Second Set of Awards

The group stage has been setting up nicely, here is the latest set of awards:

Best Goalkeeper: Vladimir Stojkovic - Saved a German penalty, something most thought was impossible, thus the award goes to the Serbian keeper.

Best Defender: Ryan Nelsen - A rock at the heart of the New Zealand defence. Led by example, and as the only notable player, shone as New Zealand held Italy to a draw.

Best Midfielder: Dennis Rommedahl - Thought he played well last week, but with an assist and a wonderful goal, he grabs this award with both hands.

Best Striker: Diego Forlan - One of Europe's top marksman for quite some time and he showed his experience and class as he ran Uruguay's attack from just behind the front two.

Best Match: Cameroon 1 - 2 Denmark - Truly wonderful game with mistakes galore as Cameroon fought for World Cup survival but came unstuck against the best Rommedahl performance that I have ever witnessed.

Worst Match: England 0 - 0 Algeria - The worst game of football that I have ever watched at any level, yet alone the top level. Simply awful.

Surprise Player: Michael Bradley - To be honest, I didn't know a lot about Bradley apart from the fact that he is the coach's son. However, he has proved to me that he is by far the best American central midfielder that I have ever seen. He is good at everything and I wouldn't be surprised to see him make a transfer to a mid-table premiership club.

Best Manager: Bob Bradley - I was tempted to give New Zealander Ricki Herbert this award but I felt that Bradley made enough changes and seemed to give the team some oomph at the break to allow USA to come back from a 2-0 deficit.

Team of the 'Round':

-------------------Stojkovic--------------------

Maicon----Nelsen-----------Kjær----Coentrão

Rommedahl--Tiago----------Elano----Ronaldo

--------------Forlan--------Fabiano-----------

Predictions

Golden Boot: David Villa (previously Klose) - Villa is showing me that he is going to score lots of goals in this tournament, even if Spain do not make it that far, I think Villa will score at least another 3 goals in this World Cup. Klose is suspended but who knows what can happen in football?

Player of the Tournament: Maicon (previously Lahm) - Like for like, Maicon has the attacking flair to win over voters, as well as the fact that he will probably end up on the winning team.

Winners: Brazil (previously Germany) - I still think Germany will win, but Brazil look unbeatable despite lapses of concentration in defence.

Surprise Team: Mexico (previously Chile) - I think Chile may get knocked out at group stage despite amassing 6 out of 6 points so far due to their lack of goals. Mexico looked the real deal before the World Cup against England and have so far played very well.

Overperformers: Denmark (unchanged) - Still think they are going to make the quarter finals. They play open, attractive football and probably deserved their win.

Underperformers: Cameroon (unchanged) - They are out and they really should not be. Appalling result for the African team which had the best chance of getting out of their group.

Final Thoughts

The referees have been awful, it is time to simply use the best 32 refs in the world rather than picking refs from obscure countries with no professional league.

France Out??

France seem all but out after an abysmal match against Mexico resulting in a 2-0 defeat. However they could go through depending on their result against South Africa and what happens between Mexico and Uruguay. However is their team even that good on paper. They seem to have glaring weaknesses in certain parts of their team. France have a serious lack of quality centre backs, Gallas being their best one. When you look at the '98 French team, they had Blanc and Desailly two of the greatest centre backs ever.

Playing Abidal at centre back has clearly been a huge mistake, he gave away the penalty and played Hernandez onside for his goal. He is not suited to playing there, though he has the physical gifts to enable him to, and was very bad. The whole team played badly and the players look to have a terrible attitude towards the national team and they should be utterly ashamed of themselves. They don't deserve to go through, and it is debatable whether they were deserved to even be there, and I hope that one of the other three teams go through.

Desastre español!! (spanish disaster)

Disaster strikes Spanish football down into the doldrums by 'Gelson Fernandes' super strike'. Another 'park-the-bus' performance undoes the Catalan tactics of Barce/Spain. The first big upset, not including England v USA, of the tournament and Spain are down and about as usual. All it took was a ball down the middle to make a terrible defence weep. Capdevlia had an awful game, leaving big gaps in defence, whilst Pique and Puyol looked like they had never been asked to defend a long ball in their lives before, ironically similar to Arsenal's defence of the long ball to Ibra at the Emirates.

Now, I am not one to discount a team on one performance, after all this is a team who have only lost one game, against USA, coming into this tournament for the last gazillion years but the team looked like they had run out of ideas when sticking Pique upfront was not working. The best Spanish player was definitely Jesus Navas who stays wide and stretches defences. I think he could be the equivalent to Camoranesi for Italy, where he is not the best player in the squad but he allows moves to continue. It is clear that Spain cannot deal with direct football as none of their defensive players have really dealt with plays like that in their day-to-day footballing lives. Maybe Sir Alex Ferguson saw this in Pique and allowed him to leave for this specific reason, but you would have thought that any international defender could deal with a ball like that.

