'Big match' fails to spark
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Comment: George Dearnaley
Brazil versus Portugal! Just saying it elicits some type of excitement in the soul of every football fan. The South American giants versus their former Colonial overlords – a nice historic angle to add spice to what in any case would be a great rivalry between two great football nations.
Rumours of supporters queuing for hours to get tickets, or tickets being sold at outrageous prices as touts took advantage of the interest in the match to make a quick fortune all added to the hype and interest in a match featuring some of the world’s greatest football talents.
Anyone who watched the match will want to know what all the fuss was about!
It was absolute and utter gash. Both teams spent the first 45 minutes trying to kick each other off the park and then the next 45 minutes trying to avoid the ball. It was a match for the extreme die-hard football fan as it offered nothing for the casual supporter and certainly nothing by way of entertainment.
This is what happens when a match gets hyped up because of the participants without taking into consideration the significance of the result.
Neither team needed to win and neither team wanted to lose, and so it was always going to be one of those matches where neither team offered too much going forward – hence the stalemate.
But the bigger significance is that Portugal have now gone all three group matches without conceding a goal, and they kept Brazil goalless for the first time in a World Cup group match since 1978.
And so if you want to get anything out of the match, consider that it is Portugal who are the moral winners – but now they face Spain in a knockout match – and their defence will be sorely tested by the team who pass their opponents to death!
Let’s hope there are some goals along the way.
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