good technique" and said he was one of England's three outstanding players. That says as much about England's World Cup as it does about Rooney, who was awful. After all, the TSG felt that Italy and France each had just one outstanding player each (midfielder Daniele De Rossi and goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, respectively).

The "outstanding" players tended to be the usual suspects, and the TSG would recycle terms like "strong, hardworking players" and "excellent team spirit" when looking to compliment a group they clearly didn't spend too much time watching.

No one who paid attention to all four U.S. games would argue that goalie Tim Howard had an excellent tournament. He was very good against England but trailed off from there, perhaps because of the rib injury, and struggled against Ghana. Nevertheless, the TSG identified him as one of the four American stars, saying Howard was "reliable" and had "excellent reflexes on the goal line."

The field players that impressed the TSG were Donovan ("dangerous...quick off the mark...good technique and vision"), Dempsey ("hard-working...drove the team forward tirelessly") and Michael Bradley (hard-working and competitive...with great determination").

It listed these as the Americans' collective qualities:

-- Mental strength/attitude
-- Compact defense
-- Immediate pressure after losing possession
-- Attacks using the width
-- Ability to stay focused after falling behind