England vs Paraguay 1-0

A 1-0 victory was good enough for England to get 3 points. However, the match left the English asking more questions about their team than being particularly happy. Paraguay isn’t the strongest of sides. England creeped to victory rather than having a convincing performance. Any thing can happen in football but I don’t see England causing a serious threat in the competition if they don’t improve on the pitch drastically.

Sweden vs Trinidad and Tobago 0-0

The Soca Warriors are celebrating. 10 men Trinidad and Tobago have held off Sweden. Sweden dominated possession. Sweden attacked a lot. However, they hit very few shots on target and nothing materialised into goals. There was the very good defending by T and T and the excellent keeping by Shaka Hislop. It is all about scoring goals though. Maybe Sweden should not have kept that extra man marking Stern John and had attacked more. The English will be very happy with this result. It makes qualifying for them a lot easier!

Argentina vs Côte d’Ivoire 2-1

The match was expected to, and produced, the best match of the tournament so far. The pace was faster than any thing we have seen in the tournament. There was controversy as well when the ball crossed the line (looked like that to me at least) but the referee did not give a goal to Argentina early on. That did not matter as Argentina scored two more. Drogba pulled one back to make things exciting in the last 10 minutes. Ivory Coast have a lot of talent and would have easily qualified in most other groups. It can still be possible as they can give Holland a run for their money.

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For part 31 of the series, I caught up with Vancity Eagle who preferred to remain anonymous. Vancity believes that a new world order of football is ahead of us as will be evident from 2010 when African and Asian teams starting making bigger impact. Needless to say, he loves the Côte d’Ivoire football team.

I thank Vancity for agreeing to the interview.

Tell us a bit about the Ivory Coast football history and the football culture which exists.

The team have always been a strong side in Africa, African champs in 92. Barely missed out in qualifying for US 94. Needed to tie Nigeria in their final game but lost. The people love the game and love to play it. Also, there is a fair amount of talent.

Tell us a bit about the Road to the World Cup – the qualification, and the emotions the fans went through at the time.

They were very strong throughout, beating Egypt home and away, however lost to Cameroon home and away. If it wasn’t for Egypt tying Cameroon in the final game, Ivory Coast wouldn’t have qualified. There was celebration every where after the qualification and every one celebrated.

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