Three quick essays on Sunday’s matches at the World Cup…

Brazil 3:1 Ivory Coast

Three talking points from this one.

  1. Kaka was sent off in this one, thanks to one of the worst dives you’ll ever see. Kader Keita, the Ivory Coast forward, ran into Kaka, whose elbow therefore hit Keita in the midsection. Because Keita ran into him, remember. Keita then went down, grabbing his face – which again, had not been touched – thus earning Kaka a second yellow card and a sending off. I am sad, not for Kaka, but for soccer.
  2. Luis Fabiano scored what originally I thought was the goal of the tournament, somehow working the ball over and around three defenders in the penalty area before booting the ball into the net. Replays showed that two of those touches were fairly obvious handballs. Oh, replay, you have ruined my youthful wonder.
  3. Brazil has two wins, have qualified for the next round, and yet there are still those talking about how they have not played well. How dangerous is Brazil?

Italy 1:1 New Zealand

Three talking points from this one:

  1. If I happened to be a New Zealand fan, I would have been pretty peeved about commentator Ian Darke‘s call of the Kiwis’ seventh-minute goal. He misidentified goalscorer Shane Smeltz as Winston Reid, despite – and I wish to be sensitive here – the fact that Smeltz is white and Reid is black.
  2. I think we could all enjoy the sight of Fabio Cannavaro falling over and thus directing the ball directly to Smeltz for the goal. (We are, however, surprised that Cannavaro didn’t stay down clutching his face for five minutes.)
  3. After saving a draw against Slovakia for their first-ever World Cup point, this draw is surely New Zealand’s greatest-ever World Cup result. I’m quite pleased for them. (Not least because if they pulled off their first-ever World Cup win against Paraguay next week, they’d be into the knockout round.)

Slovakia 0:2 Paraguay

Three talk… no, I don’t have them in me. I didn’t see this match; the highlights jumped directly from Paraguay’s 27th-minute goal to their 86th-minute goal. They also showed only one Slovakian shot on net, which didn’t come until the 93rd minute. This one must have been a doozy to sit through.

Monday, though, has all the makings of an exciting day. Portugal tries to beat the pants off North Korea, while Switzerland and Chile battle for control of Group H, and Spain must win against Honduras to keep pace.