World Champions?

You know when you watch a great sportsman and you sense that they are playing or competing within themselves, keeping a bit back for later? Well, I reckon we saw that last night when Argentina drew nil-nil with Holland. Despite resting Heinze, Sorin, Saviola, Crespo and a couple of others who would walk into England's squad, the blue and white stripes looked completely in control, making sure they qualified as Group winners. Yes, you could argue that they didn't score but they were so much in control in put other teams efforts in this competition into perspective, "too much perspective," as David St.Hubbins would say. The Argentina goalkeeper only had two saves to make and one of those was in the last couple of minutes of normal time.















Edwin van de Sar realises it's not Coventry City in the blue and white kit.

Earlier in the day I saw Portugal beat Mexico and once again there were some bizarre refereeing decisions. Potugal's Paulo Ferrera (another example of Jose Mourinho not knowing a poor full back when he sees one), managed to take out one poor Mexican with a knee high tackle only for the ref to give a goal kick and suggest the attacker was diving. Portugal's reserve side looked good until Mexico had a player sent off and then they seemed to lose their way, I can't see them beating Holland though.

Ivory Coast v Serbia & Montenegro was the footballing equivalent of a car crash, the more you looked, the more you wanted to look away. This was because the Serbs didn't want to play football, the Ivorians couldn't stand up long enough to actually play any football and that wonderful ref who thinks he's auditioning for a part in a Pedro Almodavar movie wouldn't let either side tackle without getting out a card of one colour or another. The whole game was summed up in the last couple of minutes when a tennis ball was thrown from the crowd narrowly missing the ref on the second bounce but he was too busy admonishing an Ivorian player to notice.