Matchday 3

As I was in transit for Algeria – Slovenia, I didn’t catch the match. But after watching highlights, you have to say what a howler! Is the Algerian keeper Robert Green in disguise? Algeria seemed to be the better team though, which is what I figured and makes me nervous moving forwards.

In looking at Algeria’s performances in the past few years, they are a hit and miss team, while Slovenia are classic smash and grab. Algeria has the talent to put together 1 good game in this group stage and it could be a major problem to play them in the last game when they have nothing to lose.

The Ghana Serbia match was simply surreal. The atmosphere almost topped that of USA-England. It simply made the whole trip worth it. That and Serbia lost!

I didn’t expect Ghana to be as strong as they were, especially with Muntari and Appiah on the bench and Essien injured. Yet, my word they can battle. With the home crowd support, they were always going to be inspired.

It was quite silly play by Serbia in picking up the red card and the penalty, you must say Serbia threw the game away rather than Ghana won it. But, that is football. Serbia probably deserved a point, but that is life.

I actually thought that Ghana lost a little bit moving forward with the insertion of their captain Appiah and withdrawal of Asamoah. But, they picked up the goal.

The atmosphere was simply unreal and I hope that my video will do it justice. Absolute delerioum and ectasy in the stadium after Ghana won.

I must say that while Gyan played a strong match, FIFA you must name Richard Kingston as the Man of the Match. What a game he had! All this from Wigan’s 3rd string keeper…!

Germany pounded Australia in the nightcap, and it was quite shambolic from the Aussies. I rated them as the 4th team in this tough bracket, but I still think they are quality.

The Germans proved that they are just like all German teams of yesteryear, they are simply machines. They have replaceable parts and just keep on getting that job done.

Just before Cahill’s red card, I had just said through 3 days the refereeing had been superb and there had been no blown calls. Well, the one of massive proportions came.

The look on Cahill’s face says it all after the red card. It’s a borderline yellow card challenge. I hope that it gets overthrown and he can play in the next match as he’s a first rate player.

Simply shocking from the referee as it left Australia with no chance in the match (not that they had one anyway), but also with little chance moving forward having to play Ghana without their talisman.

Takeaway from Day 3: African home continent advantage is real and alive. Some in the journalist world don’t understand African soccer or culture and don’t believe in this.

I will leave the Yahoo Soccer journalist unnamed, but for those of you that know me, you know my thoughts on this fellow.

Some like to say there is no way Ghana and Ivory Coast can have an advantage in South Africa as those countries are “as close to South Africa as they are to Spain”. Ignorance.

Ghana was buoyed by a frantic South African crowd and it was essentially a home match for them. What I will say, is that the venue may be a determinant as to how pro-African the crowd is. In Afrikaner homelands like Bloemfontein, it may not be as strong.