American folks, for sure. Matches like this are the reason the sport will never truly succeed here (on whatever level you'd like to reason). Pretty bad, though, for the Swiss to be ousted without giving up a single goal in the tourney.

No one watching the Brazil match?

Half time. Ghana have been the better team but you just can't stop Brazil scoring.

2-0 Ronaldo, Adriano

I think billy is... I think he said he was staying home to watch it today.

I think Ghana will be kicking themselves hard for those missed chances. Again Brazil's performance will not of had many other teams sweating.

Of course this comes from someone that supports a team that cannot string three passes together.

I missed the start. What was up with Essien?

Can't wait for Spain/France.

Pretty sure Essien had accumulated cards.

I agree that Ghana was better throughout. Of course, Brazil finished when it counted.

Come on Spain, who's with me?

I thought Brazil won easily. They let Ghana have the ball but Ghana had scored it would have been all to easy to go up the park and score a few at the other end.

Just because they haven't been exciting doesn't mean they aren't winning at a canter. Brazil are putting 3 and 4 by teams without even trying.

Nah Brazil put 4 past a poor Japan side and then hit 3 against Ghana because they had to push players forward to try and get back in the game and Ghana played the same offside trap that Germany got caught out with in the Costa Rica game. They could very easily of lost that game if Ghana had off taken the chances early on, but yeah Brazil exposed the gaps in the latter stages. Ain't nothing to do with being exciting.

Hell i hope Brazil start turning over teams but they don't seem to have the midfield to impress. Adriano was offside for his goal and apart from Ronaldinho & Kaka they look ordinary compared to the argies.

But i hope they prove me wrong.

Holy fucking cock this is a good game! Vieira puts France up 2-1 w/ a deflected header with 6+ left to play.

Holy fuck, come on spain, come on...

Balls! Zidane you cocksucker.

Brazil/France.

Pete, is Cisse still on the French squad? I've not seen him play yet, but he's in the friggin Adidas commercial. Where's the little golden beard?

Spain fuck it up again.

Those 3 goals didn't do my fantasy team much good either.

Cisse broke his leg in the last warm up match.

Broke his leg in a pre-tournament match.

I'm so gutted, huge spanish football supporter.

ghana deserved to draw that game even

glad zidane scored, man is a gentle giant, how can one not love him

so i told a friend that henry was a diver. then he showed me this--karma's a bitch. to which i responded "touche', mssr pussycat".

is it just me or does ribery look a little "slow"? played a hell of a game though. . . feel bad for spain. i wish joaquin and luis garcia had come in sooner.

Speaking of Ribery, what happened to ole boy's head? Looks like he went hunting with Dick Cheney.

So this is the first time I've been back near a computer since the match.

I'm STILL gutted about what happened. Not the result so much as the way it happened. In no way was it a penalty, and then for it to be Neill that caused it, who has been far and away our best player in the tournament. It would have been so much easier to take if Italy had outplayed us and won by 2 or 3.

But at the same time I'm finding it difficult to criticise the ref for it. I can see how it probably looked bad in real time, but given the shitty refereeing we've had to put up with in our games, I can't shake the feeling that he was trying to make up for the red card, or that it was another case of the established power getting the important calls. He did have a good game in general though. It was the same guy who did the 2nd leg of the playoff against Uruguay, so I was hoping that was a good omen, even when he gave the penalty (given Schwarzer's 2 excellent saves in that match), but it wasn't to be.

I'm more than willing to admit that we lacked the punch up front, which is a huge disappointment since coming into the cup I would have said we could score plenty of goals but not keep enough out. But it wan't really helped by Italy playing defensive even by their standards. Even in the first half they were sitting back and letting have all of the possession (well, until that flurry just before half time anyway).

Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that guys like Bresciano in particular, and Viduka and maybe even Cahill didn't really step up like we needed them to. If Bresciano had played well in that game, having Kewell out wouldn't have been such a big problem. And while Wilkshire did actually play ok, we really missed Emerton out there as well.

Oh well. At least we actually got there this time, rather than having the heartbreak in the final qualifier. And it's had a huge amount of coverage over here as well. Hopefully some of those people will stay interested in the game rather than just jump back in for the next WC.

The big problem we have though is that half of the squad will probably retire now, and we'll have to rebuild immediately for the next Asian Cup qualifier in the middle of August. There doesn't seem to be a lot of confidence among those in the know about the generation immediately behind. God knows why, when it should be full of the players from the team that got to the final of the u17 world championships back in 2000 or so.

And what the hell happened to Spain? They would have been my next choice of a team to support, but it seems like yet again they have completely stuffed it up.

Did France actually start playing well?

yeah i thought ribery looks slow too, tho certainly not on the field

Apparently he was in a bad car crash as a kid (though this was from the "colour" section of the WC coverage in the paper, but the context made it sound like it's true)

escaped mental patient?

Dude's got some sick moves though. Maybe it's partly due to people thinking he's a little slow.

he should cut out the middle man and just shave his dome. . .