I wrote plenty last night about referee Koman Coulibaly, but here’s the latest from ESPN. This week’s Weekend Links at RandBall also covers Coulibaly in some detail, mostly to ruminate on what might be an appropriate punishment.

A few notes on today’s games:

Denmark 2:1 Cameroon

The Danes got the win, Cameroon is going home, and both teams should be fairly embarrassed with how they played. The highlights were littered with horrible giveaways – I’m talking things like “keeper, apparently blinded by the sun, accidentally passes the ball directly to opposing forward.” Dennis Rommedahl set one up and scored one for the Danes, who mostly got better goalkeeping than did Cameroon (even though the Danish defense might have made more horrible, horrible errors.)

Cameroon is the first team eliminated this year, and the Danish win also made The Netherlands the first team to advance to the knockout round. (That Cameroon-Holland game next week should be a real doozy.)

Holland 1:0 Japan

It’s funny – as I mentioned, the Dutch have two wins, something only one other team has managed from their first two games, they’re through to the next round, and yet all anybody can talk about is how disappointingly they’ve played. We’ve all come to expect glorious, entertaining soccer from the Oranje, and they’ve scored two goals along with a Danish own goal so far. Everyone’s so disappointed. (I suspect no one from Holland is too concerned about qualification, though.)

Ghana 1:1 Australia

The Aussies finally scored, with Brett Holman putting them in front after just 11 minutes, but they can’t seem to stay on the field. Tim Cahill was sent off in their match against Germany, and Harry Kewell got the gate after just 24 minutes against Ghana, with a deliberate handball on the line causing the dismissal. Ghana scored the resulting penalty to tie it, but couldn’t take advantage of their extra man to get a winner, mostly thanks to the goalkeeping of Mark Schwarzer. And frankly, the Aussies could have grabbed their own winner; they may even have had the better of play after Kewell left the field.

Group D, then, is incredibly muddled; any two of the four teams, with Germany and Serbia, still could go through to the knockout round (though the Aussies need a win, some help, and a wheelbarrow full of goals to do so.) In Group E, Denmark needs a win against Japan to go through; a draw or a loss will put Japan in the knockout round.

It’s all so complicated, really. (I think we’ll all feel better if Italy loses to New Zealand tomorrow, which would frankly be hilarious.)