SRI'S Blog

W eek 3 ( yes it has been three weeks ) saw the completion of the group matches and the tournament getting in to Knock out  and Hear break phase. As predicted , Germany , USA qualified and it was sad to  see Portugal go out from this group. Playing the first match badly cost them the opportunity to move up . You can have the Stars in your team but unless everyone plays well including your star player, you go nowhere .. So much for team work and team dynamics Greece was the surprise packet from its group along with Columbia. Italy got dumped by Uruguay but the man of the match was Suarez. How on earth can he be doing what he did ?. Not for the first time that he was found chewing off flesh of his opponent players. FIFA quickly swung in to action and there is not only a ban on matches but a fixed time period of time  that he has to sit out. Argentina and Nigeria went through from their group as well as France and the Swiss from their groups The final line up saw Bel

Expected Results Spain getting knocked out was expected one for me .. After glory of the Euro 2008, World Cup 2010 and Euro 2012 , this was bound to happen. Aging players , possession football not helping to score goals saw Spain getting eliminated at the  Group stage. In their match against Chile , they held possession for more than 65  %  but that did not help as Chile pumped in two goals  to send them crashing out. They will play for pride with Australia with no stakes to both teams England was the second one to go out on my expectations. They again played so well but just lost the game ( pun intended ). Suarez continued his fine run from the Premier League and that was enough to pack England off Unexpected one Costa Rica   is turning out to be the dark horse. When they beat Uruguay, there some stir and many believed it was one off .  No --They took on the next top ten ranked team Italy and put them under severe pressure by winning their game . Again Italy

The last time I wrote covering an event in Sport was the  Cricket World Cup in 2011 that  India won again after 28 years. The FIFA world cup is an event that is followed and watched by so many in different countries. In comparison --- food for thought  --I was looking at the attendance at the World Cup Hockey event last Sunday and the attendance at the finals was something that  a league cricket game attendance in India woild put to a shame. For a World Cup event , that was held in  Hague, there was little crowd. Sad indeed. But Football is different .. I see everyone talking about , posting about it in FB and sometimes I am amazed that they have picked bits and pieces to be knowledgeable and be able  to comment on a post in FB. So it is the in thing till the event ends ! Augurs well for the game.  My thoughts were to watch some selected matches that had my interest and where I expect sparks to fly. But I quickly realized that watching matches Live  was  a big time zone cha