Dejected Koreans and Czechs

It is pitiful to see both of these teams crashed out of the World Cup. The South Koreans had two great matches and needed a win against Switzerland to enter the second round. Previously, they had beaten Togo and drew with France. In the match against Switzerland, they played dreadfully. Their defences were very clumsy. It is clear that their tactics wasn’t really working. They were playing long crosses upfront and the strikers were unable to head the ball because of tight marking by the Switzerland. They were not playing fast enough to zip pass the defence of the Swiss team. And it is clear that luck wasn’t on their side in that match. They had so many missed chances and it’s too bad that they were unable to score. The game ended 2-0 to Switzerland. Senderos scored the first goal for the Swiss team by a header. No Koreans are aware of the freekick cross and they paid the price. Frei scored the second goal for Switzerland. The Koreans thought he was offside but the referee said that the ball was kicked to Frei by a Korean player. You just got to pity them because they had just let in a suicide goal. But it’s not everything bad about the Koreans. The goalkeeper, Lee Woon-Jae was brilliant. Park Ji-Sung and Lee Chun-Soo were playing well too. It’s just that luck was not on their side.

I thought the Czechs will be a challenger for the World Cup. We must remember that Czech Republic is no.2 in the FIFA World Ranking. They played superbly in the Euro 2004 and were in the semi-finals. They had Petr Cech, one of the best goalkeepers in the world. But what when wrong? They played their first game very well. They killed off the Americans in the first game. But after the match, they lost all their top strikers as Jan Koller and Milan Baros were injured. In the second match, they were unable to find the net and Ghana were the better side. They lost 2-0. In a must-win game against Italy, they were unable to find the net again although Milan Baros played. The Italians send them home after winning them 2-0.