World Cup Friendlies Sunday Rewind

June 4th, 2006 | by: WC Bob |

Crunch time is here and some teams have to be happier with their performance in today’s friendlies than others. The Dutch have some injury worries thanks to the Aussies. Ghana and Ivory Coast have newfound confidence thanks to some weak opponents. Japan has some questions thanks to their inability to score. I’ll have some pleasant dreams thanks to the pictures of the Brazil fans dancing in the stands. Here’s a recap of today’s action.

Australia 1 – Netherlands 1
A very physical affair between both sides ended in a draw. Australia brought their kicking game with them for this one, kicking every Dutch player in sight. As a result, three Dutch players limped off and the Aussies were forced to play the last 30 minutes a man down. Ruud van Nistelrooy and Tim Cahill are your goal scorers.

Japan 1 Malta 0
Sometimes I think that the sole reason Malta exists is to serve as a football opponent for teams warming up for tournaments. The Maltese did their job today holding Japan to a lone goal by Keiji Tamada in the 2nd minute. I remain unconvinced that Japan has the offensive weapons to advance in the tournament.

Ghana 3 South Korea 1
Lock away the women and children, the Black Stars of Ghana are on fire. Asamoah Gyan, Sulley Muntari and Michael Essien all scored as Ghana has put together back-to-back impressive exhibition performances after a slow World Cup training start. Ghana might just be the spoiler team people are overlooking.

Ivory Coast 3 Slovenia 0
The Elephants finally put together a winning performance thanks to a pair of goals by Didier Drogba and a goal from Kanga Akale. Ivory Coast had played well during their friendlies up to this point but soft goals had been their nemesis. This is a nice win as they move forward towards group of death play in less than a week’s time.

Brazil 4 New Zealand 0
Both teams got what they wanted out of this game. Brazil walks away with a solid performance and a victory that didn’t come with any injuries. New Zealand didn’t give up 13 goals and could have put a few on the board if not for a few dodgy finishing attempts. The stadium in Geneva where the game was played looks great. Also some props to the cameramen for showing us some bikini-clad samba action in the stands.

As always, check out the various team blogs for opinions and to chime in with your thoughts.

Five more days to go!

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http://paraguay.worldcupblog.org Daniel

Paraguay 3 – 0 Some selection of Bavarian players.

http://paraguay.worldcupblog.org/1/paraguay-won-its-last-friendly-match%e2%80%a6.html
zé

Brazil’s game was pretty bad at the beginning. The team’s offensive looked convoluted and lost too many chances due to simple mistakes. Everything got better after a few tactical changes later. When the replacement players joined it also started to work better… Kaká was the man of the match IMO, followed by Cafu’s and his long runs. NZ’s keeper seems to be pretty good too.
Claudio

Yep, New Zealand GK was pretty impressive. In fact, if it wasn’t him, the game could have finished 7 or 8 x 0. He made some hard and pretty defenses.

Unfortunaly, here in Brasil We just can listen to Galvão Bueno trying to bring some patriotic self-respect in form of football to a suffered people, instead of the great players of the match, from both teams.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my team and I support it in all games, but this 4 to 4 years patriotic paranoia, despite all the problems we are facing now, gets me sick.
http://spinachdip.blogspot.com spinachdip

Re: Japan

3 years ago, I would’ve been concernerned about a result like 1-0 against Malta. But now, not so much.

Under Zico, Japan has always played its best against better opponents and struggled against far inferior opponents who pack their defense, which is what happened against Malta.

If you look at Japan’s record on Europe soil, scoring isn’t an issue. Whatever you think of Japan’s ability to attack, the Malta match tells us nothing really useful.