2006 World Cup
Bwahahahahahahaha!
Last night, Uruguay lost 2-0 to the might of Georgia (world ranking 98 according to FIFA; population: 4.6 million and primary export - scrap metal, according to the CIA Factbook).
Makes me laugh a lot when I consider that last year Uruguay playmaker Alvaro Recoba claimed that Uruguay had a divine right to play in the world cup.
As Australian football supoprters reflect on a year passing since our stressful and joyful penalty shootout victory over Los Celeste and the intervening months with a successful A-League season and a fantastic performance in by the Socceroos in Germany, all I can say is not any more, sunshine…
World Cup 2006 - The Wash-Up
Sigh…
What a waste of a great match. All was fine and dandy until Zinedine Zidane’s brain exploded and he headbutted Marco Materazzi. Both sides probing for the crucial opening, chances being created, the referee staying mercifully uninvolved in the most part and the players responding by keeping their feet instead of sprawling on the turf.
Shock, horror! Two teams actually going out and playing football as if their lives depended on it!
And then this:
Image sourced from Eurosport.
Cue the French losing their impetus, the Italians seemingly unsure of what to do with themselves, and the last ten minutes drained away like fine wine down the sink - what could have been marvellous was wasted.
Instead, the lottery of penalties. This time David Trezeguet was the unlucky man whose miss decided the outcome, though it was left to Lucas Neill’s nemesis Fabio Grosso to slot home the winning kick. But penalties are a side note, the rest of the match even more so, thanks to the madness of Zidane.
World Cup 2006 - The Final
That’s what I’m talking about.
That, friends and comrades is the single most sought trophy in the world. Forget Olympic gold medals, forget le maillot jaune in the Tour de France, forget the America’s Cup, the William Webb Ellis trophy or even the much vaunted VB Series trophy.
This is the real deal.
World Cup 2006 - Semi Finals, here we come
[selects appropriate cliché from the Sportswriting Cliche’s box]
And then there were four…
Quarter-Final Roundup:
Germany vs Argentina
Italy vs Ukraine
England vs Portugal
Brazil vs France
Well, of my predictions, 3 outta 4 ain’t bad. And England had to lose some time. Penalties is just such an appropriately English way to go out as well - people queue up, take a shot, and the lot what gets the most gets the pints. And England are so bad at shootouts. From memory, England’s World Cup exits in 1990, 1998 and 2006 were on penalties, and their Euro exits in 1996 and 2004 as well. I can’t think of a time when England has won a shootout.
World Cup 2006 - The Quarter-Finals
sniff
So close…
Australia, according to at least those wearing slightly thicker green and gold glasses, should have had a spot for the World Cup quarter finals. The slight detail of not having scored a goal was incidental really.
Instead, the everpresent Bastard Referee blew all our hopes away like so much icing sugar off a teacake when he adjudged Lucas Neill to have fouled Fabio Grosso in the box with seconds remaining in stoppage time, leaving only Francesco Totti’s successful penalty and three pips of the whistle to delay a torrent of Australian tears in Kaiserslautern.
sigh
World Cup 2006 - The Knockout Stages
It’s that time again – make myself look like a goose in the name of predicting which way the World Cup’s many dramas will twist and turn. My previous predictions were reasonable in terms of who’d get through, but as always there was a surprise or two.
In the interests of keeping up to date, I’ve revised my earlier predictions for later rounds as well. Feel free to point and laugh.
Australia goes through!
Australia slipped through to the second round of the World Cup this morning with a nerve-jangling draw against Croatia. The Socceroos now meet Italy in Kaiserslautern in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Sydney time.
One Football Thread To Rule Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them
Consider that this game, a match played with once-despised round-ball rules, against a team regarded as unbeatable, at an unwatchable time, has inspired the kind of talk once only the preserve of ‘Ork.
Federal Opposition leader Kim Beazley recounted to Channel 10 the famous words of former PM Bob Hawke following Australia’s victory in the America’s Cup in 1983.
“Any boss who sacks his worker today is a bum. That’s what Bob said.”
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma told Reuters that employers should cut their workers a bit of slack tomorrow.
The Australia-Japan game played last week, similarly scheduled well outside of prime-time, has also dealt out to the rugby league’s premier event a judicious flogging.
We have a new national code of football.
UPDATE: Amanda agrees with me:
I’m not one of those who claims soccer is about to take over league and AFL as our tribal ball game of choice. Being a Winter game domestically and an unrivalled international programme, I reckon we can all co-exist happily. What annoys me in reading international comments about Aussies embracing the world game is that “rugby” (rugby union) is always included in the list of sports Australians care about more than soccer.
Like, so not.
Whale Eaters 1 : Whale Watchers 3 *
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
That’ll teach you to bomb Darwin.
* With apologies to 702ABC for the header and BBC for the picture
World Cup Preview: How will everyone else go?
In the wee hours of tomorrow morning, Australian time, the World Cup is set to kick off. This is an event that pretty much the entire world will follow, anyone within cooee of a mass media outlet will know who wins the thing within hours, whether they are a madly passionate fan Ghanaian Hearts of Oak fan or a Glen Waverley residing Hawthorn fan who wishes the whole thing would just go away so that they can get back to reading about whether the hip-and-shoulder should be banned or not.
Earlier this month, I attempted to predict how the Aussies would go. This, I think, was an astonishingly bad idea. Not merely because I am laying myself open to the possibility of being stunningly and humiliatingly incorrect, but because it leaves me with little option but to compound the folly and try to guess (albeit in less detail) how everyone else is going to go.
So, with more than a hint of foreboding (because I’m sure to be more wrong than dwarf-tossing), I give you my predictions for the World Cup.