Article that kinda fits in here....
Club international
July 1, 2010
By Norman Hubbard
It is the clubs' fault. They are too rich and too powerful, too greedy and too grasping, too unhelpful and not understanding enough. Whenever an international football team fails, they are convenient scapegoats, exhausting or under-using its players and depriving them of form, fitness or confidence when their country needs them.
Yet this is a World Cup to suggest that the achievers and overachievers have benefited from behaving like clubs. Brazil are the most prominent example. As no nation produces more top-quality footballers, none has a greater opportunity to chop and change at will. Instead, Dunga has showed the kind of continuity that is enforced at domestic level, where managers have few players to choose from.
His is a squad without Ronaldinho, Adriano, Diego, Alexandre Pato, Marcelo, Alex and Thiago Motta, to name but a few. Instead, nine of the side who appeared in last year's Confederations Cup final began this World Cup in his first XI. Some have endured troubled seasons, most notably Robinho and Felipe Melo, but there has been consistency of selection. If there is an understanding in the key partnerships in the team - particularly Melo and Gilberto Silva in midfield and Lucio and Juan in defence - it is forged by shared experiences and a knowledge of each others' game.
Indeed, the success of the entire South American contingent, with the exceptions of an ever-changing Argentina outfit, can be attributed to their seemingly interminable qualifying campaign. Featuring 18 games each, it has permitted them time to grow together.
Chile's ability to interchange positions is a sign that players are accustomed to performing with one another. More prosaically, the tough Paraguayan and Uruguayan defences, both only breached once in their first four games, have had plenty of practice. As they required a play-off to reach South Africa, the Uruguayan campaign encompassed 20 games; captain Diego Lugano started 17 and the other centre-back, Diego Godin, 16. After manager Oscar Washington Tabarez invested in youth, a team took shape in that time.
The CONCACAF countries' route to the World Cup can also appear unnecessarily unwieldy. However, it may have benefits: USA play more internationals than most European nations and manager Bob Bradley's familiarity with his players was apparent as a series of replacements exerted an impact, even if his critics can query why his initial selections were less effective. Mexico's frantic summer included 12 games since the start of May, yet those eight friendlies can account for their swift start to the World Cup, out-passing South Africa in the opening fixture and outclassing France next.
In contrast, plenty of other sides were unable to kick-start their campaign; some never truly began. Team-building can appear an impossibility in international football, but there can be a logic to it. Of the four West African representatives at the World Cup, should it be any surprise that Ghana, two years into Milovan Rajevac's reign, progressed furthest? He had the greatest opportunity to assess players in training and matches and promoted much of the younger generation into the senior side in January's African Nations Cup. There was still scope for newcomers to be introduced, as Kevin-Prince Boateng showed, but he could slot into the existing framework. It was the equivalent of integrating a new signing, rather than building a new team.
Europe's three quarter-finalists display more a club-like understanding than its underachievers. The majority of the Spain squad are owned by either Real Madrid or Barcelona and the passing axis of Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets has been transported from Camp Nou into the national team. Despite the Dutch tradition of dissent, two elements are relevant to their serene progress: the left half of their defence, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Joris Mathijsen, have been virtual ever-presents for years and the creative contingent of Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart and Arjen Robben are all at a fourth international tournament, all former Real Madrid players and, in the first two instances, graduates of the Ajax academy.
Germany, meanwhile, are a team of two generations, hastily spliced together because of injuries but skilfully blended. Joachim Low's willingness to trust the products of the Under-21 squad is rightly respected. A few years their senior, Per Mertesacker, Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski are all 26 or under, yet possess almost 300 caps between them. While only Mertesacker has retained the same role, that stability in a winning side breeds belief in one another.
It is little wonder they don't look like strangers when placed on a pitch together. The key is not experience per se, as the aged English and Italians illustrate, but experience of playing as a team, establishing patterns of play, uniting players who combine profitably and discarding those who cannot function within the unit. They are prospering by possessing balance, rather than trying to cram in incompatible or unhappy players. Rather than blaming the clubs, the cleverer international managers are emulating the better ones.
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