World Cup Friendlies Dance Rewind

May 31st, 2006 | by: Peter | View Comments

It was another action packed day of friendly football. Although the robot dancing was limited to my office when Bob finally got the bootleg broadcast of Italy and Switzerland to work, we had some fun watching a commanding performance by Iran. Then there was the player scoring for Paraguay on the pitch while his teammate was shot down off it and a bunch of other tidbits thrown together in this daily wrap.

Iran 5 Bosnia-Herzegovina 2
Iran spotted Bosnia-Herzegovina two first half goals but turned things around quickly by scoring five unanswered goals. Iran fielded a largely its reserve team, but that didn’t stop Team Melli from putting an arse whipping on B-H. Bob’s been on the Iran bandwagon since he predicted that they would edge out Mexico in Group D, and I would join him if it weren’t for the fact that Bob is usually wrong.

Paraguay 1 Georgia 0
Nelson Haedo Valdez scored in the 37th minute to lift Paraguay to a victory over Georgia. Anyone ever been to Georgia? I hear they have palm trees and nice beaches. As for Valdez, it is nice to see someone on Paraguay score. At least one unnamed player struck out recently.

Turkey 1 Saudi Arabia 0
Turkey warmed up for its upcoming clash against Bob’s favorite team and future World Cup Cinderella Angola by beating Saudi Arabia in Germany. Necati Ates scored the lone goal of the match for a Turkey team that would be a lot more interesting to watch at the World Cup than Saudi Arabia. It’s too bad Turkey has a full schedule of feeling bitter about the Swiss.

Slovenia 3 Trinidad and Tobago 1
Ranked 71st in the world, Slovenia will surely move ahead of Venezuela in the rankings after it defeated the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup: Trinidad and Tobago. They are chanting Milivoje Novakovic’s name in Slovenia thanks to his hat-trick. Chris Birchall netted the lone goal for the Soca Warriors who have now lost to Wales and Slovenia in their less than spectacular run-up to Germany.

Italy 1 Switzerland 1
For a mere friendly, this turned out to be quite the physical affair. Both teams’ training staffs got a workout running on and off the pitch to tend to dinged players. Alberto Gilardino got the Italians on the board first with a goal in the 11th minute. Daniel Gygax notched the equalizer in the 32nd for the Swiss. Francesco Totti did start for Italy as his recovery from injury continues to progress nicely.

France Denmark
Thierry Henry scored in the 12th minute and Sylvain Wiltord put a penalty kick past the goalie in the second half as a crowd of 55,500 screamed “Allez les Bleus!” in beautiful Northern France. Most everything stayed friendly, but things aren’t looking up for the Danish program, who maintained their perfect record against Israel in this loss to France.

Finally, it wasn’t a match but 42,000 people showed up to watch Germany stretch during practice. Great effort by the host nation fans, who, like many others , are skipping work because of World Cup fever. Wish I could have been there.