by bigfluffylemon » Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:03 am
Well well well. Warning, long post ahead.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Denmark-Australia game. Was about as compelling as a low scoring draw can be. It might have helped that I had a stake in it though. Funny - I get wholeheartedly behind the Socceroos, but despite having lived here for many years now, I find it hard to support the Australian cricket team, even when they're not playing England. Maybe it's growing up with the long rivalry between the cricket sides that doesn't exist in football, maybe it's the fact that Australia are usually the underdogs in football, maybe it's the fact that the Aussie cricket team always seems to consist of a bunch of arrogant *modded*s, I'm not sure.
The penalty call was questionable at best - frankly, I was very surprised when it was given. I guess Australia could argue it was justice after a tight VAR penalty was given against them in the France game. Nonetheless, I think a draw was a fair result overall. After the first ten minutes, I thought Australia were in for a hiding, but they came back very well indeed. Eriksen's goal was superb, but he didn't do a lot else, I was surprised he was given Man of the Match. Personally I'd have given it to Matt Leckie. He was excellent, and behind everything good that Australia did, until Arzani came on as a sub. That kid's got some promise.
Australia's problem is that in both games they really haven't looked like scoring from open play. They just don't have the quality in the final third to turn pressure into chances, and chances into goals. While there were plenty of good breaks, the delivery into the area was usually poor, or there wasn't an attacker in place, or on the rare occasion the ball found the target the first touch wasn't good enough. Part of that was due to the quality and organisation of the Danish defence, but I couldn't help but feel that there were a few situations where a natural striker like a Kane or a Costa would have slotted something away. Cahill might be getting on a bit, but the man is a natural goalscorer - you can't help but feel he would have offered more threat in the box than the likes of Nabbout or Kruse - the latter was particularly wasteful.
Australia have exceeded my expectations in the tournament in how well they've played, but they still only have a point. Did they deserve more? Perhaps, but not overwhelmingly so. Technically they're still alive, but they need to beat a decent Peru side, and hope the French do them a favour against Denmark. Given both France and Denmark will be happy with a draw, and France have been sub-par so far, it is likely to be a quiet game. No one expected Australia to progress, but it will still be a bit of a disappointment for me to see them leave.
As for Croatia-Argentina, wow. Argentina truly are mediocre side, Messi excepted. Perhaps we should have seen this coming - they only just made it through South America qualifying needing a string of results to go their way in the final round, and then drew with Iceland in a pretty ordinary showing. Yet no-one in the prediction game called the result. A one man team is always going to be a problem, but the issue that I see it is that their style doesn't mesh with Messi's talents at all. With Barcelona, he has quality support up front which allows him to use his amazing vision and distribution ability to give options. With Argentina, they're playing from much deeper so he doesn't have the support, and it's not too hard for other teams to isolate him and keep him marked. And without a free-flowing Messi, Argentina don't have the skill to create many chances.
Argentina have Nigeria last, who are pretty weak, so they may well still go through. But it's out of their hands now. Who'd have thought Iceland-Nigeria would be such a critical game?