Tag: sports

I’m really looking forward to this one, which is the most interesting matchup of the first round of the Knockout Stage. Holland should win, but Mexico is playing very hard for Herrara and the Mexican keeper was easily the best in the Group Stage. A very good test for the Oranje if they are to flatter themselves with the idea that they are serious contenders for the title.

Costa Rica v Greece should actually be worth watching. Greece is, as always, an old, untalented, defensive-minded team, but they have a crazy ability to give much better teams a difficult time. Costa Rica was the shock winners of a group that literally no one gave them a chance to win, so one has to consider them the favorite here.

HOLLAND 2 MEXICO 1: Ugh. Great game and down to the wire, but even so, ugh. I was supporting Holland, but seeing Robben dive three times in the box, and on the third one draw the penalty that won the game, was truly ugly. Ochoa was awesome, but there was no stopping the cannon blast from Wesley Schneider that tied the game in the 88th minute.

FIFA is really going to have to give serious thought to replay on penalties.

FIRST HALF 1-1: The Brazilian goal was clearly an own goal. The Chilean goal, on the other hand, was the combination of laziness by the Brazilian midfielder and an opportunistic Chilean jumping on the chance. Brazil doesn’t seem to be fully in gear, but Neymar is blowing by the central defense at will, so I would think Brazil will score two more and put the game away without too much trouble.

SECOND HALF 1-1: Brazil will be crying about it, but there was no question that Hulk controlled the ball with his forearm. Good call by the official. The goalies are keeping both teams in the game; both had excellent saves. Chile is attacking more and actually looks the better team despite their obvious lack of quality in comparison with Brazil. Extra time!

EXTRA TIME 1-1: WOW! Chile hits the crossbar in the last two minutes of injury time after a desultory 30 minutes where Chile ran out of steam and wisely switched to a defensive orientation. Brazil then counterattacks, but Neymar unwisely passes right instead of left on a 3-on-2 break. And it’s penalties.

PENALTIES: 3-2 Brazil. Great game. Neymar coolly fires home, the Chilean 5th penalty taker hits the post, and Neymar visibly falls apart with the relief. I can’t even imagine the amount of pressure he must have been feeling. But, as Ender says, I’m going to miss the Chilean coach. He’s awesome, both in terms of his tactics and the way he stalks the sideline like a pitbull, which he rather resembles. I think he is now my third favorite manager after Arsene “please to enjoy my impromptu 30-minute lecture on subjects unrelated to football” Wenger and The Special One.

The Brazilians seem to like him too. Several of them go out of their way to pay their respects. Interesting, too, to see a number of apparent Christians among the Brazilian players, including Neymar and Willian.

That seems about right to me. Suarez is out of all football for the next four months, which means he’ll miss nine Premiership matches with Liverpool as well as nine international matches with Uruguay, including the remainder of the current World Cup. He was also fined about $110,000.

Luis Suarez has been banned from all football for four months and an additional nine Fifa international matches after biting an Italian defender. Fifa made the ruling after footage emerged of Uruguay striker Suarez biting down on the shoulder of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini in the 80th minute of their World Cup clash.

The ban will mean Suarez misses the rest of the international tournament, including Uruguay’s last 16 match against Colombia on Saturday, and the start of the Premier League next season.

I don’t see how anyone can complain that FIFA was soft on this one. A fast and fair decision.

I truly don’t see how the USA is going to be able to hold off Germany. It would have been better if Germany had not tied Ghana, because there would have been less incentive for Germany to win the game outright. We should know very early on if Germany decides to bring the noise or not; if Germany is sitting back and playing the possession game then the USA might have a shot at a draw with some judicious counterattacking.

The France v Ecuador game demonstrated how a team that doesn’t need to win often doesn’t concern itself with doing so. If the Germans decide to push forward, and I suspect they will, I just don’t think the US defense, which has been shaky at times, is going to be capable of withstanding the pressure. The USA has already acquitted itself very well, and with four points, has done better than expected. I thought three points was reasonable, although there were many who expected only one point from a draw with Ghana.

And even with a loss, a draw between Ghana and Portugal is far from impossible. Regardless, I hope Klinsman elects to come out with guns blazing, as clearly sitting back and defending is not a style with which the US team is comfortable.

FIRST HALF: Good start by the USA. Jones is being a bit of a drama queen and Bradley is still losing the ball more than he should, but the Germans have pressed several times and the defense has been up to the task. Only one particularly dangerous chance, and Howard stopped Otzil’s shot. Jones barely missed a beautiful shot from outside the box; other than that the USA doesn’t look like scoring but they don’t look particularly vulnerable either. And with Portugal up 1-0, this would be exactly the result they’re looking for.

FINAL: 1-0 Germany. A great result for the USA. One seldom sees a losing coach look happier than Jurgen Klinsman. No one expected the USA to make it to the Knockout Stage, but now they’re in, and against one of the weaker group winners too.

None of the matches today are particularly interesting, although I am curious to see if the Swiss can pull themselves together after the shellacking they received at the hands of France. As good as the Dutch have looked, no team has impressed me as much as Les Bleus. I’d be very surprised if Ecuador can stay within two goals of them… which, given the accuracy of my expectations this tournament, probably indicates a 0-0 draw.

Although I was skeptical of Spain’s chances of repeating and I did not, like many before the tournament, count out the Dutch. But let’s face it, absolutely no one in the entire world expected Spain to go out in the group stage or Costa Rica to win its group. But apparently someone did genuinely expect Luis Suarez to bite someone; I heard that a man won a 175-1 bet courtesy of his toothy attack on Chiellini.

