Game Day Beer Review: Foothills Brewing's Hoppyum American-style India Pale Ale

(6.30% ABV) Brought down to South Florida by a visiting guest, Hoppyum is a welcome addition to these parts, where Foothills doesn't yet distribute. Enjoyed at sunset out by the pool with friends, Hoppyum was poured out of a growler. The beer is a deep golden color with only a very small head.  It smells like pine and hops, but the overall scent is pretty minimal.  I get caramel and malt on the first taste, but that's soon overwhelmed by a bitter follow through. It's not so bitter to make me want to stop drinking it, but there's nothing to take the edge off. Not my favorite: B.

Popping Bubbles

photo by Jeff Kubina	via PhotoRee

Sir Alex trots out a conservative lineup today, planned with one eye firmly on United's mid-week Champions League match against Chelsea. It's a 4-5-1 with Rooney sitting alone up top, and supported by a crowded midfield that includes Giggs, Gibson, Carrick, Valencia and -- for the first time in three months -- Park Ji-Sung.  Nemenja Vidic comes back to Captain the side and marshall the defense, and he's surrounded by Evra, Smalling and Fabio and the Pole in Goal, Tomas Kuszczak.

I'm nervous pre-match, but it's nothing compared to what my friend Paul is thinking: "Nervous?  You don't know about nervous.  Nervous is worrying about having to play against Scunthorpe and Doncaster next season!". Well said, Paul.

United are first to test the 'keeper, with Chris Smalling directing an early corner at Robert Green, but the English national team's backup is more than equal to the task. It's a scrappy start for both teams, with few real chances created in the first 10 minutes.

The mood quickly changes, and not for the better: it's horrific defending from Patrice Evra, and it's a magical long ball from Thomas Hitzlsperger that leads to the game's first goal.  Carlton Cole is shocked to find himself through on goal from the German's long hoof down the pitch, and when the subsequent ball bounces awkwardly against Evra's upraised hand, Lee Mason has no choice but to point to the spot. When Mark Noble tucks the resulting penalty away, it's 1-nil to the home side and the Boleyn Ground grows ever more boisterous.

Fourthright

"Bandwagon?  What Bandwagon?" says Columnist James
photo by cpeachok	via PhotoRee

Spurs' coumnist James checks in with a feature piece on Tottenham Hotspur, finished just in time to coincide with his first visit to the home office in quite awhile:

Brian Phillips has written an excellent article on Slate about the lack of parity in most international football (at least the leagues we here at farlieonfootie care about) compared with the American professional sports leagues, and the NFL in particular.  Phillips raises some interesting questions, not the least of which is whether parity, in and of itself, is a good thing for both revenue and aesthetics and how, at least implicitly, its emphasis could be the result of cultural differences on either side of the pond.

Phillips, not surprisingly, highlights the remarkable disparity between the big teams that routinely win the Premiership and La Liga and those that do not.  By now, we've heard this many times, but it bears repeating:  the same three teams (United, Chelsea, L'Arse) have won the Premiership every season but one since its inception (the lone interloper not Liverpool, but Blackburn. Blackburn? How did that happen???) That's an incredible statistic and certainly reinforces an argument that parity is not a prerequisite for commercial success given that the Premiership is, by most accounts, the single most popular professional sports league in the world. 

One thought, however, that came to my lilywhite-blinded mind while contemplating the article is the stupidity of the accusation -- not conveyed in Phillips' article, mind you, but being bandied about the web quite a bit of late -- that any recently converted Spurs fan is jumping on a bandwagon.  And not only am I seeing a lot of this lately in the blogosphere, but yours truly has been accused of such conduct on this very site.  On one level, this sentiment is understandable.  With Spurs' enchanting Champions League campaign, the increase in popularity of the Premier League in the States (routinely generating record ratings here on both Fox and ESPN this year), Uncle Harry, Bale, VDV, et al., my unscientific research does reveal that Spurs have replaced L'Arse as the non-Manchester United team du jour for johnny-come-latelies Stateside.

