Whose World? What Cup? (Day 15)

This will be an interesting evening. The Hermit Kingdom, boasting a national anthem called The Patriotic Song, will face Côte d'Ivoire, whose national anthem is the Song of Abidjan (which used to be their capital, the 4th largest Francophone city on earth, with a population of about 5,000,000). Only the Ivorians can qualify, but they'll need to beat the tough Patriotic Hermits by a large margin.

Meanwhile, I will probably spend a lot more time watching the other match, between Brazil and their former colonial masters, Portugal. The Portuguese have fond memories of Brazil and all the loot they got out of that great nation. The Brazilians pretend not to have any memories at all. I'll just note here that my not-so-distant ancestors came from the former Portuguese colony of Melaka.

Later on, Spain meet Chile (a similar story to Portugal-Brazil, historically), while Switzerland meet the Honduras. Basically, both Spain and Switzerland need to win. It is all too possible that Chile and Switzerland will qualify and Spain will be a third great European footballing nation to get dumped (unless the really unlikely has already happened and Portugal were dumped first).

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Well, even though Côte d'Ivoire is leading North Korea 2-0 at half-time, the 0-0 deadlock of Portugal (in red) and Brazil (in yellow) looks like letting both through to the next round. Unless we see more red and yellow. It's a vicious game. Or at the very least, full of ill-judged behaviour.

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Seven yellow cards and 24 fouls later... we're still waiting for a goal at Brazil-Portugal. It has just struck me that there's a very high chance of us seeing two matches between a Portuguese-speaking (Portaphone?) team and a Spanish-speaking one in the next round. The languages are basically regional dialects, but the Castilian hegemony won out (unless you ask a Catalan).

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Final scores 3-0 to the Ivorians and a deathly 0-0 at the 'Match of the Day'. Ha! So Brazil top the group, Portugal are second; it is likely we'll see Portugal play Chile and Brazil play Spain. If it's Brazil v Switzerland instead, I shall laugh my socks off.

Whose World? What Cup? (Day 10a)

At half-time, Brazil are leading 1-0 over Côte d'Ivoire, thanks to a lovely Brazilian-style goal by Luis Fabiano. Although Brazil are no longer the flair-at-all-costs insanely-wild-moments team they used to be, they are fairly solid, still inventive, still capable of magic.

Côte d'Ivoire, however, are not just Didier Drogba and ten other men. They're a pretty cohesive fighting unit, good at keeping possession but not so skilled at visualising the field of battle. Both teams have found that crossing from deep to the left doesn't work, but the other direction is reasonably effective.

And that's how it goes...

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An hour into the game, Brazil have been helped by a referee who apparently can spot a handball but laugh it off, and allow a blatantly wrong goal on its artistic merits. But they're Brazil, and their third goal was entirely merited. 3-0 to them now.

I am, however, plagued with bad commentary. The commentator keeps going on about how Brazil is being brilliant and only they can be Brazilian. The former is sporadic, the latter is true, but I am irritated when he starts saying that only they can score pedestrian goals.

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Didier Drogba managed to pull one back for Côte d'Ivoire, but of course (especially in the light of Fabiano's self-confessed handball-assisted second goal) it was too little, too late.

Whose World? What Cup? (Day 10)

Paraguay, inventive and fluid, beats Slovakia 2-0. Why should things be any different? In all the talks of dogs and underdogs during any World Cup, it's never easy to say who a clear favourite might be except on the basis of form and depth — are the team always doing well against other teams of all kinds? And if the entire team were to be replaced by reserves, would that reserve team also do well?

The other factors are just too nebulous. Tonight we'll also see Italy play New Zealand. Italy have good depth, and fair form. New Zealand are relative unknowns who drew Slovakia 1-1 earlier. Logic would say Italy 2, NZ 0. This would be the result most of the time.

We live for the remaining chances, the slim shreds of possibility that say NZ will pull off an upset. But Italy are hard to defeat, although drawing is not such a difficult result to obtain. We'll see.

What's truly delectable is the match-up even later this evening, when Brazil (ex-Portuguese colony) meet Côte d'Ivoire (ex-French colony). Looking at the World Cup's interesting geography, one is struck by the thought, "Be careful when you build an empire; some day, the empire strikes back."

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Ho ho... NZ just scored against Italy. 1-0 to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

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And that De Rossi has just got himself a penalty for Italy. Iaquinta converts it! 1-1.

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Afternote: 1-1 at the death. This just feels like a moral defeat for Italy, though. World Cup champions eh? Ha. And NZ keeper Paston should be the man of the match.

Whose World? What Cup? (Day 05)

Having dealt with Slovenia and Slovakia in an earlier post, I found myself at a loss for clever commentary on the first match tonight: New Zealand meets Slovakia. Then I realised one thing: most people know about New Zealand, but few people realise that it is one of the most isolated places on Earth. The nearest continent to New Zealand is also the nearest major piece of land — Australia. The next nearest is Antarctica.

If you sailed eastward from New Zealand, you'd end up in Chile after a long stretch of empty sea in which you would cross the International Date Line. That's an interesting fact, considering that the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, is still New Zealand's Head of State. The sun still hardly sets on the British Empire, it seems.

New Zealand gets its name from one of the Dutch provinces, Zeeland. Those Dutch were everywhere in the bad old days — even New York used to be called New Amsterdam. Its Maori name is Aotearoa, 'The Land of the Long White Cloud'.

Also playing tonight are Côte d'Ivoire (officially) and Portugal. The Ivory Coast is so named for a long-gone ivory trade; since then, coffee and cocoa have dominated exports. Civilisation in the region has long flourished; evocative names like the Muslim Empire of Kong and the Agni Kingdom of Sanwi were trading with Timbuktu and other Sudanic powers even up to the late 19th and early 20th century.

Portugal, on the other hand, is the only remaining state in the Iberian Peninsula that hasn't become part of Spain (much to the envy of Catalans, Basques and other formerly independent peoples). The Portuguese retain their own language, approximately shared with their largest former colony, Brazil. It seems a long time since the Treaty of Tordesillas in which Portugal and Spain divided the entire globe between them.

Speaking of Brazil, they play against the Hermit Kingdom (or is that a Hermit Crab?) in the last match of the day. Sounds like fun.

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Well, two very entertaining draws there. New Zealand must be happy to have their 1-1 against Slovakia; I'm not sure who is happier between Côte d'Ivoire and Portugal at their 0-0 'blockbuster'. Probably Portugal: towards the end, the Ivorians looked really dangerous, compared to the rather soft-looking Portuguese.

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Hmmm. The Hermitage scored a consolation goal as the Samba netted twice. But the Hermitage was impressive. Generally stingy and very hardworking.