World Cup 2006 first round
Thursday, June 15th, 2006
All teams have played one game each and it’s time to look at which team has convinced and who has disappointed us.
Germany, England, Argentina, Holland, Italy, Chech Republic, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil and Spain all won their opening match which we expected. Some more convincing than other like Spain which crushed Ukraine 4-0 (which actually wasn’t that expected) and Chech Republic which played very good football against the USA.
Poland, Sweden, France, Ukraine on the other hand didn’t live up to the expectation and now faces a though second round in the priliminary rounds. The Swedes played a good match against Trinidad and Tobago, but was incapable when it comes to getting the ball in the net. The french side had the same problem as the swedes on top of not producing enough chances.
So have we come any closer to knowing who will win the trophy this year? Not much as many teams only did what they needed to do to get the first important victory and teams that failed in the first match still has the posibillity to come back in the second round, but then they need to improve their game. In the second round it would be even more important to get 3 point as many teams already faces elimination without a victory.
Brazil is of course still the big favorite to go all the way, but they need to show us more in the coming games than they did against Croatia.