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The beauty and boredom of soccer
June 11, 2008A couple of days ago, the beauty of soccer was on full display when the Netherlands out-finessed Italy, 3-0.
It was everything a fan of the game could hope for. Elegant attacking, brilliant passes. Even up 2-0, the Dutch were searching for more goals.
Unfortunately, if a soccer hater would have tuned into the game before Italy-Holland, then their resentful behavior toward the sport would have been verified.
Because Romania-France was awful. The 0-0 contest, if you could call it that, had few scoring chances. Sure, France was without its best player, but still.
For the most part though, the first five days of games have been highly entertaining. The day after Holland's win, Spain -- led by David Villa's hat trick -- crushed Russia, 4-1.
Portugal continues its brilliance with three goals against the Czech Republic a few hours ago, and Turkey captured an impressive second-half comeback against the Swiss in a game that featured a driving rainstorm.
It was the tournament's first win by a team that has given up the first goal.
One of my only other complaints was the play of the defending-champion Greeks yesterday. I knew it would be a dull game when Greece opened with five defensive backs.
At one point late in the first half, Greece was playing keepaway by passing the ball around in the defense, with Sweden just standing there, begging for them to attack.
Luckily, the Swedes broke through on a savory strike by Ibrahimovic and won 2-0.
There are 10 games down, 21 more to go. I guess we will see if this offensive outburst keeps going.
Posted by at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
