your daily recap

[rone]

Germany 2 - Sweden 0: Germany scored early and then proceeded to wipe the pitch with the Swedes, who had to play a man down in the second half.  To compound their misery, Larsson brutally overshot a penalty kick early in the second half, which completely demoralized his team.

Argentina 2 - Mexico 1: Mexico came out strong and scored early, but almost immediately knocked in an own goal to tie the game up.  The rest of the half was very even.  In the second half, Argentina dominated more but failed to get decent scoring chances due to an excellent Mexican defense.  Late in the second half, the Mexican defense started flagging, and the Argentinians scored the winning goal with a minute to go in injury time, except it was called back on a very bad offsides call.  In overtime, Rodríguez scored a gorgeous goal, the mirror image of Joe Cole's goal against Sweden.  Mexico tried their hardest, but just couldn't get it done.  Argentina gets to face Germany.

Comments

[wisn.livejournal.com]

Argentina/Mexico was the best game I've seen -- exciting from start to finish and well played on both sides. Rodriguez' goal will be the stuff of historical retrospective for decades. Props to Sweden and Mexico both for being capable of keeping their opponents scores as low as they were, since the ball was on their sides almost all the time.

The Germany/Sweden game, in particular, would have been a lot more exciting if Sweden's defense wasn't responsible for resisting the unending grind of Germany's offense. Any more I could say would begin to sound like a WW II recap.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

To be fair to the Swedes, nobody's a Viking against the Germans.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Even before yesterday (hell, before the group games had finished), I had a suspicion that the winner of a presumed Argentina-Germany tie is going to reach the final. It seems even more likely now. Looking at the draw, the only team I could see disturbing that would be Italy, if they improve dramatically.

[khrister.livejournal.com]

The man down situation in Germany - Sweden was bogus, though. Lukic was clearly on the ball when he got the first yellow card (well, it was clear on the replay, at least...)

Not that I think that the chance of a comeback was great at that time, but it might at least have made the game more exciting.