World Cup: U.S. Must Unleash "Gladiator" Hell
It may well be that Koman Coulibaly of Mali watched "Bambi" the night before enjoying himself while the U.S. and Slovenia attempted a little street-fighting last Friday.
However, Frank De Bleekere of Belgium knows he must gird himself for stronger stuff when he officiates Wednesday between the U.S. and Algeria.
So he would like both teams to know that he will be watching a slightly more robust movie in order to prepare for what promises to be an entertaining game, as the U.S. wouldn't have it any other way.
De Bleekere explained to Yahoo Sports: "I will watch the previous games of USA and Algeria to help me understand their tactics and work on my positioning. But I will watch 'Gladiator' first."
This was, naturally, excellent Belgian humor. However, what fine Roman movie dialogue will prepare him for the battle ahead?
"Still alive? The Gods must have a sense of humor," might play around his head.
Appropriate words too, as he will be aware that the U.S. has tried hard to make things as difficult for itself as possible.
Equally, no one expected that Algeria still might have a chance of moving forward.
De Bleekere might also ponder: "You know, dirt cleans off a lot better than blood, Quentis."
And this might just inspire him to remind the teams that too much of the hugging, shirt-tugging, back-pinching, elbow-lifting rough stuff will not be tolerated.
De Bleekere has been known to fall for precisely the same sort of fakery that moved the referees in both the Brazil/Ivory Coast and Switzerland/Chile games to believe that players from the Ivory Coast and Chile had been felled by karate chops, rather than by their own desperate dissimulation.
In the fine and difficult European Champions League semi-final between Inter-Milan and Barcelona this year, De Bleekere was fooled like a child seeing a card trick for the first time by Barcelona's Sergio Busquets.
Busquets claimed to have been felled by Inter's Thiago Motta, when, in fact, he was peeking through his fingers to see if the referee had fallen for it.
So the U.S must be very careful not to itself fall for D-list acting in an A-list game.
The "Gladiator" movie will also offer this lyric gem: "Three weeks from now I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be and it will be so."
Quietly, there might have been just one or two whispers in American minds that they might have already weathered enough storms, that they just might have a little grace on their side.
They might, indeed, be able to go at least as far as the fine team of 2002 that fell foul of some very sad Scottish refereeing in the quarter-final.
Before the tournament started, the team must have imagined that Algeria would present the least opposition. Certainly, the Algerians are the least physical in the group.
Though in Karim Ziani and Nadir Belhadj, they have a strong left side, the complete ineptitude of England's performance in Algeria's last game meant that if only the Desert Foxes had offered a little more belief, they might have gained all three points.
The dangers for the U.S have been all too evident in the first two games.
Somehow, the team contrives to give away early goals by leaving vast spaces uncovered in front of its back four.
"It's something that's been with this team for a number of years now," U.S. goalkeeper, Tim Howard, said.
Howard theorized at a press conference that only when the team is behind does it eschew the pretty for the pretty aggressive, sending high balls in and offering a fully frontal aerial assault.
Perhaps the U.S feels caught between two styles, the ideal and the effective. It would be more than charming if the team could marry the two.
Optimists might point to the fact that Algeria hasn't yet scored a goal in these World Cup finals.
Pessimists might offer that the U.S. has yet to win.
But the first 20 minutes, the first big chances and the first big refereeing decisions might dictate the flow of the whole game.
So perhaps the U.S. might watch "Gladiator" too in its preparations.
It might especially bear in mind one of Maximus' most touching lines: "At my signal, unleash hell."
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing, and an avid sports fan. He is also the author of the popular CNET blog Technically Incorrect.
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