strange as it may seem, i once had my football dreams

missed yesterday's opening world cup matches, the opener between host germany and costa rica, followed by ecuador-poland. apparently the germans and ticos played an entertaining offensive-minded game, as evidenced by the 4-2 score. poland once again look to be a world cup disappointment. i thought they'd come through 2nd in the group, but doesn't look like it now.

did watch this morning, a couple of matches this morning, england's 1-0 win over paraguay and the 0-0 draw between sweden and trinidad.

sweden should have won. they played a team with much less talent and got a gift when avery john was sent off a minute into the 2nd half for drawing a second yellow on a hard but not bookable foul. at least not bookable when he was already carrying a yellow. but trinidad clamped down as teams often do when down a man. trinidad keeper shaka hislop was outstanding...made a few amazing saves. though i'm danish and thus should nominally be rooting more for sweden, i like trinidad because a) they're major underdogs, and b) i've met lots of folks from trinidad and every one of them are fun people.

the england-paraguay match was kind of eh...blah. england got a gift own-goal early on and never really got an offensive rhythm. paraguay seemed fine with packing the defense and not creating any offense.

the argentina-ivory coast game should be fun, but i've got my own game to play this afternoon.

for what it's worth, i see final 8 matches between germany-argentina, italy-france, england-netherlands and brazil-spain, semis of germany-italy and brazil-england and a germany-brazil final won by brazil. but there are always surprises in the tournament, which is what makes it so much fun.