When Siphiwe Tshabalala gloriously fired home the first goal of the World Cup it looked like we had a tournament on our hands. Unfortunately, France and Uruguay took to the pitch straight afterwards and in a heartbeat the previous match was a distant memory, I can’t remember the last time I watched a game that was so bad it hurt to watch it.
Day one pretty much set the tone for the rest of the opening matches. There has been excitement; there has been hints of brilliance. But so far the dull is outweighing the delightful, that could be down to many things – first game nerves, or it could be down to the ball which has been much complained about. A lot of passes are being over hit, the shooting so far has been so woeful it’s causing more problems for low flying aircraft than goalkeepers.
England’s Rob Green tried to shift some of the blame onto the Jabulani after his howler against the US. Green has come in for some stick from the forever fickle British press, but Captain Steven Gerrard came out and said that “the whole team is behind Rob Green”, in hindsight that would’ve been a good place to stand. On a serious note I hope Capello sticks with Green, if he drops him you may as well send him home as his confidence will be shot, and knowing our luck, Fabio will drop him then injury and suspension will lead to a recall and we’ll have a quivering wreck between the sticks. The entire furore over that incident completely covered the fact that a draw wasn’t a disaster for either side, and both should really qualify with ease.
The football so far hasn’t been up to much in the excitement stakes, but Holland, Brazil, Argentina and Germany have shown glimpses of things to come, on the flip side North Korea and Switzerland amongst others, have shown that you can get amongst the big boys, and that a shock is always on the cards.
The vuvuzela’s are set to stay, they do add to the atmosphere but you’d think that those incessantly blowing into them would take a break from time to time, if anything to clean out the massive amount of saliva that must get collected. Let someone bang a drum from time to time or maybe even have a bit of a sing song. That swarming drone wears thin over ninety minutes. The vuvuzela’s were given a stay of execution but thirty-six Dutch girls in matching dresses were not, they were ejected during Mondays match between Holland and Denmark as the dresses in question were part of a gift pack from a brewery, in an act of “Ambush Marketing”. It was a good spot to notice identical Orange outfits in amongst the thousands of Dutch fans. The real plus side in this story is that ITV viewers no longer have to listen to Robbie Earle’s less than lame attempts at punditry, as it was Earle’s ticket allocation that got the Orange ladies into the ground. All we need now is a similar plot to remove Andy Townsend and ITV may become mildly watchable again.
In a short while all eyes will once again be on hosts South Africa as they take on Uruguay. Three points for Bafana Bafana would boost their chances of making the last sixteen. Whatever the result let’s hope that this is the game that proves a catalyst for the rest of the competition.
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The World Cup, So Far, So So
Most fans of professional women’s soccer already know that today kicks off one of the biggest events in the game on the international stage. For those that have not heard that the Women’s World Cup starts today, June 26th. And ESPN has it covered – literally.