Fielding Your Best Eleven: The Bradley Dilemma

photo by babasteve	via PhotoRee

We told you previously that  we had scouts embedded in with the US Mens National Soccer Team, and we weren't lying.  Okay, we actually were, but Super Scout Mark's acute tactical insight and analysis of the US Mens' side more than makes up for it:

For the better part of his five year tenure with the national team, Bob Bradley has taken the approach that the United States' best chance of success comes when it puts its eleven best players on the field at the same time. The problem with Bradley’s teams, though, has been that too many of his best eleven play the same position. You can get away with a couple players out of position, but what do you do when half of your team isn’t playing in their natural spot?

Clint Dempsey started his national team career as the second forward under Bruce Arena, and no matter where you put Dempsey on the field, he seems to end up playing as a second forward. He’s been an attacking mid, a right mid, and most recently a left mid, although he and Donovan trade sides frequently during games. (If you are playing out of position, what’s the hurt in switching with someone else who's out of position?). But no matter where he starts, Dempsey seems to end up on the end of passes in front of goal. His record ten goals in the English Premiere League tells you this isn’t a guy who likes to hang out on the wing and offer Beckham-like services into the center forward. When Deuce has the ball he takes it at goal, and when he doesn’t have it he heads to goal to receive it. He’s great at attacking the goal, but the problem in the US game is that when Dempsey attacks from that role there's no service coming in from the left wing. With the exception of a couple really weak Jonathan Bornstein crosses, the US got no service at all from port-side against Paraguay, and rarely gets any wing play at all when Dempsey is in the game as a wide mid.

The same can be said for Landon Donovan on the opposite side. Donovan is certainly a more natural winger than Dempsey, but Donovan is happiest and most dangerous in his full field runs at goal on the counter. It’s what he does best. While he’s one of the most accurate service providers in the entire US squad, Donovan doesn't have the finesse, patience and willingness of a natural winger to work his man into the deep corners and play balls from the end line. He’s an attacker, and probably the best counter-attacking forward the US team has ever had. Putting him at wing puts him in his second best position.

International Friendly

Fiona Shoots Over the Largest Defender

Coach Tom returns to our pages with a heartwarming story of how football transcends language and culture, and helps to makes the world a friendlier place:


I just returned from my annual trip with a group of US students to Honduras. Through Grace the Americas, a charity supported by volunteers working to make a difference in the lives of those who live in rural Latin America, we spend a week building a home for a family living without adequate housing. It's also become a tradition while we're in Latin America to play a game of footie against the locals.

This year we got upgraded from the small pitch (a generous term, as it's usually half submerged by floodwaters and constantly surrounded by a moat of slimy filth that would keep even the most exuberant Brazilian from storming the pitch) to the town’s main field. This seemed to my eyes to be roughly 110' x 75', although without any lines I was making  a best guess, and even had a small section of concrete “stands.” Notably, it also featured a number of sizable cow patties and, naturally, a cow, which soon moved off for quieter pastures as Los Gringos took the field.

Joe Looks to Dribble Around Defenders, Garbage and Cow Patties

This year our group from the US featured two varsity boys and five varsity girls; the other five players on the team consisted of three girls, our translator, Franklin, and me. Our opponents were a mix of Honduran boys and girls who averaged 13 years of age. In other words, it was an even match.

The Perfect Storm

farlieonfootie would like to extend its sincere congratulations to our faithful readers on the U-11 girls soccer team of Scarsdale, New York, the "Scarsdale Storm," which won first place in  the Rye Brook Invitational Soccer Tournament on March 27, 2011.

"We're so proud of our girls", said coaches Mitch Berger and Chris Saenger (pictured without his traditional sideline puffer coat).  "Our girls' and boys' high school teams had great seasons in the Fall, both going deep into the state tournaments, which really inspired our girls. They worked hard over the winter months, and kicked off the Spring season in grand style.  We can't wait for the regular season to start this Sunday!"  And neither can we, Chris and Mitch.  Neither can we....

