Vinnie Jones Delivers Third-Greatest Halftime Speech in Soccer History

Number one is Pelé, Michael Caine and the boys in the escape tunnel at halftime against the Germans in John Huston’s Victory.

Number two is whatever Alex Ferguson said to Man U the day he hit Beckham in the head with a shoe.

And number three is right here—actor and former Chelsea, Wimbledon, and QPR tough guy Vinnie Jones lighting a fire under his Sunday pub-league team, Hollywood All-Stars:

Hard to settle on just one favorite quote from that, but we’ll go with:

“Mikey! F***ing get in there, come in the midfield, go and pick someone up.  You want sit out there on the f***ing left side and f***ing toss it off!”

Related: Jones has supposedly been working on a Victory remake for years, with designs on casting Beckham in the Bobby Moore role.

Hat tip to the Henchman for the clip.

The U.S.’s “4-3-3” vs. Colombia, Explained

Major League Soccer’s Yanks-abroad correspondent, Greg Seltzer, has a helpful analysis of the United States’ formation and tactics in Tuesday night’s friendly at PPL Park. Click here to check it out on the MLS site.

Seltzer says that they were playing a 4-3-3—or trying to, anyway—but due to a failure of execution, and personnel options ill-suited to the formation, it devolved into a lone-striker setup—essentially a 4-5-1, as we said.

Seltzer further suggests that with the right U.S. players in the right spots, the Yanks could be very effective in a genuine 4-3-3. “Ideally,” he writes, “one wants a centrally pinned defensive stopper, a two-way midfielder shading one way, and a forward-thinking playmaker set slightly to the other.”

Now, imagine Jermaine Jones in the first role, Landon Donovan in the second, and Benny Feilhaber in the third.

Or Jones in the first, Michael Bradley in the second and Donovan in the third.

We could see combinations like those, with say, Stuart Holden and Clint Dempsey out wide, functioning effectively—and as a proper 4-3-3—for the U.S.

Seltzer goes on to point out how Holden and Shea pinched in too much on Tuesday and what effect that had on the attempt at the formation, along with lots of other tactical-breakdown goodness. Go give it a read.