You’ve gotta hand it to One News. On another day of high drama in Brazil they led their sports bulletin with a bitch and moan about diving. Sure, Arjen Robben may have taken a dive or two throughout his career but the rest of the world was looking at a great game of football while Andrew Saville was dribbling about something that’s just not that big a deal anymore. I love the moral outrange in New Zealand when it comes to...
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Damn Brazil, that was close. Too close if you’re serious about winning this World Cup of yours. I will say I kinda called it yesterday, but boy what a reaction there would have been on Copacabana Beach if Chile had won that shoot-out. Or if Pinilla’s shot had hit the underside of the cross bar and gone in rather than hitting it flush and bouncing away. It is a game of such, such fine margins now and we could quite easily...
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There weren’t any games today as the top 16 sides took a break before launching back into action, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to have my say about a rather curious phenomenon that sits at the fringes of this (and any other) World Cup – the backlash. Here in New Zealand as well as in the United States, there’s a group of people who don’t particularly like football, for whatever reason....
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So, the final group games are done and dusted and we have our final sixteen teams. The Americans and Algerians made it, which just helped add to the unexpected nature of this tournament. Given what’s gone down over the last couple of weeks that should, really, have been expected I guess. I didn’t watch too much of today’s games. I was up early enough, as per usual, to watch a taped version of the USA versus Germany...
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And so, just like that, we’re a fortnight into this World Cup. Today’s games weren’t overly inspiring, save for Lionel Messi versus Nigeria. Without much fuss, actually none at all, Messi has carried his team into the knock-out stages. Argentina hasn’t looked fantastic so far but, like the Belgians, that could be the way to play it. Some of the other big favourites – Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany...
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