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Three quick thoughts on Greece-Argentina (World Cup Group B)

Three quick thoughts after Argentina's 2-0 victory over Greece in Group B on Tuesday: 1. Did Greece not get updates from South Korea/Nigeria? Even after South
George Dohrmann|
Three quick thoughts on Greece-Argentina (World Cup Group B)
Three quick thoughts on Greece-Argentina (World Cup Group B)

Three quick thoughts after Argentina's 2-0 victory over Greece in Group B on Tuesday:

1. Did Greece not get updates from South Korea/Nigeria? Even after South Korea went ahead 2-1 in the second half, meaning Greece would need to score twice against Argentina to advance, the Greeks continued to play far too defensively. It was as if they were settling for the draw, for a moral victory. It is possible that Greece didn't know where it stood, but a more plausible explanation is that Greece simply didn't know how to play attacking football against a side like Argentina. Or perhaps Otto Rehhagel really is as overly defensive-minded as his critics think he is.

2. Neither Diego Milito nor Sergio Agüero did anything to deserve a start against Mexico. Milito and Aguero are good enough to start for almost any team in the world, but in Argentina's opening two games Gonzalo Higuaín and Carlos Tévez got the call. A stunning game by either Milito or Agüero might have led Argentina boss Diego Maradona to consider giving them a run out against Mexico in the second round, but Milito was pedestrian and Agüero missed the two good chances he got. Higuaín and Tévez seem likely to start against El Tri in the round of 16.

3. Argentina succeeded in avoided injuries. Watching Lionel Messi get knocked around in the 75th minute made me wonder why Maradona still had him in the game. A change was made five minutes later, but it was Milito who was pulled, not Messi. Maradona is an unconventional manager, but this was an instance when he needed to be less of a fan, needed to stop admiring Messi's brilliance and get him out of the game. Greece was overly physical, especially in the first half, and an injury to Messi or another stalwart would have been devastating.

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George Dohrmann
GEORGE DOHRMANN

Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated Sports Illustrated senior writer George Dohrmann is the rare sportswriter to have won a Pulitzer Prize. He earned journalism's top honor in 2000 while at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Pulitzer cited his "determined reporting, despite negative reader reaction, that revealed academic fraud in the men's basketball program at the University of Minnesota." In 2000 he joined Sports Illustrated, where his primary beat is investigative reporting. He has also covered college football, college basketball and high school sports for SI and SI.com. Dohrmann is the author of the book, Play Their Hearts Out, an expose about youth basketball that was published by Random House in October 2010. It won the 2011 PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing and was named the best sports book of the year by Amazon.  Dohrmann cites the 2010 story Confessions of an Agent and the Michael Vick dog-fighting case in 2007 as the most memorable stories of his SI career. He has also written investigative stories on Ohio State football, UCLA basketball and other schools. Dohrmann's previous experience includes stops at the aforementioned St. Paul Pioneer Press (1997-2000), where he covered University of Minnesota football and basketball, and the Los Angeles Times (1995-1997), where he was the beat writer for USC basketball. Dohrmann graduated from Notre Dame in 1995 with a B.A. in American studies and later earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (2006). He resides in San Francisco with his wife, Sharon, daughter, Jessica, son, Justin and a crazy mutt named Reyna.

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