Walk Like A…Well, You Know…

A lot of Americans probably think the biggest news to come out of Egypt’s 1-0 victory over Italy yesterday in the Fifa Confederations Cup is the fact that this means the U.S. still has a (remote) chance of escaping the group stage. Ok, scratch that, most Americans don’t know and don’t care that the Confederations Cup exists, or that anybody played a match yesterday.

But for those who do care about the beautiful game, Egypt’s victory over the Italians was truly an amazing sight. Egypt far from dominated the game, and trailed in possession, corners, shots on goal, and just about every other statistical category possible. But the Egyptians played without any fear of an Italian side that had not lost a competetive international match since 2004. Egyptian keeper Essam Al Hadari looked even more unbeatable than his Italian counterpart, Gianluigi Buffon, the goalkeeper who played so brilliantly in Italy’s 2006 run to the World Cup. Many of the Egyptian veterans failed to make much of an impact, like striker Mohamed Zidan (No relation to the head-butt champion of the world) who failed to even record an attempt on goal after netting two against Brazil. But the young players stepped up, and Mohamed Homos buried a perfect header off a corner in the 40th minute.

While Egypt played inspired, Italy can hardly say the same. After looking impenetrable for about 35 minutes, Italy’s backline, composed largely of World Cup veterans, completely fell apart. The corner that set up the game’s only goal came as a result of a last-chance save as Egypt got behind the Italian defenders. Then, on the corner Italy completely neglected to mark anyone, leaving Homos an embarrassingly undefended path to the goal. Now, as I understand it the Italian Press noted that many of the Italian players, fresh off some very long seasons with their international clubs, didn’t even want to compete at the Confederations Cup, and I have to wonder if Thursday was their way of showing it…

As for the Americans, they need to beat the Egyptian side on Sunday (which is not going to happen) and they need Brazil to absolutely trounce the Italians (this is a little more likely) to have a chance at escaping from the group stage. Sadly, I think this is a pretty accurate preview of what the Americans have to look forward to next year in South Africa at the World Cup (assuming we even qualify, don’t take it for granted). Then again, not qualifying may be ok with the Americans, who have already played two matches in South Africa and probably realize that the Cup might be noisy as hell.

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