More Footy & a few upsets

So since I wrote my last blog much has happened. More than one team has unraveled and has gone home. My beloved England disappeared like a bunch of schoolboys on trip to Bognor Regis and the Brazilians yesterday went absolutely haywire. The US Team played magnificently however struggled to get the first goal and that undid them.

Portugal have also gone home, which is OK. I can't stand Ronaldo, he's the Kobe Bryant of footy. You want him on your team but he shows up team mates and he shows up the opposition. As a Manchester United fan he got me a few trophies however I despised his penalty taking stutter step.

So back to the World Cup. The John Madden EA game curse has struck again, that's the one where the player on the cover typically has a disastrous NFL season that year. This time is Nike "writing the future", all the players featured in it went home early. In fact Ronaldinho didn't even make the team! Perhaps that's the curse, so Brazilian witch doctor in the Amazon cursed him and all around him.

The Quarter final games yesterday were crazy, Brazil completely unraveled and became undisciplined and sloppy. That's not how they play but the Dutch upstarts messed with their heads. Its a great thing for the world cup. Its not that Brazil is THE best team, but they are the easy pick. They only similarity are the Yankees. Brazil have great style & tempo, and by them just being there they have the upper hand regardless of how good the team is. They have won 5 world cups because they have a winning culture, which causes teams to panic a little bit when they play them when games really count. I love how ESPN sportscentre referred to the Brilliant orange as "The Dutch... aka the Netherlands... aka Holland" as if people weren't bright enough to make the connection.

Yesterday's Uruguay vs Ghana was amazing. For those that didn't see it, it was back and forward and was going to penalty kicks. In the dying seconds Ghana smashed the ball inside the penalty box 3 times at the goal, each time it was saved. However, the final time Suarez, the Uruguayan centre forward, saved it using his hand on the goal line. Immediately he was sent off and a penalty given to Ghana. Whilst this was happening I told my son, that someone should stick out their hand, worst thing a PK and a red card. My reasoning came true. In regular play 92% of penalties go in, when the game is on the line only 60% hit the back of the neck. Call it nerves, call it whatever you want. When the whistle went I knew he'd miss, and he did. Poor Ghana, they played well and deserved better. Suarez had cheated, but I would have done the same thing.

The only thing I found really suspect was the penalty kick taken by Ghana's captain, Mensah. It just struck me as being too strange when he did less than a one yard run up. That should be investigated. Why would the one person that should carry a team, your captain, do that. It made no sense unless it was deliberate and he was trying to throw the game. Call me crazy, but we've seen similar things over the years. Germany vs Austria comes to mind

World Cup, Enter the weekend - C'mon England

Some of you may have been following me on Smittenbybritain.com , a great britophile blog by my great friend Melissa. However, this week I am going it alone and hoping that I won't make a fool of myself. So here goes

OK footylovers, we're at the end of the group stages and what a whirl wind trip it has been. As I wrote last week, Fans all over England have been thankful to the French for putting the ass into embarrassing and the func into dysfunctional. Well the french truly went the way of waste water by jumping the South African shark. Will anyone really take them seriously ever again? Italy, the team of old, looked like the team of old. They played like a bunch of old men arguing over bocce ball in the park. To get kicked out of the group stage after being put in the weakest group is just plain sad. Note to Robert Lippi, if you're going to play defensive footy then you need to have good defenders.

As for our boys of the St. Georges Flag. Well, its been a roller coaster of emotions. As you should know I am a Mancunian that has lived in the New York area for 25 years. I bleed Man United and world cup soccer. You can imagine my upset at realizing that my company's kick off meeting was being held at exactly the same time as the England vs Slovenia game. The only thing helping was that the US was playing Algeria. That allowed me to be the official keeper of all things "soccer" for my colleagues in the room. I knew that my iphone would make me look like i was distracted and that I was suffering from "Crackberry-itus" however by having my netbook open it would look like i was taking notes. This was a great plan as it worked out. I positioned myself at the very side of the room, FYI students if you hang out at the back of the room it's assumed you're goofing off if you hang out at the side then everyone assumes that you couldn't get close enough. With my netbook open I had the gamecast running for both games, even I'm not ballsy enough to run ESPN3 with it's live coverage.

When Defoe scored it coincided with someone's speech finishing which allowed me to jump up and applaud. I will admit that I may have looked a little over-enthusiastic, which goes against my grain. I'm a bit of a renegade that works for a very conservative bluechip company. Sarcasm is usually my style, that and an acute ability to use profanity whenever and wherever possible. When the USA scored at the dying end, I slowly walked up to a close friend, and lead speaker, with a small note that gave him the score and also recommended that we take a break so that we could at least check out Youtube.

I was so proud of our boys, both teams. However all I could think was why the heck did we finish 2nd in the group with Germany and most likely Argentina ahead of us. Whilst Team USA will face Ghana & Korea (no disrespect to either nation) but bloody hell!!!! Yes our games will be great, and a world cup where you have these types of match ups is brilliant but couldn't we for once have it easy. Or perhaps its better, we don't do "easy" very well. In fact we get distracted and become lethargic and disconnected. The idea of a England vs USA Semi-final will do great for the game here in America.

so here's to a really great weekend of footy. In the words of Rik Mayall - C'mon En-ga-land, you noble Englishmen!!!!!!!!!!!!!