I have always had an issue with Iker Casillas, whilst he is a great shot stopper he does not seem to be able to organise a defence as I have never seen him open his mouth on a pitch and he always seems to be a bit naive when rushing out to an attacker. This was illustrated perfectally in the Switzerland goal when Derdiyok was dribbling towards him, Casillas came feet first out and took the striker out without touching the ball, which should have been a straight red card even with the goal standing. It looked as though he was scared of getting hurt, which is never a good sign.

All in all, not an impressive performance from Spain, but they should still be able to make at least the quarter-finals, though if they come second in this group, they will have to play Brazil, and I know who I would back to come through that tie, and they speak Portuguese.

First Set of Games Complete

Everyone has now played in the World Cup and it has been a fairly slow start BUT I am still going to try my hardest to find as many positives as I can find. Having watched every match so far I will give certain 'awards' to the stand out players and other staff so far (I will be excluding the S. Africa v Uruguay from this round up).

Best Goalie: Vincent Enyeama - There have been quite a few good keepers in this tournament so far keeping, excuse the pun, the goals to a minimum but Enyeama really did well against Argentina, keeping them to just one goal. They looked on fire, especially Messi, but he made some outstanding saves to earn himself this award.

Best Defender: Stephane Grichting - There were many players who could have won this award, especially as so many full backs have played exceptionally but Grichting was the key reason why Switzerland were able to beat Spain. He had an answer for everything that was thrown at him today and definitely deserves this award.

Best Midfielder: Mesut Özil - I had him down as the player to watch in this tournament and he has proved just that. Outstanding against Australia, being the playmaker that Germany have not had in recent times. They have been a team who have been effecient and have ground out results at recent World Cups, but Özil adds creativity to their midfield and allows Schweinsteiger and Khedira to guard their defence.

Best Striker: Lukas Podolski - Scored a goal, made a goal, got the ball into the box and even helped out in defence. His performance was the best I saw all week, plus he really got over his poor club form.

Best Match: Netherlands 2-0 Denmark - I was tempted to pick England's game, but I thought that this was the most open game with both sides having opportunities to win the game.

Worst Match: Japan 1-0 Cameroon - Cameroon looked lethargic and played really poorly. Japan were well organised and reminded me a bit of Fulham but an organised team against a team playing poorly often leads to a boring match. There were quite a few I could have chosen here.

Surprise Player: Hong Yong-Jo - He led the North Korean team out against Brazil and was pretty much the player which everything went through. Was maybe overshadowed by the dribbling of Jong Tae-Se but still had a fantastic game.

Best Manager: Ottmar Hitzfeld - Tactically spot on and got his players to execute against Spain to keep a clean sheet. Great performance and great win. Didn't expect Switzerland to play so well but they could be looking to go through. Chile might be a sterner test as they will feel they have a great chance of winning and could play more attacking football. If Switzerland do well, do not be surprised to see Hitzfeld take the reigns at Liverpool.

Team of the 'Round':

--------------------Enyeama-----------------

Maicon-----Grichting------Heinze------Lahm

Messi------Veron----------Özil-------Robinho

-----------Mueller----------Podolski-----------

Predictions:

Golden Boot: Miroslav Klose - Don't be surprised to see him win it again. He didn't have his shooting boots on but he still bagged a goal. His movement looked really good and with the service that he is getting he should be bagging 5/6 goals here.

Player of the Tournament: Phillip Lahm - World-class full back who can do it all. His crosses were pin-point accurate and it looks as though he could get an assist every game. Unstoppable.

Winners: Germany - Without a doubt they looked the best team in the opening matches. Even if they weren't playing well I still think that they could win it, it's in their blood and 20 years is too long for Germany not to win it.

Surprise Team: Chile - I do not think that many people really knew a lot about their team despite scoring the most goals in South America. Sanchez is the real deal.

Overperformers: Denmark - I was really impressed with the way that they played. I know they lost to Holland, but they should be able to finish second in that group on that performance. Bendtner looked good and Rommedahl played really well. I think they could easily make the quarter finals.

Underperformers: Cameroon - To me, they were the worst performing team in the tournament, even worse than Greece. They were appalling and for some reason they played Eto'o on the right when clearly he would be more suited being the focal point for their attack. Maybe they want him to be more involved in open play.

Final Thoughts :)

If you have made it this far than I thank you for reading this really long article. I thought that two referees looked very poor. Marco Antonio Rodriguez is a referee who loves to give out red cards and proved this when he gave one to Tim Cahill for no good reason. Even Bastian Schweinsteiger admitted that this was the wrong call (typical German). The other referee was the one from Seychelles who refereed Hondurus v Chile. Eddy Maillet was appalling and should not be allowed to ref another game at this tournament. He could not even get the simple decisions correct.

COME ON ENGLAND!!!!!!