07 July 2010 – Day 27
The future’s bright, the future’s…….well you know the rest. Gefeliciteerd to the Dutch for making their third World Cup Final. Third time lucky? And for all those on the high veldt of football morality, yes what goes around comes around; the Uruguayan Olympic Basketball team is out. All that remains for them now is the most meaningless game of the tournament, the 3rd/4th Place Play-off. But of course, silly me, it’s not worthless, there are FIFA ranking points at stake…
As for the game itself, with a final score of 3-2 you might assume it was a bit of a thriller. In truth, apart from the excellent strikes from van Bronckhorst, Forlan and Pereira and the frantic last period of time added on, it was far from a classic. For the most part it was a niggly, nervy and generally uninspiring game; dominated by defences and lacking in attacking ideas. It was a World Cup Semi Final, so perhaps I was expecting too much. Certainly the hordes of Dutch fans won’t care how they got through.
Later today we have the all European Semi Final as Deutschland take on España tonight. Really am left wondering how this will go. Can Germany continue to blast another team away on the counter attack? Will Spain finally produce a performance that the “names” in their line-up warrants? As my attempts at predictions have been poor, I’ll turn to my namesake the psychic octopus Paul who has backed Germany all the way so far, but has gone for Spain tonight.
On a more note serious, I’d like to dedicate this piece today to friends in London caught up in the bombings 5 years ago.