The Australians haven’t had it easy. 1-0 down first and then 2-1 down. It has been a ride so which the Australians will not forget for a long, long time.

Graham talks about the emotions during qualifying in the Australian interview:

This time, we held our own in Uruguay and had a stellar second round in Australia, managing to get through on penalties. Cue a huge party. Everyone loves it, even some of the oval ball fans, and it’s great. If we do well, thesport will really take off here.

Emotions? I can’t even begin to describe it. It’s overtaken the whole country. Everyone’s buying the jerseys. Everyone’s talking about it in the newspapers and on the street. It actually took a few days for the realisation to set in.

If you ever get a chance to watch a video of the Australia-Uruguay game in Sydney, watch it - you’ll see the emotion in the fans, the players and even in the commentators, who were close to tears. It’s an experience I will never forget. It was a pretty entertaining game too - a real cliffhanger.

It seemed that the party will be short lived when Japan was allowed a goal which shouldn’t have been. The Aussies have missed the previous world cups in the last moment and so, now that they were in the world cup, this opportunity would not be allowed to slip without a fight - and fight they did! Three goals within moments meant the hopes of qualifying to round 2 were alive.

The game versus Croatia was a scramble and by the end, every thing went crazy. It appeared more of a rugby match than a football match. Even the referee Graham Poll got caught in the excitement. He forgot to send off Simunic when he was yellow carded the second time. Then, he yellow carded him a third time.

The game was the best we have seen from the world cup so far in my opinion. The setup was ideal in the first place. With Japan having only a mathematical chance to qualify, we had two teams battling it out - with only one from the two to go through. Same situation for the Italy-Czech match in perspective but the Italians know to hold a team more than most - not an as exciting prospect.

This game saw either of the two teams had to score to qualify at different points in the game. Add to that, neither team’s defense was good, both teams tried their hearts out as none wanted to loose. Both teams kept attacking with short passes as neither were equipped to instrument longer passes with half as much accuracy. The football wasn’t that good but the competition was. It was a classic.

Ghana also found themselves feeling similar emotions to the Aussies after they defeated USA. They had a tough qualifying as Epton pointed out in the Ghana interview:

Many had ruled out Ghana’s chances of qualifying ahead of DR Congo, South Africa and Burkina Faso. DR Congo and Burkina Faso were expected to create surprises in the group. However, South Africa were the favorites since they have featured twice in the World Cup finals in 1998 and 2002 respectively. Ghana did not have a good start during the qualification after a 1-0 defeat by Burkina Faso and fans of the national team became unhappy and less confident but they quickly recovered and had two consecutive wins against South Africa (3-0) and Cape Verde (2-0), in order to maximize their hopes of World Cup qualification.

South Africa lost hopes of qualifying after a shocking home defeat at the hands of the Black Stars 2-0 during the return leg in June 2005. Ghana’s historic qualification sent thousands of jubilant fans to the streets of Ghana to commemorate the team’s achievement – dancing, singing, partying while vehicles on the other hand had their roles to play with honking horns reminiscent of the vocal sound of trumpets airing passionately during a state occasion.

They defeated a more fancied Czech team and shut out the US. Well deserved and a proud moment in Ghana sport history. The Czech have nothing to do except rue the loss against Ghana. They were a very good team whom I rated pretty highly. Player injuries meant their downfall? Isn’t sport about striding through adversaties. Czech Republic failed the tough test right there.

The qualification for the second round will mean a huge boost for the game for Australia and Ghana. USA has failed to qualify and in similar proportions, not qualifying for round 2 will mean a huge set back for US soccer. A lot of people became interested in the world cup from the US. Most of them will run away from football seeing the poor US performance. It is tough to climb up the ladder fast in a world sport like football. It is equally tough for a sport to catch the attention of the US kid given the many options he chooses from.

I am happy Brazil are back to form. It had to happen sooner or latter. The big question now is - what will happen in Group G and will France qualify or not? See here for what needs to be done for the teams to qualify. This has been a superb world cup so far and it has been delightful to watch.

On a side note, the quiz results will be announced tomorrow as tabulations still need to be done.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.