(Kris Boyd: International. Goal scorer. Houdini.)
Whilst club coaches, directors and medical staffs were tearing their hair out in fright over the deadly fatinjury bug which can be caught during midweek international friendlies sandwiched between domestic weekends, we were afforded with some decent(ish) football. Much of it was designed to gel squads, burst personnel bubbles and flirt with tactics which would drive the media into a frenzy.
The first may have happened; the second probably happened; the third definitely happened (when doesn’t it?).
Though the results of friendlies are largely meaningless, one slightly worrisome stat did emerge from Wednesday: the record in games between a World Cup team and one that didn’t qualify.
4-1-5.
Greece, Slovakia, Ghana, Honduras & Denmark all fell to “lesser teams”. Not quite how you want to prepare for the World Cup.
Meanwhile, there were a number of other curious results:
- Ivory Coast lost to South Korea 2-0, and did so without a manager. Presumably it was Drogba barking directives from the pitch, and that’s never going to end well.
- Algeria lost 3-0 to Serbia in Algiers; The Desert Foxes then blamed it on Coffi Codjia.
- Germany lost – in Munich! – to a team coached by Diego freakin Maradona.
- South Africa drew 1-1 in Jo’burg with Namibia, ranked 113. For most of these teams, the games mean positively nothing. They however, after the tumult the footballing portion of the team has endured, might want to step it up.
The full results of World Cup teams:
* – New Zealand v Mexico is being played late.
Other, less-concerned with the World Cup team results.
Cherry-picked highlights:
Yossi Benayoun performs something out of a late-90’s Jackie Chan movie: it starts out in a flash of brilliant technique, then something happens, but you don’t know quite what, and Jackie winds up on the other side of the scrum unscathed before scoring a goal. Or speaking in poorly dubbed Engrish.
Peter Crouch weighs in on the FIFA-offside debate:
Rene Adler repays the mountains of support and praise heaped upon him before the game, not to mention the No.1 jersey.
Oh.
Nigel De Jong arrives fashionably late to Stuart Holden’s lower leg.
Niko Krancjar shows us simple is better – though not quite as good as going to the World Cup.
Guirane NDaw hits a free kick that looks menacing even in slo-mo.
And finally, it’s okay to laugh (via The Guardian’s minute-by-minute):
40 min: Defoe’s turn to head over. He then scampers into the box and El Hadari saves well. “From Tyldesley’s commentary: ‘And Egypt are passing it around in triangles – or should I say pyramids?!’. No Clive, you shouldn’t. For so many reasons I can’t be bothered to list,” says Bill Chilton. “What odds ‘Egypt are Niles better than England’ and ‘They sphinx it’s all over’ before full-time?” Sphinx it’s all over. Ha! Oh.
[Vids via 101 Great Goals]