A Leap To Leipzig

TigerBlog cannot remember a world-class athlete who humiliated himself or herself more on the international stage than Neymar just did at the World Cup.

The Brazilian, one of the best players in the world, went to Russia hoping to lead his nation to a World Cup with a team that had as good a chance as any other. He left knowing that he could go on the internet or social media and see literally millions of videos that were mocking him after his team's failure.

If you haven't been watching, Neymar became the greatest flopper of all time. If you were anywhere near him contesting a ball, he went down in a heap, writhing in agony. Or supposed agony at least.

In the end, it definitely caught up to him, and not just for his reputation. Several times near the end of Brazil's 2-1 loss to Belgium in the quarterfinals, there were plays that might have been actual fouls - including one in the penalty area - that went uncalled, quite likely influenced by the fact that Neymar had spent so much of the tournament clearly faking contact.

It's easy to tell when a player is actually hurt and when there is simple flopping going on. The player's reaction tells the whole story.

How much American football have you watched? A lot. How many injuries have you seen? A lot.

How many times have you seen a player roll around three or four times, as if the momentum of the hit was just too much to be stopped? Never is the answer.

As you know, TigerBlog hates the flopping. He also hates PKs as a tiebreaker, which is how Croatia defeated Russia to get the final spot in the semifinals.

The semifinal matchups are Croatia against England and France against Belgium. That's four European countries.

For all of the geography represented in the tournament, one semifinal matches two bordering countries whose capitals are 194 miles - a little more than three hours - apart. The distance between the capitals of England and Croatia is roughly the same as the distance between New York and St. Louis.

One fascinating part to TigerBlog is that of those four teams, only one - France - was a semifinalist two years ago in the European tournament, which was won by Portugal.

TigerBlog, as you know, has watched a ton of the World Cup. He can't remember which game it was the other day, but during the broadcast he heard a rather familiar name come from one of the British announcers.

Jesse Marsch.

To fans of Princeton soccer, the name Jesse Marsch is a very familiar one. Jesse was an All-American under Bob Bradley at Princeton, and he spent 14 years as a player in Major League Soccer. During that time he played in 358 games and won four MLS championships.

Since then he has been a coach, including the 2013 and 2014 seasons at Princeton under Jim Barlow. Princeton went 8-0-1 in its final nine games in 2014, by the way.

Marsch has seen his career take him to the U.S. men's national team (as a player and a coach) and also as a coach in MLS, first with the Montreal Impact and most recently with the Red Bulls. That time ended when he stepped aside last week, and that's why his name became part of a World Cup telecast.

Why did Jesse leave the Red Bulls, who play in a stadium about 45 minutes from Princeton? Apparently, he's looking to make his mark in Europe.

Marsch had been rumored to be moving to RB Leipzig, a franchise in the German Bundesliga that comes from the same ownership group as the Red Bulls. This would be a much different challenge, of course.

Those rumors were confirmed early this morning, when Marsch became the assistant coach for RP Leipzig.

There haven't been many American coaches who have been able to coach at the highest levels of European professional soccer. Bradley, Marsch's coach at Princeton, did so with Swansea in the English Premiere League, though it didn't last.

THIS story from ESPN.com tells much more about the situation and is worth reading. Don't try to comment on it, though - ESPN.com got rid of its comments section. 

By the way, when you talk to Jesse Marsch, it takes you about two seconds to be impressed. He's very much like Bradley and Barlow - cerebral and competitive at the same time.

It would be great to see him get the opportunity on that level.

As for the World Cup, it's down to the final four games, with the two semifinal games and then a consolation and championship game.

Ordinarily, TB is not a fan of consolation games, though there was that one time 53 years ago where it was fine with Princeton fans.