wc06: all-european semifinals

the following have now become official, if they hadn’t been already:

1. when it comes to predicting this world cup, i suck like a contestant at the world cup of fellatio.
2. wayne rooney can be suckered into putting a huge dent in his team’s chances to win.
3. cristiano ronaldo is such a pretty-boy, pansy-assed, gutless wanker drama queen that i can’t even finish…
4. i will not watch a world cup final between italy and portugal, the first world cup final, should it happen, that i will have missed since ‘78, when i was too young to know better
5. brasil’s back line is suspect
6. zinedine zidane is good
7. england’s penalty kick skills are not good
8. fifa’s selection process for officials in this world cup needs to revamped

i hope none of you readers has been harmed by my disastrous predictions for the bulk of this world cup. though i set a record in going 0-for-the-quaterfinals, i think i qualified my picks from yesterday with this very sentence: “…don’t believe anything I say. I chose Argentina and Ukraine in last night’s matches…”

brasil 0-1 france:

how wrong was i about france’s fitness and the ability of their old guys to play like ‘98?

my god, zidane was heroically superhuman last night for france. it must be his new gold boots or something because he’s been given a tonic of youth. he looked 25 years old last night–spry, lively, and as difficult for brasil to handle as a provoked viper. if i weren’t so bad at predicting, my money would be on france to fetch their second star now because of how resurgently young they look. apparently, that second half against spain in the round of 16 was no fluke.

together with zidane, thierry henry and franck ribery tortured brasil all night long. robert carlos and cafu at the back for brasil were made to look the fools and, on france’s goal, brasil’s marking was abysmal. two things stick out in my mind from zidane’s free kick that henry buried in the 57th minute:

1. how, on that kick, do six frenchmen end up in brasil’s box against only three (3!!) defenders?
2. how do brasil leave the most dangerous of those six frenchmen, henry, COMPLETELY UNMARKED??!?!

france’s strong midfield play strangled the sputtering brasil attack and les bleus’s shutdown defense never gave much space to brasil’s men upfront. france truly have brasil’s number and looked more brasil than did the south americans. france ran out an impressive and well-deserved win.

england 0-0 portugal (portugal win PSO, 2-4):

as for this one, what is there to say? to be honest, portugal are shit and make me sick. they are completely undeserving semifinalists. in the first hour, before wayne rooney’s sending off, portugal rarely looked threatening. it seemed that they really did miss deco and costinha in the middle. england were better in the first hour, but, as was their wont in this competition, they couldn’t take advantage.

david beckham re-suffered an injury to his right leg just six minutes after the restart and was benched, tearfully, and replaced by the ever-so-much-more effective aaron lennon. england were the much more dangerous team after this (un)lucky subsitution.

and, then, dodgy officiating and a foul scouser temper changed the day.

that rooney was sent off was mindboggling. he may have stamped on carvalho’s figs, but it was not as blatant as i’ve seen other unpunished acts go. then, he may have pushed cristiano ronaldo in the chest, but neither, taken separately, warranted an expulsion and, even when taken together, only warranted a caution, at the most. what i don’t understand is how, in the action that led to the push and the stamp, rooney was called for the foul to begin with. he was being wrestled to the ground by two defenders, yet was forced to conceded the foul.

and while rooney’s sending off was diabolical, so, too, was ronaldo’s wink at his coach after the expulsion: proud, obnoxious, a smug look of pleasure on his face. rooney deserves blame for letting ronaldo get under his skin, but neither he nor the ref is to blame for england’s loss; england are to blame.

i feel portugal are unworthy semifinalists at this 2006 european championships, er, world cup for this reason: they were still the inferior team after rooney’s sending off. they had no creativity, no character, no determination; they seemed content to get it to penalty kicks, where it’s a well-known fact that england are shambolic.

this is why the blame for the loss cannot be pinned on the ref or on rooney for being daft: england were, by far, the better side when they were a man down. lennon was fantastic, crouch was impressive with his ball-handling and efforts to help on defense, and owen hargreaves–england’s man of the tournament–was otherworldly in his play, his effort, his passion; in short, he would gladly have given his life for the england cause.

in the end, england didn’t deserve to win because, even with all of their chances, they were unable to make them count. portugal were so poor that they had very few chances, but they made count what they needed to make count: successfully converting penalties in the shootout.

so, the world cup semifinals resemble more of a european championships semifinal: germany v. italy in semifinal I and portugal v. france in semifinal II. check back later for those previews…