The man in the middle...

For all those people who have been dying to read my reviews on the world cup, here's something... the most important man on a football field at any given point of time is the referee. He controls the game and the players. Going by all that, you might have expected better standards at fifa's flagship event. The refereeing at this edition of the world cup has been abysmal to say the least. the men in black have been card happy...flashing reds and yelows like there was no tomorrow..and they haven't been helped much by players going down like rag dolls everytime they were touched. that certainly affected the tempo of the games and ruined a few like the one between portugal and holland in which both teams finished with nine men. Fifa have a lot of work on their hands if they are to avoid catastrophes like that in south africa in 2010. Now a bit about my failed dark horses, the czech republic. Riding high on european success, the czech came to germany hoping to create some waves. And they did just that by beating the USA comprehensively in their first game. But the injuries to key strikers baros and koller dealt a blow to their campaign. Ghana exploited their weaknesses in defence, played some attacking football and caused an upset. All crdit to the black stars for doing the unthiknable and beating the no 2 ranked team in the world. But their run came to an end in the pre quarters when the brazilian bandwagon rolled over them on the way to hopefully another cup. the world will remmber ghana for their unique brand of attacking football and never say die attitude. About england the less said the better.Sven seems to have taken the team backwards on their quest with the team turning in drab performances match after match. If it had'nt been for some brilliant individual goals from the likes of gerrard and joe cole,beckham and co would have been packing their bags before now. Another team that gave it all but lost out in round two was australia. the socceroos were first timers at the world cup, having reached there via a playoff with much fancied uruguay. their world cup dream came to an end 5 seconds before probable extra time against italy due to a debatable penalty decision.Totti smashed in a perfect penalty nad broke aussie hearts. Finally France put to rest never ending criticism by showing up with the performance deserving of world champions. The press were all but ready to put out obituaries on the french team and zidane in particular. But just when you had discounted les blues, they turned up an outstanding performance against favourites spain. It was perhaps fitting that zidane rounded off their performance with the third goal after speculation that we had seen the last of this pastmaster of football. That's about it for now.Until the quarter finals...