France vs. Australia
I woke up this morning at 6:00AM. For those of you not keeping track, today is Saturday, the day that I usually catch up on sleep. So, I have to confess that I didn’t see much of this game. I brought a pillow into my living room and fell asleep right as the France penalty was being awarded. It made history as the first penalty awarded with VAR. Apparently all of my complaining about penalties has come to naught. I’m the one who was wrong. Video replay is here and it is changing the course of games.
I’ll say this: Australia looked good (from what I saw). Either Australis is stronger than we thought or France is far weaker. In any event, France came away with a win. 2-1.
Argentina vs. Iceland
Lionel Messi had his penalty kick saved by Iceland keeper Hannes Halldorsson. Fox Sports has showed it over and over and over and over and over and over again. Alexi Lalas, who used to be this goateed bad boy of soccer and is now a corporate talking head, has been talking up Ronaldo’s performance yesterday versus Messi’s paltry one today. Ronaldo made his penalty because he’s a star! Messi missed his because he’s a failure. Well, folks, that’s a nice story but it’s premature. It’s day three of the tournament. And let’s look at the facts. Both Portugal and Argentina drew their first games. Yes, Ronaldo had a hat trick. Yes, Ronaldo came through in the last minutes of his game. And yes Portugal played Spain and Argentina played Iceland. But facts are facts. Day three of the tournament. Two draws. Let’s not crown one player king of the world and throw another on the scarp heap, okay?
How about Iceland, though? Smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup and they drew Argentina? Pretty impressive.
Peru vs. Denmark
There is not much that matters about this game other than Jorge Perez-Navarro’s announcing. He even dropped a “boom goes the dynamite.” Listening to him versus anyone else calling a game just amped up the excitement. I believe during the game he said something to the effect of, “Whoops, that was a mistake!” I think we need all announcers to not be native English speakers. He called the game literally and simply and with so much enthusiasm. It was brilliant.
Beyond that, Kasper Schmeichel was pretty amazing in goal for Denmark. I think the stat is that Denmark has not allowed a goal in 2018 and I can see why. All of the attention was on Christian Eriksen, even from me. But it was Schmeichel that made this a game against a Peru side the looked like it had been chomping at the bit for thirty-six years to get back to a World Cup.
This game also featured a second penalty called by VAR. Christian Cueva missed it and I feel for him.
Croatia vs. Nigeria
I wore my Croatia jersey while secretly hoping that Nigeria would take the game. I met a friend at a bar in Williamsburg for this one and I’m staring to realized that my whole jersey curse thing, i.e. wearing the jersey of the team that I don’t want to win is kind of odd given all the nods that I get from other people thinking that we’re on the same page. And also the whole believing that my clothing choices influence games thing.
I felt like this game was pretty even but Nigeria just wasn’t strong enough to score on Croatia. While Croatia’s goals were an own goal and a penalty, the were going to score eventually.
Conclusion for Day 3
The biggest piece of soccer news today was Messi’s missed penalty. I have to say, I’m not that concerned for Argentina… yet. It’s unfortunate that it came the day after Ronaldo’s hat trick but I’d rather Messi got his mistakes out of the way early in the tournament. The question remains, are there still more to come?
