WC10: Bowing out with pride

The World Cup 1020 South Aftica has finally entered the knockout stage.

The World Cup 1020 South Aftica has finally entered the knockout stage. There's no doubt that a lot of shit is happening in this world cup. The lack of goals in the earlier group games except in certain games; then big teams underperformed with some surprise "giant killings; and the Vuvuzelas to ruin the beautiful game, although the new toned down model kinda eases the ear pain.

Surprising (not) that both 2006 finalists Italy and France went out as early as the group stages. France repeated their failure in 2002, crushing out of the group stage after just reaching the final 4 years before. After all the fuss about Henry's handball that cheat them to this World Cup, you would not be surprised that the tournament turned out this way for them. Anelka bust up and sent home, team refusing to train, then even losing against South Africa? Karma, what goes around comes around. As for Italy, although they have some good talents, in truth they were never that good as a whole, with all the old legs in their team. Their last game against Slovenia was really good though.

The big teams underperformed. England, with so much expectation placed on their shoulder, only managed to scrap 1 win and 2 draw, in fact they never show convincing performance in all 3 games, although their play improved a bit against...well, Slovenia. Spain meanwhile lost against Switzerland in their first game, bounced back and won the remaining 2 games. Tbh they could easily won the first game if they didn't waste too much time trying to play beautiful and passing the ball too much. Then, Germany also unexpectedly lost to Serbia, but they had a man sent off (Klose, a harsh first yellow), but underperformed is not the right word for them. It's more of a bad luck in that match. That being said, other big teams like Argentina and Holland didn't disappoint by winning all their group games, more or less convincingly.

As Australia's supporter, obviously I am disappointed that were heading home early, but I took pride with their performance in this world cup. The first game was something to forget to the least, getting raped 0-4 against the Germans, but the team bounced back and battled hard in their next two games. But in the end unlike WC2006, the 4 points that we earn (1 draw vs Ghana and 1 win against Serbia) is not enough to get us through to the second round no thanks to the large goal difference from the first game.

Plus, we had a tough luck in this World Cup. Tim Cahill was harshly sent off in the game against Germany for a tackle that wasn't as bad as the two dangerous tackles made by Holland players in their first two games which went unpunished/only got a yellow card. Thanks to that, we're missing Cahill in the 2nd game against Ghana, in which we draw 1-1. Again, another of our key player, Harry Kewell was sent off because of handball in the penalty area. It was indeed a penalty, but IMO the ball went to his shoulder/upper arm and you can see he clearly try to use his body to block the ball from going into the next, but the ball was too fast and swing away to his right upper arm. Another man missed in the next game. But the third game against Serbia, which I didn't expect a win given the strong defense of the opponent; turned out to be a good game in the 2nd half, with the Aussie coming down from a goal down to win the game 2-1. Great game.


Anyway, I would say that the World Cup has becoming a bit more interesting after playday 1, with more goals being scored, small teams making a surprise package (Slovakia went into the 2nd round in their first ever World Cup lmao), while the vuvuzelas were less annoying than they were in the opening week.
Now, time to enjoy the rest of the world cup. I don't have anyone in particular that I would want to support wholeheartedly (as I did with Australia), I'm just looking forward to "good games".

till next time