Wednesday, June 21, 2006

FIFA WC 2006 - Time to sleep after Nirvana

Of late I have missed most of the matches in this world cup. There are many reasons for the same, the primary ones being.

1) There is no more interest left in most of the groups, except the one in which Italy and Czech are present, as most of the qualifiers are already known.
2) In India, the exciting matches are usually played at 12:30 AM IST (that is not the time for football on "working" weekdays !!)
3) I attained football nirvana after seeing the Argentina vs Serbia Montenegro match. All matches subsequent to this one have not matched my new levels of expectation !

Argentina has so far played the best match(es) and if their players maintain the same level of fitness till the finals, then we can be sure of Argentina taking the cup comfortably. Currently the next best bet seems to be Spain. Netherlands is currently playing in patches and they would be thoroughly tested in today's encounter with Argentina. My expectation is that this encounter would raise the levels of both the teams during the further stages of the tournament.

Coming to Italy, they seemed totally clueless against USA after having a very good outing against Ghana. There was no need for rough play and it almost seemed like they had forgotten to score the goals. The defending was definitely far from being the best and it also led to the decisive goal (self goal) ! Italy needs to lift their game if they are to progress further !

Interesting days ahead and I hope I get to watch most of the matches !! I sincerely hope that the viewership in India for football increases tremendously so that the television houses and organizers are forced to schedule the matches (alteast the exciting ones) during the evening hours (6 - 12 in the night would be fine) and not in the middle of the night !

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