World Cup 2010: Germany 3-2 Uruguay
“Let’s make this a celebration,” intones ITV commentator Peter Drury, before kick-off, and millions of people, all at once, think, “yeah, lose your voice.” Uruguay’s national anthem is what Billy...
Category "World Cup"
What’s The Point Of The Third/Fourth Place Play-Off?
So the World Cup third-place play-off is the most meaningless match in international football? Holders of tickets for England’s Wembley friendly against Hungary in (count ‘em) five weeks may have...
World Cup 2010: Germany 0-1 Spain
Two years is not a long time in football, especially when you consider that national sides evolve, certainly more than club sides. In that respect, you would have expected quite...
World Cup 2010: Uruguay I-Spy
Our resident pencil wrangler Dotmund was very excited about the prospect of Uruguay playing the Netherlands. However, we at Twohundredpercent have noticed that some of his match reports during...
World Cup 2010: Uruguay 2-3 Netherlands
At times they looked like making heavy weather of it, particularly in the last couple of minutes of stoppage time. Indeed, for the first twenty minutes of the second half...
Suarez Again: What Constitutes Cheating?
Tonight in Cape Town, Uruguay will take the field against Holland in their biggest match since their last World Cup semi-final in 1970. It will be the biggest match any...
How “Multiculturalism”, Apparently, Cost England The World Cup
Over the last eight days or so, England’s failed bid to win the 2010 World Cup has been picked at repeatedly by the sports press in an attempt to try...
Argentina Flounder Before German Unity
Out of the chaos of the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup has come some degree of consensus. If today’s newspapers have one theme running through them, that theme is...
World Cup 2010: Paraguay 0-1 Spain
What a world. Regardlesss of the lie of the fixtures, if anyone had said two days ago that Paraguay and Uruguay would be the last South American representatives in the...
World Cup 2010: Argentina 0-4 Germany
Some games need no introduction, and they fall into two camps. One camp is the poor games that are best left forgotten (which can only be known after the event)....
Brazil Undone By Dutch Pragmatism
Never meet your heroes, they say. It is possible that a lot of people met theirs yesterday in the form of the 2010 version of the Brazilian national football team....
Luis Suarez, Or Why Football And Morals Don’t Mix
It was the perfect storm at the end of the perfect match. This morning, though, moral outrage is brewing. With one movement of his hands, Uruguay’s Luis Suarez has ignited...
World Cup 2010: Uruguay 1-1 Ghana (Uruguay Win 4-2 On Penalties)
If this isn’t the signature match of this World Cup, an absolute classic awaits. All the “total football” focus had been on Holland v Brazil but in the end only...
World Cup 2010: Netherlands 2-1 Brazil
Into the quarter-finals then, and now it starts getting serious.This was the first clash between two teams with serious winning credentials - or at least, Brazil's pedigree was beyond dispute....
The England Obituary, Part Five: A View From North of the Border
In the last of our responses to England's World Cup campaign, Gavin Saxton presents a view of the campaign as seen from Scotland, and is less than impressed by the...
The England Obituary, Part Four: Where Do We Go From Here?
In the fourth part of our look at England’s elimination, Rob Freeman suggests that perhaps we don’t need a post mortem of this team’s so-called failure, and suggests that England...
Good Luck, Jonathan: Nigeria’s President Calls The Shots
In the immediate aftermath of a disappointing World Cup campaign, it might seem like an appealing idea. Get the team out of all competitive football and force them to rebuild...
The England Obituary, Part 3: “Ha Ha Ha!”, Or “Bloody Hell!”?
In the third part of our brief series on England at the 2010 World Cup, Mark Murphy reports on his four-yearly bout of schadenfreude and how England at least managed...
The England Obituary, Part Two: What The Papers Said (And Didn’t Say)
As some of you may have noticed, England were knocked out of the weekend in just about the most emphatic way possible last weekend. Over the next couple of days,...
The England Obituary, Part 1: Do England Need An English Manager?
To fill the void caused by the World Cup rest days before the quarter-finals (I've never fully worked out if the rest is for us or them), over the next...