World Cup 26/06/06

I knew the Italy vs Australia match was going to be exciting. I figured if the Australians could score early, they might just keep the advantage. And there was a huge Aussie crowd in the stands to cheer on the Socceroos. The Aussies came out with winning on their mind, and they had 80% ball possession in the first 10 minutes. Unfortunately while Australia out played Italy, and dominated numerically, they just could not capitalize on the advantage. Both teams had a key player out on injury (Nesta and Kewell), and both had a player out on suspension (De Rossi and Emerton). The Australians really missed Emerton in the starting line up. When Materazzi was sent off for a tackle five minutes into the second-half, it seemed to shake the Italians up a bit. A dodgy penalty kick call in the final seconds of regular play saw the Italians take the lead when Totti struck the ball firmly into the net. From my point of view Neill tried to play the ball and went down and Grosso tripped over his prostrate body. That’s not worthy of a penalty kick to me, but the ref saw differently, and the Italians are off to the quarter-finals.

I expected the Swiss to best the Ukraine in this match-up. Coming in to this group of 16 match Switzerland was the only team to have not conceded a goal in the group stage. The match started out slowly and never really picked up in pace, with both sides playing more like this was a friendly between countries than a second round World Cup match. As the minutes ticked down in the second over time period, it became increasingly clear that this was going to be the first game to go to penalty kicks to decide who moved on. The Swiss will be replaying the horror of missing 3 penalty kicks in their dreams for a long time, and the Ukraine advances to the quarter-finals.