damn! nice finish by switzerland! and well-deserved because their second goal was unfairly disallowed.

otherwise, the game didn't exactly wake me up this morning-- lots of back & forth but no brilliance on either side.

YES! Rodriquez gets an assist for the second Swiss goal in the dying seconds. Adds a few more points for my fantasy football team.

As for last night's game. Gutting, just gutting. I don't know why I let myself get drawn into it.

-Pirlo has eyes on the back of his pissing head

-It was weird to see Rooney shifted over to the left, and also telling that his one big chance to score was when he shifted over to the center.

-The bar (a real chav bar basically) went NUTS thinking Sterling had scored on that first chance 3 minutes in. WOOSH went a pint onto the (MASSIVE) projection screen, pints everywhere, people hugging, then one by one people realised it hadn't gone in. The look of sheer disappointment (mine included) was incredible.

All in all England played the tactics Italy wanted us too. Italy defended heavily and they waited to grab their chances when they came. Fair play to 'em.

^^ speaking of fantasy teams i had to put up a honduran defender after abate didn't play yesterday-- damn you, zonal marking! ha ha ha. eh!

--

i hope france plays well this year. fingers crossed!

Pogba looks decent

honduras game plan: park the bus, foul, roll on the floor.

Haven't really seen Griezmann before but he also look very good. France should really get at least another couple in the second half.

he's been great a real socieledad for the past few years. i remember his back breaking goal against barca

I FUCKING LOVE THE WORLD CUP. Fact.

No love for the Ivory Coast-Japan game?? USA-Ghana tomorrow is huge. The one thing USMNT gets plenty of is attention, necessarily warranted or not. I'm betting this will be one of the most scrutinized opening matches of the Group stage.

argentina pretty fucked as a team. several times already you have attackers standing around looking at messi and clueless as to what is going to happen. initial bad luck aside, bosnia is playing as much more of a team-- the only thing argentina has going for them is individual talent, but they are as uncoordinated as you can get.


i watched most of it. while well contested, it wasn't in any way great.

I was a bit burnt out for the Japan Ivory Coast game. I watched it but found it hard to get fully into. First time I've watched four games in a day. Two is perfect, three is doable but four was pushing it. I mainly remember Honda's goal and Ivory Coast only really doing anything once Drogba came on.

Anyway, seen nothing from Argentina so far.

Completely agree. Massively disappointing. The goalkeeper's probably their best player so far.

they improved going back to 4 defenders vs. the lone bosnian attacker but still not that great. not sure what's their completed pass stat but can't be that high.

compare to how italians know where each teammate stands (with the culmination of pirlo letting that ball go unseen to marchisio) and you'll see argentina has quite an uphill road to the championship.

nice goal by messi though.

so far i'm getting the feeling that this cup might go, contrary to geographic tradition, to a european team; and my favorites so far are italy and OF COURSE the amazing netherlands. but there's still a long way to go and a lot to see, so i'm not putting money down anywhere.

Argentina had a 15-20 minute spell when they looked really strong and Messi's goal was lovely, but I feel the own goal ruined it for Bosnia. Had they been going into the second half at 0-0 they'd have likely started to close up and go for a point but they had to chase and as Argentina got stronger they found more space.

In the US, quite possibly

Maybe I'm just biased, Ivory Coast plays the kind of swarming, athletic, pressure defense that I like, and they really could have scored 4-1 if they weren't booting it so damned hard. Props to Japan, they played tough and tried to equalize Ivory Coast's strength with some dirty plays but I won't hold it against them, Ivory Coast are clearly big enough to hang with that. It was a great game, FAST paced, and a lot of shooting, not exactly a lot of stylistic ball movement, but I'm from CONCACAF so you know we like defense over sophisticated offense, and really, that is Ivory Coast's game plan..

Will you stop banging on abut that bloody game!

Great matches to watch! Had a blast catching most of them. Love the Mundial!

Seeing spain get their asses handed to them was awesome.

how wasted exactly did your dutch friend get after that match? i mean, if it could be somehow established… say, was he still walking on 2 legs by the time the new day arrived?

ps- read that pep is going to put lahm as a midfielder. i mean jogi boogers, in imitation of peppers. fuckit, if it doesn't work, i will put a pitchfork up his ass. well, only in my imagination.

obviously i don't trust the fucker which is why i have no german players in my fantasy team. sad.