World Cup day four – moving day

Very short post today because I’ve spent the whole day packing up the last of my worldly possessions and moving them into storage for the summer.  Which a) means I’m exhausted and b) means I’m sad.  Moving is always a pain, but particularly so when you’re leaving a place that’s this wonderful.  Oh well, new wonderful homes await, and new memories are going to be made.

Netherlands 2 –  0 Denmark

Van Persie looked nowhere near as good as I expected.  I know he was hurt for a long time but he looked brilliant in the final couple games for Arsenal and the preliminary matches.  The Dutch aren’t going to go far if he doesn’t perform up to his ability.

They also really need Robben back.  I thought they’d be fine without him but the lack of width and creativity coming from the wings was a major problem for them today.  I literally had never even heard of this Elia fellow until he came on, but he showed some really great flashes and completely changed the game by filling a bit of the role of a genuine attacker on the flanks.

The first goal was a mess, obviously.  And the second one wasn’t much better from Denmark’s perspective.  They defended quite well today except for those two mistakes.  The second one is the one I want to focus on.  It wasn’t pretty (particularly the defender who just watched Kuyt run past to stick it in the net), but serves as a pretty good example of the three key characteristics needed for Dutch success.  It was all orchestrated by a brilliant ball from Sneijder, facilitated by Elia’s pace and movement, but would have just been an unfortunate miss without the workmanlike effort from Kuyt to actually finish it off and clean things up. If they can routinely bring all three of those components they’ll be a serious contender.

Japan 1 – 0 Cameroon

I went back to sleep during this match.  It sounds like it was horrible though–rivaling the Slovenia-Algeria game for worst of the tournament.  Good win for Japan there.  I didn’t expect much from them (predicted them to get zero points actually) but they’re in good shape to take 2nd in the group now.

Italy 1 – 1 Paraguay

My second spot-on prediction of the Cup, and a thoroughly predictable result.  Italy were the better team, I suppose, but only really based on the final 20 minutes or so. Before that, Italy was controlling the game but not really generating anything useful.  And the Paraguay goal (unlike some others in the t0urnament) was not a fluke or a goalkeeping mistake.  It was just an absolutely brilliant cross and a nice header.

Italy will be upset for not getting all three points, but they didn’t really show anything to suggest they’ll be moving past the second round.  They’d certainly be better with Pirlo, but I think that’s only part of the problem.  They’re just a bit old, slow, and don’t have the precision that they did four years ago.  No shame in that.  And while they didn’t look great today, the old cliche is that they pick up the pace as things go on.  And I do think that their ability to shut a game down may serve them well once they face a flair team.  We’ll see…

My predictions for tomorrow:

• New Zealand 0 – 2 Slovakia
• Ivory Coast 1 – 2 Portugal
• Brazil 4 – 0 North Korea

If Slovakia want to advance they absolutely MUST get three points.  The second game is perhaps the single biggest one of the entire group stages.  It pits the two teams presumably fighting for second place in the group of death.  I haven’t been following the news on Drogba (he’s trying to play with a cast, I think?), but even if he does play I can’t imagine he’ll be that useful.  And while Portugal have been pretty miserable, I think their ridiculous strength in the midfield is going to save them.  Plus, I’m counting on Ronaldo to be the first to score from a free kick in the tournament.

I would actually love to see a competitive game in the final match.  We don’t really know anything about North Korea.  But I can’t imagine they’re going to be able to hang with Brazil.