The Marmot’s Hole

if you didn’t stay up until 6am this morning to watch the late fixtures, you missed perhaps the best match of the tournament in croatia v. australia.  and with brasil getting a wake-up call a half-hour into their match with japan before getting juiced, it made for an exciting two hours of football.

japan v. brasil: japan took a shock lead 33 minutes in on a goal by keiji tamada, who was fed an exquisite through ball by alex (alessandro santos by name, a brasilian-born naturalised japanese citizen).  it was japan’s first real chance of the half and was, to be fair, an undeserved lead. 

to that point, brasil had been peppering the japan goal, only for that man, outstanding japanese goalkeeper yoshikatsu kawaguchi, to keep the south americans at bay with save after save.  it was only a matter of time, however, that he would concede because his defense continually kept breaking down in front of him.  once the dam was breached, as it was by ronaldo two minutes from the break, it became the proverbial flood and brasil, with three second-half goals, coasted to a comfortable 1-4 win over the asians.

the elimination of the japanese, coupled with iran’s exit a couple of nights earlier, leaves just two asian teams to carry the continent’s banner into the next round, saudi arabia and korea.  and, of course, korea seemed the more suited to shoulder this burden–and we shall see soon enough.

croatia v. australia:  this was perhaps the most exciting match of the tournament so far.  it had an early goal, a late goal, two comebacks, one man for each team sent off in regular time, a goalkeeper make one of the howlers in world cup history, a ref forget how many bookings he’d given–and, as a result, dish out three bookings to one player, the third one right before the final whistle in injury time to make it three explusions–and raucous celebrations by both sets of teams and fans at various points of the match.

if the brasilians did the expected and defeated japan, then the winner of this match would go through (though, in that case, oz really only needed a draw).  to make this a potentially thrilling match, croatia would need to score first, which they obligingly did in the third minute to stun the travelling hordes of aussies.  oz would equalise five minutes from the break with a craig moore penalty conversion.

the restart began as the game did, when, 9 minutes in, substitute oz keeper, zeljko kalac, gifted the croats a goal when he allowed a weak ball from nico kovac, that kalac seemed to have grasped, slip away and bundle over the goal line, giving croatia the lead and an open door to the next round.  a while later, oz had a second penalty denied, thereby raising the stress levels inside the stadium to what seemed, from watching on television, an unbearable level.

all that tension from the travelling hordes wearing yellow and green was released ten minutes from time when harry kewel levelled for the socceroos.  the scenes on the telly were stunning.  the theretofore dancing and singing croats were reduced to stunned silence while jubilant australians were losing their knickers.

the last ten minutes were as nerve-wracking as a group stage match could produce as croatia slammed the oz goal in desperation to get the goal they needed to progress.  as the minutes ticked down, the croats pressed and nearly got what they needed, only for that shot to be kicked off the line by moore.  at that point, you couldn’t help but think the croats were going to nick it, even when, first, dario simic was sent off in the 85th minute to reduce the croats to ten men and, then, for sure, when oz’s brett emerton was given his expulsion two minutes later.  the scene became beyond surreal when josip simunic received his second and then third yellow card in injury time and was expelled just seconds before the final whistle.

with that, oz’s 2-2 draw was enough to see them through to the next round for the first time in their history and i’m sure the denizens from down under partied stuttgart numb in celebration.

can friday night’s matches top this for drama.  while group h seems nearly set, group g seems the more likely to produce histrionics, with three evenly-matched teams–switzerland, korea, and france–desperately in the running for the next round and the wild card, togo, completely unpredictable but, oh, so able to have a say in the final results.  it should be fun…