Neither Here Nor There

Suarez with a header!

But it all started with Diego “2-goals-in-3-games” Forlan, didn’t it?  What a guy, what a team.  We’ve seen nerves, swerves and under-achieving big time from some of the highly-touted European sides.  Uruguay’s got the pace and passion, minus the f-ups, and they cleared their group without ceding a goal, fer gosh sakes.  Gotta love ‘em.  They’re taking the tourney by storm.

Mexico will join Uruguay in the Round of 16 — but if they want to progress from there, I strongly suggest they take a cue from England’s match results when Heskey started, and their own loss to Uruguay with Blanco in the starting line-up.

Managers, hearken to me.  If you’ve got older, wiser guys you want to play (and whether or not that description applies to Heskey is debatable), play them in as subs.  Bring them on late in the game, when the youngsters on the pitch are a bit winded.  Putting your old dudes on at the start just hobbles your team.  (Not a smart move, when the game is football.)  C’mon.  It’s patently obvious from the matches so far — a team is only as fast as its slowest striker.

It’s sad, no denying.  Sad the host nation didn’t make to the next round.  Sad that failing to advance to the knockouts garners South Africa the dubious distinction of being the first host nation to be eliminated at the Group Stage.

Ah, Bufana Bufana!  Hold your heads high!  Sing and dance into the streets of Mangaung/Bloemfontein, just as you sang and danced into the Free State Stadium!  This is a famous win!

Bouncing back from a dismal showing in their 2nd match, South Africa treated us to terrific football in this, their last.  Sure, it would’ve been nice if more of those well-executed strikes had paid off, but it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference in terms of their elimination.  So, hell with it.  Job well done — the 2nd South African WC win ever, against the 2006 WC finalists. The Boys treated us to a classy performance, with particularly impressive football from Pienaar, Josephs (subbed in for the suspended Khune), Mphela (who scored in the first half and thrice nearly found the back of the net in the second half of the game) and Tshabalala (only denied a goal in the 92nd minute by excellent goal-keeping and desperate defending).

I’m way happy Bufana Bufana are going out on a resoundingly high note.  I’m positively delighted they did it by beating France. I hope I’m not offending any true Bleu fans… but I imagine said fans are well frustrated by France’s lack of character on the pitch, disgusted by the lack of discipline on the training ground, disappointed by the team’s inability to play as a team and embarrassed by the realization that Zidane’s head-butt at the end of the last WC wasn’t a fluke, but an omen of things to come.

Instant Karma?  Divine Justice?  I wish, but football doesn’t work that way.  With Fate, Luck and an assortment of referees taking to the field with the starting 11, random upsets and inequitable results are par for the course.  I get it — I do — but I still don’t like it when heart, spirit, skill and guts go down to brutality, arrogance, deceit and calculated rule-breaking.  It offends my sense of fairness when cheaters win.

France gained entry to the tournament by dint of a deliberate handball by Thierry Henry that resulted in a last-minute winning goal against Ireland.  France cheerfully copped to the foul and just as cheerfully denied their opponents a re-match, pocketing the ill-gained ticket to South Africa and thumbing their collective nose at both the Boys in Green and good sportsmanship.

Today the World Cup hosts gave France the “boot.”  Bufana Bufana did their country proud.  Les Bleus got what they deserved.  Eminently satisfying.