pekerman's substitutions were ridiculous indeed and argentina's negative aproach to the game rightly costed them the victory. after the argentinian goal there was space for their attackers to finish it off but instead he takes off all his creative players and tries hanging on to the lead. after the equaliser you just knew that argentina didn't have the players on the field anymore to drag a victory out of it... and of course germany were the favourites for a penalty shootout.
in my fantasy team, yesterday i just decided to throw everything on argentina and brazil, even though history says neither of them were going to win it. yesterday before the game i suddenly had a feeling germany were going to win it and to be honest i have a similar feeling today that france are going to knock out brazil. my only chance of still catching up 70 points on grand popo though is by picking different players than him and hoping they will do better. i now have 5 brazilians in my fantasy team.
as for the england-portugal game, it's a really close call, but i think england are going to reach the semi-finals,
despite of having sven the mastermind on the bench. at least they have a much better chance now than they had two years ago. but i hope they're finally going to show a decent performance on this tournament, they've been terrible to watch so far; except for joe cole and steven gerrard.
portugal will have to improvise on midfield today... however that turns out could be the decisive factor today.