More on World Cup

I haven't made any comments about soccer/football for a few days, but I wouldn't want my faithful readers (both of you) to think I haven't been watching the games. I missed England v Ecuador yesterday, but I got to see the ridiculous number of cards in Netherlands v Portugal. I was really pulling for the Dutch (being Dutch myself), and I thought they dominated the ball for most of the game...which could have something to do with outnumbering the Portuguese by one player for most of the second half. Oh well.

I was cheering for Australia this morning--partly just the wanting an underdog to win--but I was feeding my son breakfast when Italy got their penalty kick to win and haven't seen a good replay of it yet, so I have no comment on that. Now the Swiss dominated for basically the entire game (a game with only one yellow and no reds!! shocking!) but couldn't score...and couldn't even score a penalty kick for the final shootout. I feel sort of bad for them--I think the announcers said that they hadn't allowed a single goal all tournament, including this game. But that second kick that went high for them...unacceptable at this level. If you want to be chosen by your team for penalty kicks, you have to have better control than that. Maybe the camera angle made it look worse than it was, but it looked pretty bad. Of course, my problem was always that I had the control but not the power to make the shot fast enough. Well, since my little brother lives in Ukraine, I was cheering for them anyway, so Yay, Ukraine! Too bad he's in Mongolia now so I can't ask him how things are in the streets.

Looking forward to Spain v France tomorrow! And Brazil v Ghana as well, of course.