Another quick update since I’m sort of playing catch up here and I want to get this in before midnight! Somehow, I don’t think I’ll manage that.

First, yesterday’s game summaries:

Portugal’s 2nd half was better than their first, but they just couldn’t seal the deal. They had plenty of chances, but a solid defense by the Ivory Coast and… shall we say a reliance on drawing fouls seemed to hamper their efforts at actually scoring. It was a decent game, but not nearly as good as I thought it would be. I expected more from Portugal, and sadly I was disappointed. Oh and Rinaldo is a fantastic player, but he flops like a fish. The most annoying part about that is that he’s got such amazing skill that there’s no reason for him to go skidding across the field every 30 seconds. Imagine if Michael Jordan took a dive every time another player got too close. There isn’t a roll eyes graphic big enough.

So I finally got to watch the Brazil game it was a great one! North Korea came at them like there was no tomorrow, but Brazil brought that magic they’re known for. No matter what the North Koreans did, they couldn’t get the ball away from Brazil with any reliability. This isn’t to say that they played poorly; but they were the 105th ranked team going against the 1st ranked team. Yeah… that’s not gonna end well. Surprisingly the Koreans did make Brazil work for the goals they got. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, they managed to score one on Brazil! WTF mate?!

And now for Today’s games, by which I mean the games of 6/16!

Honduras vs Chile! Perhaps one of the most exciting games yet in that both sides played hard, but it always seemed like Chile was balanced on the edge of coming crashing down upon Honduras like an unstoppable wave of destruction. They won the game 1 goal to none and it was pretty great all the way through. I did think the score would be higher given how often they had a shot on goal, but they did seem to have trouble finishing their runs. Oh and a word of advice to Chile for future games: I don’t care how good Sanchez is, the dude had HORRIBLE shots on goal, kept taking them, and routinely spent time doing step-overs while the Honduran defense got into place, thereby ruining his chances of capitalizing on fast breaks. Seriously, he didn’t fool a single player with his step-over nonsense, but did that stop him? Nope! He kept doing it and probably ended up costing Chile a goal or two. Why he waited for defenders to get back before making a play is beyond me.

I’m getting into the second half of the Spain vs Switzerland game now, and so far this has been an interesting one to watch. The Swiss defense has been pretty awesome, with them making only one major mistake leading to a breakaway play by Spain. Fortunately for the Swiss, the Spanish attack didn’t end in a goal. It’s still scoreless at this point, but I’d be surprised if the game ends that way. An odd note about something the commentators were saying about the Spanish offense was that Switzerland wasn’t going to be able to steal the ball from them, and indeed there were precious few turnovers. From what I saw though, it seemed more like the Swiss were afraid to attack the Spanish and hung back in a more defensive posture than anything Spain did to really hold on to the ball. Granted, their ball handling skills are nothing to sneeze at, but their passing wasn’t nearly as crisp as that of Brazil’s, nor did they seem to have

OMG AWESOME HOLY POO

So as I was writing that last sentence, I was watching the game (yay picture by picture on my monitor!) and the Swiss just scored an AMAZING goal on the Spanish! Two attackers, two defenders. The defenders get beat and the first attacker takes a shot that the goalkeeper comes out to stop. He’s successful, but he’s unable to hold onto the ball. Fernandes zeros in o the loose ball and slams it into the goal, putting Switzerland up 1 goal to none. I didn’t think the game would end scoreless, but I didn’t think the Swiss would be the ones winning. Wow, what a play. Oh and that sentence I was writing before should end like this: “nor did they seem to have that magical Brazilian ability to pass the ball through the bodies of the defenders as if they weren’t even there.” In any event, while Spain is certainly playing very well, I don’t really agree with the commentators confidence that Spain is going to have the majority of the possession through skill alone. There’s certainly some trepidation by the Swiss in attempting to go head to head to take the ball from them, although this half they’ve been more aggressive, with some pretty fantastic results.

I’m wrapping this up and now and focusing on the game, because I don’t want to miss another second. Goddamn do I love the World Cup! 😀