Too little too late for the Ivory Coast. A lot of talent, but in a very tough group.
Nice to see Brazil attacking from the sides in the first half.
Cristiano Ronaldo: full of sound and fury and signifying not very much so far.
Those were the worst possession numbers for Portugal ever in a World Cup match.
Dunga seemed pissed. Wonder what he said to his players postgame.
Juan got away with a yellow instead of a red card for the deliberate handball. He should be more careful.
I see a lot of La Liga games, but didn’t recognize Pepe with hair.
I believe that the two players from Portugal destined for more attention from other clubs after the World Cup will be Raul Meirelles and Fabio Coentrao.
Every team from the Americas except for Honduras advanced, while all but Mexico and Chile won their groups (Mexico was in the group that Uruguay won).
I want to thank team manager Ottmar Hitzfeld and the Swiss Men’s National Team for doing everything today to vindicate my opinion about their dreadfully weak attack.
Lucio deservedly got a lot of attention for marking Ronaldo fairly well, but Gilberto Silva was a calm, veritable wall in midfield.
Memo to Didier Drogba: if your shot hits the crossbar and bounces down, making you suspect it’s gone over the line, bury it into the back of the net instead of running for the referee. Fortunately for you, Romaric was there to take care of business.
I truly hope nothing happens to the DPRK players when they return.
Chile will have three players unavailable for the game against Brazil due to red card/yellow card accumulations. Waldo Ponce’s was arguably the stupidest. Two of the players are defenders and one is a defensive midfielder. Brazil’s attackers must be drooling. The only good news is that they’ll have Carlos Carmona back.
Everyone talks about Fernando Torres all the time, but David Villa is the real deal.
I still think Carlos Queiroz is a crappy coach. I hope Spain fillets them.
All credit to David Villa’s marskmanship, but WTF was Claudio Bravo thinking?
Okay. This brought tears to my eyes.
MattR
Fantastic video.
demimondian
I’m actually kind of surprised the DPRK team hasn’t defected. However, if they do choose to go back, I hope that they are not harmed.
Morbo
Epic win today by me and my yahoo picks. 4/4 in matches and 3/4 in scores (overestimated the scoring in BRA/POR) got me back from 5th to tied for 1st in my group. The BBC news segment described Chile’s goalie as “on walkabout,” making me wonder WTF and laugh.
Steeplejack
Darn good.
Direct link to the video. It was hinky when I went to the site you linked.
Violet
@demimondian:
Great coverage of North Korea here. Also here and here. It doesn’t sound like they’d want to defect, as they live relatively comfortable lives by North Korean standards. Several of their players are actually Japanese, although they come from the Korean community in Japan.
Violet
Dang it. I put too many links in my post and it went to moderation. This guy is blogging from Pyongyang about North Korea’s football team. I’ll just put the first link in and you’ll have to hunt on the site for the rest.
It doesn’t sound like they’d want to defect, as they live relatively comfortable lives by North Korean standards. Several of their players are actually Japanese, although they come from the Korean community in Japan.
Cacti
I could potentially see the North Korean players taking some flack when they got back if they had under-performed.
But out of the 4 teams in their group, they were most assuredly 4th best coming into the tournament.
Americanadian
@Cacti: But the embarrassment of that Portugal game, combined with the fact that it was broadcast in its entirety on North Korean television, might push Dear Nutjob over the line.
Who knows? Who can find out? Nobody will hear from these people again until qualifiers for 2014 start up.
demimondian
@Cacti: Oh, I agree — in fact, the rest of the world was really quite pleasantly surprised with their level of play. The question is whether the deGeneral will see it that way.
mai naem
My guess is that they don’t defect because Dear Leader’s probably holding their family members hostage in North Korea to ensure that these people come back. Reminds me a little of the Pakistani soccer players who played in Afghanistan pre-9/11 and forcibly had their heads shaved because the Taliban didn’t think they were following the tenets of Islam strictly enough.
Paula
POOP. I haven’t seen Drogba in action, and now I’m pissy that it’s Ronaldo’s mug I have to see instead. Please tell me Spain are going to pound POR into the ground this week.
spudvol
WTF is up with Portugal? They have scored 7 goals, given up 0 goals and have 1 win and 2 draws? There is an ass-kickin’ in there somewhere.
kvenlander
@spudvol: Yeah, the Portuguese capitalist running dogs crushed The People’s Republic.
Dr. Squid
So who will come out of each group to go to the semis?
49-50: USA, Possibly the weakest of the four groups.
51-52: Argentina – probably the strongest group.
53-54: Brazil. Just because, but that Brazil-Netherlands game will be a real ball-burner.
55-56: I’m going waaaay out on a limb here – Japan.
Pooh
My favorite non-US moment or series of moments happened in the Bra-Por game. One of the POR players fouled Melo quite badly, and about three minutes later, Melo just leveled him with a hip check, got up, nodded to the ref as he got the yellow card, was immediately subbed and got a “well done son” nod and pat on the back from Dunga.
Funkhauser
@Pooh: The SporTV commentators disagreed, and wanted Felipe Melo to remain calm. And they thought that Dunga would/should give him a strong lecture on the value of patience. They say this every game for Luis Fabiano. Then they wanted Brazil to add creativity to the second half of a match that was not a must-win and was already in the bag.
This is the game where I figured out that they don’t really know much about futebol. And are irritating. Of course, the straight Globo announcers are worse, and Band are ridiculous. Sigh. I wonder if there are botequins that show the game on mute.
Thlayli
DPRK ended up with the coveted “32nd place” tag, even though almost nobody would argue that they were subjectively the worst team.
***
LOL! I thought the exact same thing.
ChrisB
Sorry to pan the video but that wasn’t really the world’s reaction to Donovan’s goal.
But the music from Rudy was worth listening to.
SRW1
Apropos great video: enjoy the hilarious performance of one Fabio Capello. He seems to be a bit limited in terms of his vocabulary. But the passion of the man, the passion!
Tattoosydney
My guess:
Round of 16:
Uruguay beat South Korea
USA beat Ghana
Netherlands beat Slovakia
Brazil beat Chile
Argentina beat Mexico
England beat Germany
Paraguay beat Japan
Portugal beat Spain (voting my heart there)
Quarterfinals:
Uruguay stomp the US (sorry)
Netherlands go down to Brazil
Argentina beat England
Paraguay probably beat Portugal but I am picking the Portuguese again.
Semifinals:
Brazil beats Uraguay
Argentina beats Portugal
Third Place:
Portugal beats Uruguay
Final:
Brazil edges out Argentina
Pooh
@Funkhauser:
They didn’t realize that he basically got a free shot at him?