The Ball 2002

Who’d have thought it?

FIFA must be as pleased as the supporters – three countries where football is still in its infancy are through to the second round. Can’t be bad for the competition. Or the advertising revenue, either, come to that…

I thought all the qualifications were well deserved – the Portuguese played negative football in the first half, and paid the price – though I struggle to remember a team so effectively shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. Poland were as good as their word, and helped the Koreans relax by scoring two early goals… effectively guaranteeing Korean qualification. And then Korea did the Amercans a favour by putting them through. Gotta love the irony.

Seoul is booting off at the moment – Koreans celebrating like they’ve won the cup. Which, of course they haven’t. But it hardly matters – they’ve played entertaining football and I applaud their style. Even if they get no further in the competition, they’ve proved that Asian football can no longer be dismissed as second-rate. I rest my case with the Korean goal today. Bergkamp and Gascoigne eat your hearts out.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 14th, 2002 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.