Category — World Cup

The second semifinal ended with Japan 2-1 England. Unfortunately Japan only scored one of its two goals. The winning goal is too painful to discuss.

This sets up a repeat of the 2011 final that Japan won on penalties after a 2-2 draw with the US. The final will be played on Sunday, July 5th.

It was United States 2-0 Germany at the World Cup in Canada and they will face the winner of the England – Japan game tomorrow in the final.

While I’ve been out of commission the Women’s World Cup has been taking place in Canada. It is down to the two semi-final games with the US facing Germany on June 30th and England vs Japan on July 1st. It sort of looks like a replay of WWII. Japan is the defending world champion. Both games will be at 6PM CDT.

[Dates corrected after I realized that I had been reading a European site, and it was a day later there and in the late night/early morning.]

If they haven’t forgotten how to play football in the last few days, this should be another German win. They have a solid team that knows how to play both offense and defense and it would really be rubbing salt in the wound if Argentina won Brazil’s World Cup.

Lionel Messi is a great player, but he can’t be expected to do everything. Teams need to stop depending on ‘stars’ and start building teams.

The German team add the fourth star to their patch:

Germany 1-0 Argentina

An Andre Schurrle cross to Mario Gotze who left-footed it into the lower right corner of the net ended the game. The Argentine keeper came out, probably expecting a header, and had no chance of stopping it. Argentina was unable to respond in the 7 minutes left in Extra Time. The game was a 0-0 tie at Full Time.

I’m not sure that either Brazil or the Netherlands wants to play this match. The Dutch coach, van Gaal, feels put upon by having to hang around to play a game to decide third and fourth place. Brazil can’t be too thrilled to take to the field again after their last massacre.

Oh, well, I’ll report the results even though only a few statisticians will actually care.

Not much of a battle:

Brazil 0-3 Netherlands

All Brazil got for this World Cup were bills. Brazil manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari, will probably be replaced at a minimum. Brazil’s fans booed every time he appeared on the screen during the game.

No predictions from me beyond neither of these teams will get beaten as badly as Brazil did yesterday because they both have defenses.

And the defenses ruled for 120 minutes which produced:

Netherlands 0(2)-0(4) Argentina

The Netherlands will face Brazil on Saturday to determine third place, while Argentina faces Germany on Sunday for the World Cup.

I’m sure that scoring opportunities were not exactly enhanced by the fact that it was pouring rain in Sao Paulo for the second half and extra time.

Netherlands had used up their substitution opportunities, so they couldn’t bring in Tim Krul, the goalkeeper who stymied Costa Rica and is something of a penalty kick specialist.

Brazil is not only without the services of their captain, Silva, for his second yellow card, their head of PR has been banned for 4 games and fined 10k Swiss francs for roughing up a Chile player during halftime of an earlier game. The team has racked up 96 fouls and 10 yellow cards so far, more than any other side in the tournament and then have the gall to ask FIFA for leniency in Silva’s case.

This is not good for football, especially Latin American football. I would feel a lot better if I didn’t get the feeling that some of those involved think that games are won by the casualty count instead of the goal count.

The game starts at 3PM CDT, so I’ll be updating with more later…

Wow! It happened but none of the ‘experts’ saw it coming. No one would suggest this as a probable outcome at this level.

In hindsight the Germans must have been testing their assumptions during the first ten minutes. Then Muller drew first blood at 11 minutes, followed by the final tweaking and the blitzkrieg was launched. Miroslav Klose entered the record books at 23 minutes, scoring for the 16^th time in a World Cup finals round. Kroos scored a minute later, and then again at 26 minutes. Khedira waited three minutes before he scored the fourth goal in 6 minutes. The first half ended Brazil 0-5 Germany.

After a half like that you would expect Germany to play defense to win, but they played defense the entire game, and Schürrle [a sub for Klose at 59 minutes] felt he needed to do his part so he added goals at 69 and 79 minutes.

Brazil finally responded at 90 minutes when Oscar snuck one in, so the game ended: Brazil 1-7 Germany. Just wow…

And they were uniformly pathetic.

Today’s results:

Argentina 1-0 Belgium

Netherlands 0(4)-0(3) Costa Rica

In the first game Belgium triple-teamed Lionel Messi which gave the rest of the Argentine offense the opportunity to mostly miss the goal. Fortunately Higuain managed to hit it at 8 minutes in so the game was over after 90 minutes.

