world cup, day 10

while koreans this morning (and all day, for sure) are celebrating their 1-1 “win” over france (any time a team scores a late equaliser, as korea did, doesn’t it always seem like that team “won” the game?), i’m going to continue my dogged pursuit of updating everyone on the world cup, so those of you only interested in the korea match may want to ignore this and wait for the next post.

though a scoreless draw, croatia and japan provided a fairly entertaining match. while croatia aren’t so bad, the only reason to watch japan play footie is to watch their hidden gem of a goalkeeper, yoshikatsu kawaguchi. though he conceded three goals to australia, he frustrated the socceroos all game long and only gave up the goals because his defense let him down. he was again remarkable last night againt the croats, most especially in the 22nd minute when he stopped a dado prso penalty kick and he denied the croats on several other occasions in the first half.

japan’s performance, aside from the gallant kawaguchi, has been pathetic. their drive to create has been typical for a culture that stifles individual creativity and their finishing in front of the goal has been horrific, most notably for this match in the 51st minute when atsushi yanagisawa flummoxed a ball wide from virtually point-blank range and the croatia goalkeeper not only out of the picture, but seemingly completely distracted by his dancing countrymen in the stands.

croatia have only one point from two matches–a somewhat cruel fate for an underrated squad that have played good football for two matches. their next match, with australia, should be a steamer just on general principles and will be aided and abetted by the fact that the croats need a win to book passage to the knockout rounds. japan, meanwhile, will battle mighty brasil and, given their performance in the first two matches–again, yamaguchi’s performance aside–will be hard-pressed to be fancied to advance.

and while australia only need a point from their match with croatia, they should feel aggrieved not to have at least gained a point in their match with brasil. for nearly all of the match, the ‘roos battled on even grounds with the five-time world champs. true, they were called for 25 fouls in the match (more than double brasil’s fouls), but they didn’t play as chippily as i thought they might. they heroically held kaka and ronaldinho in check and the difference proved to be this: a moment for inspiration from ronaldo produced a ball that adriano pinpointedly finished while the aussies had chances twice at open netting only to have both chances flash tantalisingly over the bar. their second goal in the 89th minute was inconsequential and only provided for a very deceiving scoreline.

this is the difference between world-class teams that’ve won the world cup and those that want to win the world cup: taking advantage, under great pressure, of the few chances afforded them. not every team is going to be able to create, in every match, as many chances for itself as, say, argentina did against serbinegro–not even argentina is guaranteed to do that again in this tournament–so teams that win the world cup take advantage, more often than not, of the goal opportunities when they are presented.

brasil won, 2-0, and the scoreline is an unfair reflection of the match, but it is a fair reflection of a team accustomed to finishing its few chances in cold-blooded fashion. australia, should they progress to the next round, are going to a handful for anyone they play, but they’ve got to be better about finishing should they fancy making a run at the prize.

the france-korea update will follow shortly, as my verbosity may get the better of me and it’s better to make it a separate entry…