Team USA and Other Thoughts

photo by fdrizo	via PhotoRee

Correspondent Ed once again graces our pages with some thoughts on Team USA and more:

Watching the USA stumbling through a game on turf in the Meadowlands – and I mean literally stumbling – I have quite a few thoughts about our men in red, blue and a smidge of white, as well as some other random thoughts from the international break:

n   Tim Howard may not be the tallest keeper out there, but he’s extremely fast and aggressive.  He attacks dangerous situations and probably saved the US two goals at least in the their match against Argentina.  Hahneman is a definite step down.  Competent, but not Howard. 

n   Clint Dempsey continues to show that he may be the most complete player on the US team.  He’s terrific with the ball as well as without the ball, and often puts passes in places where his teammates should be but somehow aren’t.  It’s also kind of weird that he’s from Texas.

n  I’ve really had about enough of the Bocanegra’s and Bornstein’s on the US team.  These guys are the most rigid guys on the team and, I think, a constant liability.  Until the US puts together a good back line, we’re going to going to have a hard time climbing above the top 25.

Send in The Clowns

The World's Most Biased and Incompetent Referee, Michael Leslie Dean

On the off chance they could slip the news by you during an otherwise quiet week, the Football Association announced yesterday a couple of important refereeing assignments for the next few weeks: Lee Mason will oversee Manchester United's trip to West Ham this weekend, while Mike Dean has been handed the whistle for the Red's FA Cup Semi-Final clash with Manchester City.  With these appointments, the FA has made their agenda strikingly clear: not content to ban Sir Alex for five games on the touchline, the biased and despicable characters who run the FA have assigned referees to oversee Manchester United who will do their level best best to keep United from winning any trophies this season.

For those of you who don't believe in conspiracy theories, consider this: the only refereeing appointment the FA could have made which would have caused greater controversy would be assigning Martin Atkinson to oversee the Red Devils' journey to the Emirates in early May-- and that may still be in the cards, as I wouldn't put anything past the incompetents, malcontents, liars and cheats who run English football.

I've made the case against Mike Dean many times here at farlieonfootie, beginning with my very earliest columns, continuing throughout the Fall and Winter, and criticising his performances virtually unabated right through the present day.   It's not just that he's poor, or consistently makes errors on the pitch, but the fact that he's biased is so obvious to the casual observer as to make it absolutely scandalous that he was selected to oversee another important game involving the Reds.

Not So Friendly

photo by tedkerwin	via PhotoRee

Argentina met the United States last night on a pitch specially designed to deaden the ball and make curling look like a fast-paced sport. The grounds crew at the New Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey must have worked overtime placing sand under the green carpet they laid down to muffle the ball's bounces and cause both teams to come up repeatedly short on their passes.  Playing slightly like the swamp it's built on top of, the New Meadowlands pitch acted as a 12th defender against Argentina, slowing down their vaunted attack and allowing the US to stay in the game in the first half when it could have easily lost the evening.

Instead of scoring, Argentina put on a passing show in the first half, keeping the ball away from the home side for several minutes at a time. The Americans packed it in on defense, sitting deep and looking for the rare counter-attack opportunity, but they had precious little to offer in offense after spending so much time defending. Working with a specially designed gameplan under beleaguered Coach Bob Bradley, the Americans attempted to outnumber and outhustle the Argentines as the defense came under the repeated attack of Lionel Messi and his boys.

Things changed in the second half, as the US began to show some ambition and matched the Argentines in their attacking intent.  Scoring a second half goal through newboy Juan Agudelo, the US Mens' team held Argentina to a 1-1 draw, a positive result for the home team and hopefully something for the Red, White and Blue to build on.

Over-Matched vs. Over-Hyped

The Welsh National Team in Pre-game Warm Ups
photo by Jon Evans	via PhotoRee

So, the United Kingdom?  It was somewhat surprising -- to this American at least -- to hear the Welsh crowd in Cardiff yesterday booing the English national anthem. And then the English repaid the favor (or is it favour?).  Her Majesty must have been very pleased with her subjects by the time the game kicked off.

Herewith, a few other brief observations on a contest that was essentially over before it began:

• The Welsh managed to pull off a neat trick: not only did they look like The Ronald McDonald All-stars in their red, white and yellow kits, they played like them, as well, as England jumped out to a quick 2-nil lead in the game's first 20 minutes.

• England looked sharp early on, but let's remember this was a Welsh side that's been leaking goals under bossman Gary Speed. It's a bit like testing out your gameplan on a boys' U-7 side (and the B-team, at that).