Messi is a world class player, but you can’t use three defenders to mark him without opening up space for his team.

The second game was worse. The Netherlands controlled the ball two-thirds of the time, but simply couldn’t find the net. This does not bode well for the Orange against the White & Sky-Blue of Argentina.

The final will be between the teams that figure out that the purpose of the game is to put the ball into the net.

These were very disappointing games. These were games that only fans of the four teams involved would watch to the end.

France 0-1 Germany

Hummels of Germany scored the only goal 11 minutes into the game and the next 79 minutes consisted of people finding novel ways not to score. Ball possession was 60-40% in both halves, Germany dominate in the first and France taking over in the second, but neither developed a rhythm to their game. Germany controlled the midfield and France was stymied. Germany played the midfield well, but couldn’t execute an accurate attack on the goal.

Brazil 2-1 Colombia

This was an ugly game. People weren’t faking injuries because there were plenty to go around. Brazil scored goals at 7 minutes and 68 minutes and Colombia didn’t net the ball until the 80 minute mark.

Brazil will be playing Germany without its captain, Thiago Silve, who picked up his second yellow card. They will also not have Neymar available as he suffered a fractured vertebra which will require immobilization to heal. This was not a ‘beautiful game’.

Neymar just recovered from thigh and knee injuries that occurred earlier in the game with Chile. I saw the incident that supposedly caused the injury and I don’t get it. He is a 22-year-old professional football player, but he suffers a broken vertebra from an open-handed push? I think he needs some tests done to find out what’s going on, because he seems to be injured badly with the application of minimal force.

There is a short break with the Quarter Final matches taking place on Friday and Saturday. The first team mentioned in a match is considered the ‘home team’ which gives them the right to wear their home kit/uniform. The visitors have to wear their away kit if there is a conflict as in Brazil v. Colombia.

Matches:

July Fourth:
France [The Blues] v. Germany [The Team]
Brazil [The Little Canaries] v. Colombia [The Coffee Guys]

July Fifth:
Argentina [The White & Sky Blues] v. Belgium [The Red Devils]
Netherlands [The Orange] v. Costa Rica [The Team]

I’m cheering for Germany, Colombia, and the Netherlands for heritage/family reasons, and Belgium because it dulls the pain of the US loss if Belgium shows they are really good.

Both of today’s games were scoreless ties at the end of 90 minutes and ended when the team with the best conditioning finally got through the defense of the other team in Extra Time.

The Final Results:

Argentina 1-0 Switzerland

Belgium 2-1 US

The first game looked like it was destined for a shootout when Argentina finally found the goal with only 2 minutes left in Extra Time. Several attempts by the Swiss to equalize were just slightly off, but a ‘a miss is as good as a mile’. Both teams gave the effort everything they had and Argentina had more.

In the other game, US goalie Tim Howard entered the World Cup record books with the most saves in a single game, 16. Unfortunately, Belgium made 18 shots on target.

Belgium scored two minutes into the Extra Time and a second 11 minutes later. US substitute Julian Green playing in his first World Cup game netted the ball the first time it came his way, but that was the end of scoring.

In this World Cup conditioning, the ability to play in the heat for extended periods seems to be the most important element.

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.

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.

The Knockout Round started today with Chile being the first team knocked out. Brazil and Chile were locked in a 1-1 tie through the game and two overtimes, so it came down to penalty shots with Brazil scoring 3 while Chile fell one short.

Update: Brazil will play Colombia in the first Quarter Final game, as Colombia beat Uruguay 2-0.

These are the games:

Brazil v. Chile
Colombia v. Uruguay

France v. Nigeria
Germany v. Algeria

Netherlands v. Mexico
Costa Rica v. Greece

Argentina v. Switzerland
Belgium v. US

The teams in the top four games will supply one of the finalists, while the other will come from the teams in the bottom four games. One loss and you are out.

FIFA has over a half billion dollars in the prize pool and teams get paid for advancing, with the overall winning team making about $35 million to go along with the Cup for the last game.

It turns out that I underplayed what happened to “Jaws” Suarez. The four-month ban is from football, meaning he can’t play for his Liverpool club until November, while they will be paying him millions under his contract. He is banned from 9 international games and FIFA took a ‘bite’ out of his wallet with a 100k Swiss franc fine [$112k US]. Some people think the penalty is too severe, but this is the third time he’s done it. They should make him wear a collar with a current rabies tag and a muzzle on the field.