Togo 0 – 2 Switzerland
Saudi Arabia 0 – 4 Ukraine
Spain 3 – 1 Tunisia
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Yesterday, we learned that the French are back in self-destruct mode. Today, we learned that Switzerland can play attacking football. Just think… if the Swiss had been a bit more adventurous against France, Group G could have been even more interesting. Even so, they still seemed to be holding back against Togo, who (once again) couldn’t turn passionate effort into an actual result.
Group H, meanwhile, isn’t looking much clearer than it did a week ago. Ukraine banished the memories of their 4-0 defeat to Spain, beating Saudi Arabia by the same margin. Not wishing to deflate too many parties in Kiev, but hey… it’s only Saudi Arabia, lads. But then the Saudis did hold African champions Tunisia to a 2-2 draw last week. But, but… that was the bad side of Tunisia’s notoriously schizophrenic football personality, whereas their fast, skilful persona nearly caused a major upset against Spain today. But ultimately didn’t.
Oh, I don’t know… I certainly won’t be putting any bets on the outcome of this group. However, I will wager that we won’t see many refereeing displays worse than the one in the Spain/Tunisia game today. Oh well, at least true randomness is statistically fair to both sides.
Further administrative stupidity has been in evidence away from the actual football action, when a group of Dutch fans were told to remove their comedy orange lederhosen. The offending garments, you see, bore the logo of a Germany brewery which wasn’t on the list of official sponsors. It still baffles me that, in a country with a legendary brewing tradition, one of the main sponsors is Budweiser, US-owned purveyors of plastic fake piss.