What? Nothing from Monsieur Francais about NZ's amazing tie w/ Italy? I assumed he'd at least be reporting in about the national holiday that must have been declared
The refs have had far too much influence on the outcome of far too many games and on the prospects for advancement of far too many teams.
But brace yourselves, folks, for the worst is yet to come: the bizarre methods of advancing are about to come to the fore in the 3d games of the first round. How many goals u win by, how many u score, who a team that controls its own destiny wants to play in the next round or wants to see advance or not advance all comes into play as various strategies and tactics are employed. In fact, I'm guessing that Spain's gonna be kicking itself that despite thoroughly destroying Honduras, they only bothered to score 2 goals. OTOH, we have Portugal's outright murderation of N Korea (which i didnt see, but when the score's 7-0, i imagine the score doesnt even begin to indicate how onesided it was LOL).
FIFA tries to control the gamesmanship by having both 3d games in the same group played at the same time, but that's only a partial remedy. Throw in the refs' decisions that created a lot of the considerations teams are weighing and the whole thing smells really really bad. I don't understand why fans in the "real" soccer countries put up w/ this pretty stupid system.
BTW, has anybody noticed the term "soccer" creeping into the proceedings? I've heard it used by announcers and one of the stadiums in S Africa is called "soccer stadium" or some such. I find that very weird and don't understand where that's coming from.
)
...we shall see
