So Brazil march on, but, alas, without their ‘golden boy’
Neymar, who will be out for the rest of the tournament with a broken vertebra. Before the Brazil vs Colombia match I was so
excited by what I’d seen from both him and the ultra-talented James Rodriguez,
but by the end of the game we’d lost them both.
It was such a cowardly foul by Zuniga, who knew exactly what he was
doing. At only 22, the young lad must be absolutely heartbroken. This opportunity will never come up again. But perhaps the referee was
partly to blame? There were more fouls
(around 54 I believe) in this match than in any other game at the tournament
and yet foul after foul, some of them malicious and definitely cynical, went by
without a single yellow card being brandished until the second half of the
match. Had the referee had the balls to
show a few cards, especially towards the end of the first half when the game
was starting to boil over, then maybe the game would’ve calmed down in the
second half. As it was, it WAS a crazy
and entertaining game, I’ll admit that, but now we have a situation where if
Brazil DON’T win the World Cup, people will always say: ‘What if…’ 'What if Neymar hadn’t got injured, surely it
would’ve been different?' And that is sad
for the tournament.
I really really don’t get ‘Fred’. He’s done almost nothing in the tournament –
he’s not quick, he doesn’t make clever runs and barely works at all. I’m yet to find anyone that rates him and
it’s a mystery how he is the best striker Brazil have? I realise that often it is all about finding
a partnership, a ‘tandem’ that works, and perhaps with Neymar being the
explosive, quick and tricky player that he is, he does Fred’s running for him
and is the perfect foil for him. But I
just don’t see it. Certainly with Neymar
now out it will be interesting to see how Scolari juggles his team for the
semi-final clash against Germany.
Although the BBC has beaten ITV hands down once again in the
Commentary and punditry department throughout this World Cup, I was very
frustrated at the collected opinion of the so called ‘penalty incident’ that
Costa Rica had in extra time of their Quarter-Final against Holland. Was I the only one who thought it was never a
penalty? I’ve watched it from every
angle as they all did and although Vlaar did slightly step across Urena there
seemed to be no contact and then Urena trod on the tip of Vlaar’s toes, took a
couple more steps (going nowhere) before deciding to throw himself to the
floor. Honestly, if we’re going to be giving
penalties for that to decide a World Cup Quarter-Final then we might as well
all switch off now. And yet the whole
BBC team as one seemed to think it should’ve been a penalty. Alan Hansen even saying it was
‘stonewall.’ Really? Not for me.
I was also annoyed at the criticism (at the time) of Van
Gaal’s decision to bring on reserve goalkeeper Tim Krul for the penalty
shootout. Sure, it was a little bizarre,
we’ve not seen it before, but what a move!
Arguably it won them the game.
Who on the BBC staff knows what’s going on in the Dutch camp? Krul has obviously been looking sharp on
penalties in training so why not take advantage of that? He’s also fresh as a daisy coming on then,
whereas most of the other players were completely spent. A very brave decision of course, and one that
could’ve backfired, but that’s why Van Gaal’s a top manager: he has balls. And look at Cillesen during the
shootout! He didn’t seem to have a
problem with being taken off – on the contrary, he was leading the cheers as
the shootout swung in Holland’s favour.
Good for him.
So it’s now down to a battle of some of the true heavyweights of World
Football: Brazil v Germany and Argentina v Holland; repeats of the finals of
2002 and 1978. I can’t wait!
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