An Algorithm for the true value of your team.
June 30, 2010.
Brazil over the Netherlands, Uruguay over Ghana, Germany over Argentina and a slight, slight edge in a coin flip for Paraguay over Spain.
Paraguay is the most intriguing team on the Power Rank as the tiny South American country comes in at fourth.
Much of this strength comes from a qualifying campaign in which they bested both Brazil (3-2) and Argentina (2-1) on aggregate over two games.
However, their leading scorer in qualifying, Salvador Cabanas, was shot in the head in January, an incident that spared his life but left him unable to make the trip to South Africa.
In their last game against Japan (yes, I just watched over 90 minutes of a soccer match knowing it would end in 0-0 tie),
this Paraguay team showed a surprising lack of skill and touch in the midfield for a South American side.
However, they play incredible defense and run very hard the entire game, which may be enough to eventually frustrate a talented Spanish team.
The Brazil Netherlands game provides a great opportunity to highlight an excellent article by Michael Sokolove about a Dutch youth soccer academy. Two things stand out in this lengthy read. First, the structured academies in Europe are vastly different from the unstructured pick up games in South America. The Dutch club Ajax picks out kids as young as seven and put them through years of drills designed to improve their basic skills. Kids in South America just play and learn their skills on the streets, similar to how intercity youths develop their basketball game in the United States. Second, the coaches in the Dutch academy place a large emphasis on running form. Instead of counting goals in evaluating a young player, a coach looks at whether he is "on his forefeet, running lightly?" This is a subject near and dear to my heart, as I've spent the last year of my life coaxing my body to do exactly this by running barefoot and in Vibram Five Fingers. Later, the academy brings in a track coach to help a wing player develop more speed. While most people in America consider speed an genetic gift, people in Jamaica and Holland understand how to develop it in their youth.