Before today's match against Argentina Greece actually had a chance of going to the next round: defeating Argentina and/or hoping that Nigeria-South Corea would go in its favour. However, at no point during the match did Greece seem like a team that wanted to continue in the tournament, and as such are the most deserved team to be sent home so far, for either lack of quality or lack of ambition. Although with 11 men in defence the Greeks made it difficult for the Argentineans to score, it was clear that the development of the Nigeria-South Corea match (which finally ended 2-2, sending the Asians through) would demand more risk from the Greeks. However, this never came, and it seemed only a deserved punishment when Argentina finally scored by Demichelis.
Greece is probably the team that will be least missed.
Argentina in the meantime has gone through with 3 victories, and will be facing Mexico in a repeat of the 2006 quarterfinal. It will surely not be easy, but Argentina has indeed looked strong, and has won the last 8 matches they have played under Diego Maradona, whom many continue to doubt, more because of spite than because of his results!
GO ARGENTINA!
2 comments:
hi Erik,
the quaterfinals look very interesting:
Argentina/Mexico - England/Germany - what a match this will be no matter who will be in it.
Uruguay/Korea - USA/Ghana - we now surely will have one of the "smaller" teams in the semifinal - very interesting indeed.
good show so far
jim
Hi Jim,
yes, good tournament, but too few goals. All south Americans are thorugh (as I riskily predicted) and Africa has had the hard time I also thought.
I look forward to see the semifinals and the finals in France!
:)
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