Wow!

Remember those games when you were a kid or training with your local club where you played attack v defence? Well, the professionals do that as well, in the World Cup. Steve Wilson the BBC commentator put it brilliantly when he said at the end of the Ghana v Czech Republic match, "there were 144,000 chances and that was just Ghana."
As I've said a million times before Steve, "No need to exaggerate." The fact that Ghana scored in the second minute helped things, it meant the Czech's had to attack and the fitter but tactically naive Ghana could counter. This match had loads of good things, shots, saves, a sending-off, a player booked for taking a penalty when nobody was looking - well done Ghana 2-0 winners.


Ghanaian fans celebrate their teams first ever World Cup points.









Well if the afternoon game was exciting the evening match was going to blow the group wide open. Italy must really have fancied their chances against a USA side who looked as if they'd left any hope of points at home in the first game. Three sending-offs (De Rossi finally got sent off - something that should have happened against Ghana), a disallowed goal, Kaisey Keller's best game in a World Cup it had it all. It will be interesting to see how Italy react if they don't get at least a point from the Czech game, four years ago they blamed their early exit on a referee from Ecuador, two years ago the Swedish-Danish alliance produced a draw and knocked them out, but who will they be able to blame other than themselves this time? They were inept to the nth degree and on this form they will be having the customary tomatoes thrown at them come next Friday morning.