World Cup Game #57

I thought that I was going to write about the beautiful game reappearing and, for while it did. Brazil were utterly devastating in attack and ran riot for about the first 15-20 minutes but only scored once in that time. The Dutch eventually got back into the game and began winning a good proportion of the midfield tussles. This resulted in the Dutch equaliser just after the restart after a terrible mistake from Julio Cesar, the Brazilian keeper. So far so good although Robinho and Dani Alves seemed to want to protest every decision the referee made. Robben started tearing up the Brazilian left wing and Bastos was having increasing trouble exercising any degree of control over him, eventually being substituted in the 63rd minute to avoid being sent off. Again, so far so good for the beautiful game.

The Dutch scored their second goal off a well-worked corner and suddenly it turned ugly. The Brazilians utterly lost focus and cohesion and Robinho, Dani Alves and Luis Fabiano alternately scythed and then whined. Robben continued to cause utter mayhem and Felipe Melos earned himself a red card for stomping on Robben after being utterly frustrated by Robben's many jinking, twisting runs. The beautiful game was completely gone by this time with only a handful of Brazilians, Kaka and Maicon chief amongst them with eyes for the ball. The rest of the team dived and whined and and hacked and kicked, Robinho being a prime suspect. It was very disappointing and not a little sad to see such rapid degeneration from such a great side. The Dutch to their credit did keep their eyes on the ball and kept calm and coherent, eventually running out 2-1 winners.

World Cup Game #58

With both of these teams not really expected to to do this well, this game was a bonus for both of them but sadly it didn't really turn out like that. Even though both sides attacked at times, it wasn't quite as exciting as it could have been. The goals were good and Kingson, the Ghanaian keeper just about kept Ghana in the game all on his own at times. At full-time it was 1-1 and so extra time came into play. In extra time, Ghana certainly woke up and launched a number of attacks, none of which scored. In the final minute, Suarez blocked a header from Adiyiah with his hand giving Ghana an enormous chance to win the game. Sadly, Gyan missed and so it was onto penalties. Gyan's miss seemed to have rattled a number of the Ghanaian penalty takers because there were some miserably tentative shots, meaning that Uruguay won the shoot-out 4-2, the sealing Uruguayan kick being a wonderfully cheeky chip from Abreu.