South Africa – Cape Town / Johannesburg 07-06-2010
The 2010 World Cup begins in 4 days – this coming Friday – and the 32 teams are slowly stepping up the practice pace in their preparations ahead of their group games.
As this intensity mounts, during their initial trainings on South African soil -the players of these same 32 teams are beginning to feel the heat and injuries could start to creep in.
Good News !!!!
Along with Lionel Messi/ Argentina, both strikers Didier Drogba/Ivory Coast and Arjen Robben/Holland were to be the ‘big-draw’ up front to score goals and provide their usual mouth-watering magic.
However both Drogba and Robben are dealing with ‘last-minute’ injuries but it seems that the ‘Football-Gods’ has looked down forgivingly upon the fans and it seems both fabulous players will grace the fields of South Africa!!!
The following very good list of players who are not so lucky – injured and will definitely view the WC 2010 on television-
-John Obi-Mikel/Nigeria
-Rio Ferdinand/England
-Andrea Pirlo/Italy
- Michael Essien/Ghana
-Oscar Cardozo/Paraguay
-Humberto Suazo/Chile
-Jose Bosingwa/Portugal
-Michael Ballack/Germany
-Heiko Westermann/Germany
Rotterdam 02 -05-2010
Holland were slow to start in this game but showed that their strength is in putting on a great show, passing the ball, controlling mid-field and scoring nice goals.
While a lot of passes went astray, and not everyone was as completely focused as they should have been – for an exhibition game this was fine.
The weakness is in the back – and while this team seem able to keep putting more goals into the opposing goal than they let into their own net, it might be nice to have the defense organized on a bit more solid footing then is presently the case.
The defenders, the young van der Wiel, and not so young Mathijsen and van Bronckhorst generally did what they were supposed to do. They screwed up in this game once but one can be reasonably sure this problem is not endemic – as with Heitinga.
Heitinga is slow and dull-witted – a deadly combination for a defender. He nearly caused a penalty with his lazy stupid type of man-marking – he seems to be a problem waiting to happen.
The goalie-problem or ‘post van der Saar problem’ has been well resolved with a combination of experience and youth.
Sander Boschker the ‘3rd’ goalie came on in the 2nd half – he is not that tall, and the oldest player on the team – but he is a great goalie and I prefer him over the other two van Stekelenburg & Vorm who are also ‘okay’ – average but not great goalies – like Julio Cesar of Inter/Brazil.
Holland plays Hungary in Amsterdam on Saturday in its final warmup before leaving for South Africa.
Ghana play Latvia the same day in the British city of Milton Keynes.
