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your daily recap
Portugal 0 - England 0 (3-1 PKs): This game started out well, then became quite dull. Rooney was sent off after he stomped Carvalho's soft bits, but you wouldn't know it for a while because England played hard after that, looking for a goal and coming close a few times. Meanwhile, Portugal never visibly took advantage of their numerical superiority, with a Figo who looked tired and slow. Both he and Beckham were substituted in the second half, the latter of whom was limping on his way out. When it came to the penalty kicks, Lampard, who's the player with the most shots taken in the Cup but hasn't scored, still couldn't find the back of the net. Carragher, who was inserted with less than five minutes left in overtime, ostensibly to knock in a penalty kick, shot before the referee had whistled, and his retake was saved by the Portuguese keeper, who guessed right each time. At least now the long, national English nightmare is over, and Sven-Goran Eriksson is gone. And we got to see Victoria Beckham cry, too.
France 1 - Brazil 0: You know, for all the talk about how Brazil could field two World Cup teams with their talent, they could've used that second team today, because their top team played as poorly as any team i've seen in the Cup. The French were absolutely solid until near the end, when Brazil desperately tried to tie as Parreira inserted every one of his forwards. Zidane played like it was 1998 again, and he connected with Henry for the goal (this is Zidane's first assist ever to an Henry goal in international play). Needless to say, i'm thrilled that Brazil is out, and maybe they need to stop fooling around with the ball for Nike commercials and learn to play with each other again. France-Portugal happens on Wednesday.
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Portugal played surprisingly badly. It's more of a surprise that England couldn't get a ball past them than that they couldn't score either.
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And yeah Brazil was waaaay too crap this cup, they should have killed everyone. Still pissed Argentina is out.
But at least England is out.
We're all rooting for Italy to go out next, mainly concerns of cheating.
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From a selfish and parochial perspective, I'm viewing Scotland's qualifying group for Euro 2008 with something approaching horror. It Includes, Italy, France and the Ukraine (also Georgia, Lithuania and our old favourites, the Faroe Islands). The phrase which leaps to mind is, "We are so fucking fucked."
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So what is the deal with the UK participating as such in the Olympics but not in the World Cup, anyway?
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A few years back ('92 or '96, I forget which) Scotland very nearly qualified to represent the UK at the Olympics (European qualification at that time required teams to finish in the top 3 of the UEFA U21 championships; Scotland finished 4th). If they had qualified, it would have been a Scottish team representing Britain at the Olympics, with no players from the other associations...
It isn't the only sport where this arises. For example, Scotland and the other home nations compete separately in the World and European curling championships, but Scottish teams have represented the UK at the Olympics for at least the last 20 years. I think there's a similar set-up with regard to boxing, but there are more grey areas, there. Oh, and one of my friends keeps reminding me that Scotland held (may still hold, for all I know) the slightly improbable title of world elephant polo champions.
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Of course, there are also cheeky sods who point out that Michael Owen (Welsh) and Owen Hargreaves (Canadian) aren't really English...
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