Van Basten II

Too bad it's not a vynil, I would put my needle on it and play sweet music.

And Cameroon has the dubious honor of being the first team eliminated of this competetion. So far African teams have yet to be inspired by playing on their own continent. Japan-Danemark will decide the other team that will go t the next round The Danes will need another win since a tie won't be enough.

Not pretty but nonetheless entertaining and eventful half of futbol between the Danes and Cameroon.

Anelka has been thrown out of the team, good riddance.

No team seems to want to qualify, with more than half the game nobody is sure of a secound round slot and nobody is out of it either. Things may change with the late game, a win by the Danes eliminates Cameroon and gives the Dutch a spot in the second round, a tie does the trick for them also but it keeps alive chances for the rest of the group.

Not quite, Argentina have qualified yesterday because they won both their games and therefore can't be overtaken anymore by the two teams they beat, so they'll at least finish second - see rule d) above. There is a chance of a 3 way tie with 3 teams with 6 points if Greece wins and Korea wins and goal differential being the first tiebreaker, there is a very slim chance that Argentina fails if they lose by something like 3 goals and Korea doing something similar to Nigeria.

My eyes are hurting.. You're now it, guess we'll have to be crappy against South Africa big time . On somewhat positive news, we have three groups who are now down to their last match and no team has yet qualifyed or being eliminated

Any pictures of semi-naked English or Algerian female fans, to make something positive of that horrible sterile mess of a match.

I just felt that this post deserved to be quoted. Forget quoting, that's a screen saver

The next game will be his lasi one. Laurent Blanc will replace him. Forgot about that. I guess Blanc should have taken over two years ago, after France's equally dismal performance at Euro 2008.

It's like the balk rule in baseball, everybody fakes understanding it

The Greeks are back in the running. After a dismal first game they showed some spirit. Exciting end to the this group as all the team will still be alive and all teams can be knocked out also. Argentina has obviously the simpler task, as long as they don't lose by more than two goals they are in while Nigeria needs some outside help big time to manage a way to squeeze in the second round. Korea and Greece will have to do some scireboard watching while delivering a result.

And in nomination for the Zidane award for the dumbest red card in a competition Sami Kaita

Two of the better looking teams of the firstr series of matches are giving us a worthy reason to get up early this morning, although the Korean have mostly done figuration throughout the first half. But with both teams showing flair with the ball and defensive lapses, there still is some drama to be played.

Sky just fell on South Africa. Think of it, our national team can't beat the likes of Honduras.

You'd think the host team would be lifted to play at home but this is far from happening, great goal by Forlan, if the score holds the South-Americans will be in control of their destiny in the final match.

Will answer myself, a bit of research about him made me learn that he has Haitian origins, so the proper way would be à la Française and the English commentator is butchering awfulling his name. The majority (almost two-thirds) of the Swiss population speak German Only sign from the Swiss fans shown was in French, so I took it from there I actually missed hearing the cowbells during the game.

Réalisme 101 ! Hop la Suisse ! Thought it was a good game , of course the upset makes it more compelling, felt that the H group delivered the best moments of the competition so far.

Enjoyed the Chile-Honduras game, they (Chile) could be a tough game for a lot of teams. Speed, technically and tactically sound with better finition they could be a dark horse. What is the proper way to pronounce the name of the Chile's goal scorer Beausejour, I would be tempted to say it à la Française, but the british said it in other way more like Bose-jour instead of Bo-say-jour like I would do.

Thanks for the details, sad news indeed, he was scheduled to play last thursday with Drake and Parker, but he was replaced by Kidd Jordan without much of an explanation. Tonight during the gig, Ken Vandermark informed us that he was in a Hospital but without giving details either about his condition. Get well Mr Anderson.

The second half was good , still both teams seemed to bet on a result against Brazil rather than go for broke, agree with the other posters Cötr d'Ivoire was the better team. The game featured for the first time some crowd emotion when Drogba appeared on the pitch.

The two comments heard the most in the WC so far. -That f....ing sound is annoying -Let's hope the second half will be better

Geez that's a bit harsh, ain't it? I know - let's restrict the WC to soccer royalty, that should fix things up. Just Italy, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, etc etc. No underdogs, no upsets, no drama. Reminds me of when Australia had to play Uruguay to get there last time. When the South Americans missed out, some were miffed that previous WC winners were gone. That was what? Half a century ago? Go the underdogs! They have to make a way for all the continents to be represented ,and up to a certain point I'm ok with that , problem is regarding the Oceania representation is that Australia jumped ship towards Asia to improve their level of competition which makes the pool even thinnier. If they want to keep this slot available for Oceania , FIFA has to help these teams to play against better opposition so they can improve their level. So either annex them to Asia or create some kind of local competetion where the Oceanian teams could play more often against teams that are around the top 50 in FIFA rankings I'm not against underdogs, I'm against poor level of play, what I want to see are the teams that have performed the best no matter where they all come from and no matter what is their past pedigree , the game we just witnessed has been worthy of a decisive game to qualify for the World Cup finals but not part of it. Ideally they should not reserve spots for certain conferences, I would prefer having something like having 15 divisions involving teams from every place. But logistically it would be impossible so we're stuck with this inperfect system.

Cruel result for Slovakia who with this draw may have to kiss goodbye their chances to qualify for the next round, give credit to both teams for the spirit they played but it was more of a MLS level game than a World Class game. Then again what can you expect from a game with a team that fields unemployed players ?

Trio Matthew Shipp with Whit Dickey & Mike Bisio. Shipp was in a fine form despite the horrible piano, did not think much of the rhythm section though.