We are into day four of the tournament. Twenty teams have played so far. time for a little update. The game continues to get faster. The effects of Adidas introducing a new “fastball” for the tournament are noticeable in my eyes.

The atmosphere in and around the stadiums is great. I spoke with some people who ran into fans from Angola and Portugal and described the very festive atmosphere. Even the English and Dutch fans celebrated their victories without any noticeable violence.

As for the activity on the pitch I have to say that we have seen some very great performances already. Many of the great strikers live up to their reputation. We’ve also seen some world class goal keepers already. The goalies are much more involved into the game and are required to be better all around players. The strongest teams so far were Argentina, Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

The refs are having a tough job with the new passive offsite rules. I think it is confusing for a lot of people. With the speed of the game and without video review it is inevitable that some mistakes will happen. But so far the number of bad calls has been rather limited. Let’s wait until Italy gets cheated out of the tournament again;-) !!!

The German team received some criticism for their all attack style. But I will always prefer a game with six goals over a narrow one to nothing win that involves destructive play all along. I rather have them going down in (attractive) style than playing some scared, defense only soccer. Their coach simply won’t let them.

The US boys just lost against the Czech Republic 3:0. Not a chance. They played like the whole team stayed up last night to watch the NBA finals. It was a bit unreal to see the commentators trying to keep the spirit up. They claimed that nothing is lost and all they need right now is a win against Italy and Ghana. I say: “Pack it up boys, the tournament is over before it even started. You will not beat Italy.” I wouldn’t like to be in Bruce Arena’s position right now. Four years of hard work ended within 90 minutes. This also means that the interest in the U.S. for the World Cup will go down from an even below ground level.

But they are not the only ones in deep trouble. Among the other teams that (I think) can pack up: Costa Rica, Poland, Paraguay and Serbia & Montenegro.

The players are obviously on very high adrenalin. The question is whether they convert that into positive energy as seen in the cases of Germany, Argentina, Ivory Coast, Trinidad & Tobago and the Czech Republic or whether you let it work as an inhibitor. If you can’t produce 100 or 110% at the world cup you won’t succeed.

As for the English team - same old story: They arrive as self declared favorites and then suffer from some unexplainable form of homesickness. They fans were there. The atmosphere was there. And eleven English players were there acting like this would be cricket and they’d have their tea break. There is no tea break in soccer.

Maybe they will wake up once their opponent is named Germany. I am already looking forward to the tabloid headlines of this one.

Favorites?
My money stays on Argentina. They will have to beat themselves with the strong ego of some of their players. Otherwise they have everything in place to the title home.

Easy to write all this stuff - playing in front of the world is a bit harder.

And yes: American commentators still totally suck. They treat their audience like they’ve never seen a game. But that are not the people watching soccer in the mornings on working days. You better get the BBC world feed or outsource that to Bangalore;-)

I keep switching to the Mexican channel if it is getting too bad.

10 games down - 54 more to go…