A shoot-out exit for the Brits. Shocking, I know:
One of the greatest days British sport has ever known ended with a sadly familiar quarter-final penalty shoot-out exit to South Korea in Cardiff.
Chelsea striker Daniel Sturridge missed the vital last kick, allowing Celtic’s Ki Sungyueng to send South Korea into a last four meeting with Brazil at Old Trafford on Tuesday.
Sturridge was clearly angry and upset as he made his way off the field, although it could be argued Aaron Ramsey was equally culpable as he also missed from the spot in normal time when the Wales midfielder had a chance to put Britain in front.
Personally, I blame Ryan Giggs for not singing “God Save the Queen.”
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
All credit to the Korean side. Just goes to show even playing as GB instead of England we still can’t take penalties.
Considering the bad and blatantly dirty calls in that game, Korea had to win just to prove a point and they played like a winning team should.
This is going to make the gambling odds makers who didn’t give Korea much chances hate Korea. GB was already talking about the coming game with Brazil, overly confident they would win easily against Korea. And now there’s a massive exit out to get a refund for the expensive ticket to the game against Brazil that GB thought they would play in.
Read my favorite soccer commentator, John Duerden’s comments, days running up to the game, warning the Brits to take the Koreans seriously. I guess his words went unheeded.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/1129367/john-duerden:-taeguk-warriors-fly-the-flag-against-team-gb?cc=5901
a korean japanese final would be epic
#4, perhaps, but even if Korea wins, Japan will distort the facts.
I heard so many brits were demanding a refund for Britain vs Brazil match tickets that they bought.
Hilarious.
I heard they couldn’t find the ticket to the Brazil game, with some tickets going as high as 400 pounds, before their loss. Now there’s a flood of people trying to get rid of their tickets and take their losses.
Look at all the cheap tickets for that game now.
http://manchester.craigslist.co.uk/tia/
The GB team supposedly had three weeks of training together before the Olympics…No wonder they didn’t do as well as one would expect.
#7,
“Olympic Tickets mens Football Semi Final Old Trafford – £1 (Old Trafford, Manchester)”
That’s gotta be a joke.
#4,
Could happen. We never know…But, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Brazil has scored 12 goals so far and won all of its matches. As for South Korea…
#10
As for South Korea…they have beaten GB and will be playing Brazil in the quaterfinal match. Best of luck to the Korean team.
Ah, metric football: ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………. [head falls to desk--BUMP].
Of course it probably had nothing to do with South Korea completely controlling the flow of play and just outplaying GB (and the ref), right?
#11,
Nope…As for South Korea, they’ve only scored 3 goals and won their matches in overtime shootouts, barely beating GB which had only been training together for 3 weeks.
#13,
Which wouldn’t have happened if GB was actually a team, which it wasn’t.
GB couldn’t win even with two free penalty kicks in the beginning of the match.
Korea completely outplayed them. And this is also coming from bunch of pissed off British netizens.
Korea is doing well, I was a little suprised at the result as the national squad for Korea hasn’t been doing very well recently. They obviously trained well and got the result, congratulations to them. I wouldn’t say Korea ‘completely’ outplayed team GB, but the slightly better side won, if Korea had ‘completely outplayed’ Team GB it wouldn’t have gone to penalties would it?
Some people are bad sports. I think the old quote on sports that ‘you should be magnanimous in victory, gracious in defeat’ is a lesson some folks really need reminding of at times.
Team Korea is going to have to life their game to a whole new level when they play Brazil. I don’t think they’ll win it, but I wish them the best of luck.
#17, keith, you’re mistaking and mixing up the Korea’s national team with this U-23 Olympic team.
Gold in the men’s vault for South Korea. Korea really is having a heck of an Olympics so far. Makes you wonder how well they’d have done if they’d had the home team advantage.
Korea’s U23 team has not lost a game since 2010. Undefeated in 15 consecutive games. They won most of those games with a few draws sprinkled in. Not too shabby no matter who the opposition.
@18 cm – I didn’t write that properly. I know they’re different teams, but often performance can be measured by comparing one focus to another.
I go and see FC Seoul play now and again, and they’re generally pretty sloppy in their play and lack finish. I figure when you have a team like FC Seoul playing like that, the main international team playing like that, then it’s not going to be good. That’s why I was a little suprised by the result.
Korea are doing well in many sports. I hope team Korean and team GB kick it up a gear and get the Chinese and US teams really worried!
#20, keith, Korea has never had a striker who can take advantage of scoring chances consistently, going back to the days of Cha Bum Geun who played in Germany in the 1970′s to 1980′s. Since then, no Korean stepped up to take his place. However, Korea’s strength is in the midfield, as always, which leads to good scoring chances which are often punted away foolishly. The defense is also sloppy and horrid because often the top players are developed as attackers, leaving scant number of players who wants to be defenders.
Korea beat Switzerland 2-1 in regulation, not in an overtime shootout. Before the Korea match, the GB players and media were saying how they were coming together as a team after their group results, so the 3 weeks training excuse sounds pretty lame now. The Brits just can’t handle another disappointing shootout loss in the quarterfinals of a major tournament. Poor saps.
Looking forward to another night/early dawn Olympics viewing. The odds are against it, but the thought of a Korea-Japan final in soccer is intriguing to say the least.
“Korea beat Switzerland 2-1 in regulation, not in an overtime shootout. ”
Switzerland has a soccer team?
No, but it does have a football team.
Very quiet this morning around my home (always is the morning after the South Korean team gets a spanking).
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