Australia are into the round of sixteen, justifiably but horrendously traumatically so.
It was a really bad start to the game, with Croatia scoring a very early goal. I think even from there we knew that Kalac wasn’t the right man for the game. I think he was totally out of position to deal with the free kick.
Not a couple of minutes later, Viduka was rugby tackled by Tomas, and I just knew it was going to be another one of those refs. I see Graham Poll every week in the EPL and he seems pretty decent. Not in this crucial game…
A pretty good first half from Australia, saw them constantly pressing the Croatians, who seemed to slip into a deep defensive mode. Tomas was in the thick of it again, giving away a penalty after a blatant hand-ball. Thankfully Viduka stepped aside for the ole veteran Craig Moore; who was gifted the goal when Pletikosa made a move too early.
Going into the break I was pretty happy with the Aussie’s performance especially in attack.
Fears about Kalac were confirmed as Kovac’s weak shot ten minutes into the second half was horribly fumbled and found it’s way into the goal.
I love Guus Hiddink; Australia’s Jesus Christ of Football. But when selecting a goalkeeper for a crucial game, possibly the most important in Australian history in any sport, height and language skills should not be given precedence over match fitness and recent form. Schwarzer was the obvious choice to play in goals.
Croatia, again to their discredit, after taking the lead fell back into their negative, defensive mode of football, and Australia completely dominated for long periods of time.
Tomas, whom is a defensive Maradonna, committed another blatant ‘hand-of-god’ clearance to deny Josh Kennedy a chance at the ball. Somehow while picking up the hard to see first offence, Poll managed to miss this even more obvious one.
Harry Kewell had a chance to level things when he had a free shot at goal from less than 10 yards out. Pletikosa made an exceptional save to deny him. We should have had him in our goals. Kewell more than made up for it when he put home the equaliser from an obvious offside position. Seriously though, after all the shit we’ve put up with refs over the group games, I really didn’t give a flying … well you know what.
Sadly, in the last quarter the game decended into the seventh level of soccer hell.
I was on the verge of praising Emerton for a pretty solid game, when he got his first yellow card for a stupid time-wasting offence. It didn’t achieve anything, and it came back to bite him, when he was caught for a deliberate handball. So stupid.
Simic saw red, for a second poor tackle, and somehow Simunic after receiving an earlier yellow card, committed in my mind two more yellow card offenses, and was shown a second yellow but not the red card by Poll.
Don’t we have five officials now? You telling me that not one noticed this? Not one decided to tell the ref that Simunic should be off? That Poll after being asked by the Australians if it was his second yellow card, wouldn’t check his notes?
Give me a break and give Poll his plane ticket home.
That not enough, in the dying seconds of the game; well I will probably have to watch this several times to actually grasp what happened. We had an obvious penalty (Simunic again), which may have been played on with a decent advantage, which we used to score the match-winning goal. Poll then pointed to the penalty spot, then somehow it was full-time, then Simunic mouths him off, finally getting sent off after a world first third booking. A simultaneous WTF was echoed throughout Australia I think.
So we made it to the next round, but talk about an anti-climax. I felt Australia deserved to go through, but the manner of the game in which we did was a bit of a let-down.
As for Italy, the guys sound confident, and I am too. After a gutsy win against Japan, a game where we really tested Brazil, and a game where we were superior to Croatia; bring ‘em on.
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