The Group Winners Are Still Winning
The two African teams in today’s games hung on with great defensive efforts that generated scoreless first halves in both games.
The Final Scores
France 2-0 Nigeria
Germany 2-1 Algeria
The Nigerian goalie, Vincent Enyeama, was able to frustrate the French, and Victor Moses made a beautiful save of a French shot that caught Vincent out of position, but Vincent rushed forward to block a French cross and didn’t get enough of the ball to clear it, giving Paul Pogba the opportunity to head it into the empty net.
The second French goal is down as an ‘own goal’ by Joseph Yobo, but the shot by Mathieu Valbuena was destined for the net and Yobo didn’t get enough of the ball to divert it.
The single Nigerian goal was disallowed as Nigeria was off sides.
The German-Algerian game was similar with the scoring all in Extra time, a German goal at the beginning and then the second German goal followed by Algeria’s goal at the end. The Germans had to wait until the Algerians were worn out to actually score. The German team controlled the ball two-thirds of the time and took three times as many shots as the Algerians, but the Fennec Foxes played great defense for the full 90 minutes of standard time. They were just worn out when they went back for the 30 minutes of Extra Time.
