Whose World? What Cup? (Day 09a)

Half-time at the Cameroon-Denmark match, and it's 1-1. Danish defending is like their butter cookies: it is slightly bland, and crumbles when you take too many bites. And there are normally too many in the box, but not of the kind you want.

More to the point, the Danes work best when they lash the long ball and run in straight lines or do the simple cross-and-shoot routines. Their short passes are often intercepted by the lower centre-of-gravity Cameroonians. The latter are good all-round, except when excited. Then, they miss the goal they should have scored: they ought to be 4-1 up by now.

Long lanky Scandinavians vs chunky muscular West Africans; what a match-up! But on this performance and all the stuff we've seen so far, I suppose the Netherlands deserve to get through from this group and I can't decide which of the other three undeserving teams will get through to the next round with them.

By the way, has anyone pointed out that Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon are all from the same stretch of coastline on the southern edge of West Africa? Must be the climate.

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At this point, old Dennis Rommedahl (31, almost 32) looks like man-of-the-match material. And the Danes are 2-1 up.