It’s Hot Down There
At 9Am CDT we had 101°F Heat Index locally, so I decided I wasn’t going to be weed-whacking or anything else outside. Down in Brazil that was the air temperature in the stadium (38.8°C) where the two games were played today.
Football/soccer has two 45-minute halves, and they only pause play to haul bodies of the injured off the field. Because of the heat FIFA is allowing referees, at their discretion, to call a ‘drinks break’ 30 minutes into a half, and both games had two of them. Mexico and Costa Rica fared slightly better than the Netherlands and Greece, but it wasn’t really an advantage.
The Results:
Netherlands 2-1 Mexico
Costa Rica 1(5)-1(3) Greece (penalty shots)
The Group winners are still winning, but not easily. The Netherlands was held at bay for most of the game by the superb effort of the Mexican goal keeper, Memo Ochoa. They finally got their act together at the end of the game and scored twice, the winner a penalty kick in injury time.
Costa Rica played almost an hour at the end of the game with only 10 men after Oscar Duarte received his second Yellow Card. They managed to hang on and win in the penalty shoot-out 5-3. This is the first time Costa Rica has made it into the Quarter Finals.
June 29, 2014 2 Comments
