Manhattan Adult Entertainment: World Cup 2010: Winners and Losers
The narrowed scoring window diminished the portion of the field a team such as New Zealand had to be defend. Even with somewhat of a revival in the knockout stages, the goals per game average for this tournament (2.27) was the second lowest of all-time. Only the notoriously turgid Italia 90 (2.21) was worse. Adidas’ Jabulani ball fundamentally altered the play at the 2010 World Cup, and not for the better.
Nike Stars (Losers): Fabio Cannavaro, Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Franck Ribery and Didier Drogba demonstrably failed to “Write the Future.” Ronaldinho did not even make the World Cup Squad.
France (Losers): France hamstrung themselves heading into the tournament with Raymond Domenech still coaching. With optimism already low, their campaign took one of the worst possible turns. It was a comprehensive failure in leadership on every level. Domenech was a clown. The players strike was so off-putting they made him look sympathetic. The experience was terrible enough to make an underage prostitute scandal seem tame. The only bright spot is that Laurent Blanc will get the “blanc” page he needs to comprehensively rebuild.
See the full article from “The Big Lead”