And ANOTHER THING!

I'm tired of hearing people claim that Spain "peaked too early" at the World Cup after their 3-1 loss to France in the Round of 16. Not because of Spain's 3 victories in group play, but because it's a stupid phrase with no meaning.

The whole concept of "peaking" is absurd. What "peaking early" essentially means is that they won games before losing their last game (or not qualifying for the next round). By this logic, then 29 baseball teams each year peak early at some point in the season. 31 teams will "peak too early" in this World Cup. On the other side, if Spain had lost in the World Cup Final, then in two years won their first three qualifying matches for World Cup 2010, would any writer/commentator say with assertion that they had peaked too late? Of course not. If peaking late is absurd, why is peaking early such a commonly used turn of phrase?

Peaking is something sportswriters like to talk about when they've run out of relevant things to talk about. What do you know? There's no matches for two days, and we have to fill web page space on ESPNSoccernet.

Peaking- also know as "winning" has everything to do with the individual/team/coaching/home field/weather matchups. It has nothing to do with a team carefully controlling the pace of winning its games- throttling up and down on the momentum like a stick shift to ensure that they don't peak early.