One thing that has always confused me about those who don’t follow the Beautiful Game is the way they ludicrously insist it is a non-contact sport for wusses. There have been a few less games than one sees in three weeks of the NFL season, and yet there have been more horrific injuries in this “non-contact” World Cup than in the opening three weeks of last year’s NFL. Between the fractured eye sockets, broken legs, and KOs, it’s simply ludicrous to claim that the player are not physically tough when they are taking that kind of abuse while running up to 15k per game.

Even on the amateur level, the season can be a bit of a death march. I’ve mentioned before the season when my old team went from 33 to 10 healthy players over the course of the season. My current team lost its second captain in successive years to a blown-out knee, and as for the rest of the club, the first team lost a midfielder to a broken leg, a midfielder on Ender’s team broke his collarbone and the starting goalie broke his arm. I did full-contact martial arts for six years, and while we got considerably more banged up and bruised on a regular basis, the serious injury rate was fairly similar.

In six years of martial arts, I was KO’d once and broke a few bones, but I was never temporarily blinded or had my kneecap ripped open, both of which happened during the same season a few years ago.

That was both a disaster of incompetent strategy and a chaotic mess. Marchesio was sent off for nothing I could see, while Luis Suarez got away with BITING Chiellini in the shoulder.  With a 1-0 win, Uruguay goes through, but they may lose their best player if Suarez is, quite rightly, given a multi-game ban by FIFA on the basis of the video. FIFA won’t want to take one of the game’s best strikers out of the tournament… but he clearly BIT the guy!

I am a little bit nervous after watching the Oranje defeat Chile, 2-0. I’m not certain that Arjen Robben passing the ball while in shooting range is a definite sign of the Apocalypse, but it strikes me as an ominous harbinger indeed.. Other than that surreal moment, which was beautifully set up by a long ball from the left back, Holland was in charge without ever looking likely to score. But Schneider’s substitute put in a header for his first-ever touch of the ball in a World Cup match – not a bad start – and Holland finished with all 9 points.

While Croatia v Mexico is the more interesting game, I’m tempted to watch Brazil. They have really looked like nothing the first two games, and if they don’t kick it up a notch, they might very well lose, and lose handily, to European teams like Holland, France, and to a lesser extent, Germany, that are clicking on all cylinders. Perhaps the Brazilians are simply cruising, but it can’t be argued that with names like Fred, Hulk, Bernard, and Oscar, this team seems to lack more than a little of the traditional Brazilian magic.

UPDATE: 2-1 Brazil at halftime. They’re basically Neymar and everybody else. Two very nice goals by Neymar versus one unlucky bounce followed by a lazy defensive breakdown. Brazil may find it hard to score if one of the elite teams man-marks Neymar.

UPDATE 2: Switched to Mexico v Croatia after Brazil goes up 3-1 on Fred’s header. Mexico promptly scores twice; the second goal is an excellent ground cross and finish. Mexico ends up winning 3-1 and looks very good while doing so. Brazil wins the group on goal difference, but Mexico gave them a very good run for their money.

This should be interesting. If the USA can’t do it now, against an injured and demoralized Portugal, then it will be clear it simply doesn’t have the horses to compete with the second-rate teams. But the win over Ghana looks a lot more impressive in light of Ghana battling a lazy Germany to a draw.

MESSI! 1-0 was a harsh result for Iran, who played Argentina to a near-draw and were robbed of a clear penalty. Both goalies were excellent, but one defender just isn’t enough to shut down Messi, whose 90th minute goal was the thing of beauty one expects to see from a truly elite international. A very good game, though, and probably the best the Iranians have ever played at the World Cup, their defeat of the USA a few Cups back notwithstanding.

Messi’s strike wasn’t even his most impressive move of the game. My favorite was when he took on three defenders and went through ALL THREE of them before being stymied by the fourth. He may not be at the absolute top of his form that he was when Barca was destroying everything in sight, but this is the best he’s ever been at the World Cup. Which is saying something, as only Batigol has scored more goals for Argentina.

I have to admit, though, I do kind of miss watching Unfrozen Caveman Striker.

I can’t imagine Germany having any trouble at all with Ghana, and I very much doubt I’ll even bother to watch Bosnia-Nigeria.

I didn’t expect this game to be of any interest, but in light of the Uruguay-England result, Costa Rica should probably be taken more seriously than I’d assumed. That being said, it’s a lot easier to penetrate the Uruguay defense than the famous catenaccio, even if it’s no longer being anchored by Maldini and Cannavaro. So, I still expect a fairly routine 3-1 Italian victory, but it should be one that is on the entertaining side of routine.

In any event, the prosecco is flowing and the match is on. Avanti Azzurri!

France v Switzerland is the match I’m really anticipating. The French looked much stronger than I’d anticipated, as Pogba is a fearsome midfielder in the mode of a more aggressive Patrick Viera and Griezeman is a classic fox-in-the box, albeit with speed. Prior to the tournament, I would have bet on the Swiss, but so far, they appear to be more lucky than good. I think a draw would be a good result for the Swiss, but then, the French are young, so it’s entirely possible that they’ll end up imploding.

FIRST HALF: Italy is completely controlling the ball but it’s going to be hard for them to win if they leave Balotelli up front. His head is clearly not in the game and he’s blown two very good chances. Costa Rica is robbed of a penalty, but grabs one before the half when Chiellini gets lazy. 1-0 Costa Rica.

SECOND HALF: Ugh. As Ender said, Italy looked lazy, clumsy, and slow. One would almost suspect they were content to lose in order to knock England out. They’ll have to do better against Uruguay or they’ll be coming home too.

UPDATE: As for the France-Switzerland game, the Swiss haven’t been trounced so roundly since the days of the Napoleonic invasion. It’s 3-0 at halftime and should be 4-0 considering the missed penalty and the follow-up shot that hit the crossbar. That’s more goals than the Swiss gave up in the previous eight games.