day 3

i woke up this afternoon in a generous mood that england had secured three points--even if it were in ugly fashion--that was quickly dispelled by reports all over the internet that england were seriously blaming the heat for their poor 2nd-half performance. hold on, these are world class athletes and they're whingeing about 25 degree heat? what crap. this makes england's performance all the more disappointing. if owen and a. cole don't rebound from their long spells with injury; if sven will stop playing hargreaves and going with the disastrous pairing of crouch and owen up front; if lampard will stop winging balls from 25 meters into the upper tier; if rooney can regain match fitness; if i wear my lucky england shirt every day; if, if, fi, fi, if, if, fi...

match 6: serbia&montenegro v. holland

before i start on this match, let me just say that i've decided that the S&M team's name is too goddamned long, as is trinibago's, so, henceforth, they shall be known as "serbinegro."

an easy match for me to choose whom to cheer for because i like the "clockwork orange" from decades ago, though i did feel several pangs of sympathy for the serbinegran cause because this is the last international tournament they will ever play under this moniker, thanks to the vote not two weeks ago by montenegrans to become a separate nation from serbia--which was accepted by whatever european coalition had the authority to accept such a vote. maybe in the next international competition, i will feel compelled to cheer for a country whose english translation is, "black mountain," although i did suggest that the country change their name to "negro gato," so the english translation could be, "black cat." wouldn't that be a great name for a country?

anyway, i always marvel at the dutch. the national flag of holland is red, white, and blue--exactly like the serbinegran flag, only in reverse (which begs the question: at the beginning of this match, why were there two flags being carried onto the field for the lineup and singing of national anthems? why didn't they just have one flag? that way, when serbinegro's anthem was playing, the flag could be displayed as such {blue on top, then white, then red; or is it the other way around?}, and then when holland's anthem was played, the bearers could just flip the flag so that red was on top {or maybe it was blue}; why couldn't such imagination be used?)--so why does holland where predominantly orange kits?

be that as it may, this "group of death 1" encounter was intriguing: the flash and dash of a young dutch team v. the staid stoutness of an experienced serbinegran team. both teams needed a win to keep abreast of the large-breasted dutch woman the cameras kept showing. wait, sorry, i meant to say that both teams needed to keep pace with argentina from their win over cote d'ivoire the last night. a loss by either team would not be fatal, but it would cause stress levels in either nation's denizens to rise to an unhealthy level.

about 18 minutes in, holland's man of the match, arjen robben, scored an exquisitely clinical goal to give the oranje a lead that would hold up the rest of the match. i watched this at the 3rd different bar of the tournament--a place not too far from home called dio--with some of the usual suspects from the first two nights, carlos and dominique being as principle among the group as anyone, what with their blood ties to holland. leading up to kickoff, and just as much throughout the match, they were as nervous as a virgin prom queen on prom night. robben's goal settled them, but only as much as one shot of vodka would settle the prom queen's nerves.

serbinegro had chances to score in the second half, but were always kept at bay while holland kept shooting themselves in the foot at the other end and just missing golden opportunities to put the serbinegrans away. in the end, though, the misclad dutch did their other-coloured flag proud and skulked out of leipzig with a hard-fought victory, 0-1.

match 7: mexico v. iran

as an american in exile, this game had political ramifications written all over it. both nationalities are often reviled by patriotic, xenophobic americans for linguistic, ethnic, religious, and sexual reasons, so this was a fun match to watch. i had to pull out the retro iran jersey for this one in hopes that allah would take my good karma and pass it along to the persians. however disappointed i might actually be if iran didn't win was tempered slightly by the fact that it was mexico that had beaten them.

or so i thought as i watched the match unfold.

the bar having cleared out, save for dom and me and some drunk korean who was funny as hell slurring in whatever language it was he was speaking, we tried to spur on the persian warriors against the central american giants. mexico struck first from a free kick in which the iranian defense marked poorly. perhaps my green iranian shirt was clashing with iran's red kits and meshing too much with mexico's green strips. maybe i had to rethink my choice of attire.

but one poor defensive lapse begets another and mexico's goalkeeper committed a gaffe of schoolboy proportions about ten minutes later and iran finished with aplomb to leave the halftime score level at 1-1 and me feeling good about the persians' chances in the 2nd half.

however, the persian giants wilted in the 2nd half and two more defensive blunders led to mexico's plundering the iranian goal twice in the last 15 minutes. this poor performance by the iranians begs the question: how can a team from one of the hottest places in asia wilt in the early june temperatures of germany? what is it about this german june that i don't know about? at the rate this is going, ghana or togo are going to complain about the same thing and a match between iran and england--were they to meet in the later stages of the competition--is going to feature in the last ten minutes of the game either a double forfeit or a game of three-on-three, both due to heat exhaustion on the part of the players. very strange days...

match 8: angola v. portugal

from day 1 of the unveiling of the world cup brackets, angola--and this particular match where they're facing their old colonial masters--has been high on my list of teams to cheer for. not many people on the planet--perhaps even in the solar system--gave angola any chance of success against portugal in particular and in their group (including mexico and iran) in general. they come from a very poor country where war is rife, their players play professionally in lower-tier leagues in europe or in african leagues where the quality of the game usually doesn't prepare the players for top-flight international competition, and they are debutantes on the world stage of this magnitude.

knowing all that, i still haven't felt that the angolans were just going to just up and get pummeled for all three games, take their bows, and then trudge home with their tails between their boots. african football is not that far behind european and south american football and is still ahead of asian football; i'd still take angola or togo, probably africa's two weakest teams in this world cup, if you believe all that you read, over saudi arabia, probably asia's weakest entrant in this year's finals.

some people i knew were predicting a portuguese goal-scoring buffet against the african minnows, and it didn't look good in the first minute when portugal nearly scored off the opening kickoff. angola's jitters continued and portugal took advantage of some lapses of concentration to open the scoring in the 4th minute. the shaky start by angola certainly gave credence to the prognostications that portugal could name their score.

however, early scores often have a funny effect on the game, and this one was no different. portugal continued dominating possession, but the angolans battled resolutely. portugal had a chance or two slip through their fingers--none the least of which was a header from close range that hit the crossbar--while angola was content to blast away from afar. things began to level out and, by the end of the half, angola did not seem as out of their element as many had thought.

the second half was much the same as the majority of the first half: portugal dominating possession, but not enough to look too threatening and the angolans battling to defend and lacking some quality to put enough pressure on the iberian defense. the match petered out in the 2nd half, as did i on the sofa, and portugal walked away with sluggish win while the africans can hold their heads up high for acquitting themselves very respectfully.

ploys that worked today for teams i cheered on: drinking heineken during holland's game, wearing the same colour dutch kit as the dutch themselves, watching the dutch game at the 3rd bar of the tournament.

ploys that didn't work: wearing a green iran shirt while the persians wore red kits (which were sweet, by the way), wearing a green iran strip while the mexicans also wore green strips (though theirs most certainly did not have IRAN emblazoned across the front), wearing a retro angola jersey, dozing through the second half of the angola match.

what i hope to see in today's matches: the u.s. not fail on football's biggest stage against the more fancied czechs, ghana stick it to italy like a rampaging elephant would a wayward photographer, japan not win, a 4th different bar on day 4. u.s. and ghana most definitely winning would be nice.

what i hope not to see: koreans supporting australia because oz is playing japan and because oz's coach is korea's former one from 2002, carlos cheering for his 2nd team (czech), italian play-acting on the field and rolling around on the pitch like a plugged rhinoceros every time a ghanaian defender gets physical. more than anything, i don't want to see italy win.