World Cup – the Second Rounding
June 28, 2006 by Dave Earley
Filed under Uncategorized
Brazil 3 – 0 Ghana
France 3 – 1 Spain
The highlight of the Brazil v Ghana game was seeing Ronaldo score his record-breaking 15th World Cup goal. He’s now the highest ever scorer in World Cup finals football, equalling Gerd Muller’s record in the game against Japan, and now overtaking the total which has stood since 1974. Muller scored his 14 in only two world cups, while this is Ronaldo’s fourth visit to the tournament. Nonetheless, the record is now his, and is likely to remain that way for a time to come.
France, listless on the international stage since their World Cup win in 1998, finally found their touch against Spain. France gave away an early penalty and went 1-0 down, but fought back with an inspirational performance from perhaps the ugliest man in soccer, Frank Ribery. With the high proportion of the precious, precocious, and pretty metrosexuals prancing and diving across football fields all across the world, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a man who looks like he does his own hair, dentistry and cosmetic surgery. But perhaps that’s unfair. There was a Scot, whose name I can’t remember, and after much fruitless searching have still not been able to dredge up – who probably would have taken out that award, so to Ribery I apologise.
The quarter finals then will see every World Cup winning country competing, except of course for Uruguay, who Australia so graciously dumped last November.
First there’s Germany (winners in 1954, 1974 and 1990) against Argentina (1978, 1986). Then Italy (1934, 1938, 1982) take on Ukraine, England (1966) meet Portugal and lastly Brazil (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002) come up against France (1998) in a replay of the 1998 World Cup final.
As an aside, it’s quite amazing how quickly photos get on the web. After Zidane scored for France and was mobbed right in front of the gangs of photographers behind the goal, I wondered if they would get a good shot because the group was in their faces. Sure enough, a picture from the exact perspective I had been imagining was on the BBC site within 15 minutes of the end of the match.
