{"id":85,"date":"2002-06-14T15:54:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-14T14:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2012-12-13T13:11:59","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T13:11:59","slug":"japan-belgium-korea-and-us-qualify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/2002\/06\/14\/japan-belgium-korea-and-us-qualify\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan, Belgium, Korea and US qualify"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who&#8217;d have thought it?<\/p>\n<p>FIFA must be as pleased as the supporters &#8211; three countries where football is still in its infancy are through to the second round. Can&#8217;t be bad for the competition. Or the advertising revenue, either, come to that&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"sofvm_embed alignnone\"><div class=\"sofvm_video\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Brazilian fans in Suwon\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/71D11Wy2wl4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<p>The Brazilian contingent make some noise.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sofvm_video_post_link\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/videos\/brazilian-fans-in-suwon\/#respond\">Comment on this video<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<p>I thought all the qualifications were well deserved &#8211; the Portuguese played negative football in the first half, and paid the price &#8211; 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&#8230; effectively guaranteeing Korean qualification. And then Korea did the Amercans a favour by putting them through. Gotta love the irony.<\/p>\n<p>Seoul is booting off at the moment &#8211; Koreans celebrating like they&#8217;ve won the cup. Which, of course they haven&#8217;t. But it hardly matters &#8211; they&#8217;ve played entertaining football and I applaud their style. Even if they get no further in the competition, they&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who&#8217;d have thought it?<\/p>\n<p>FIFA must be as pleased as the supporters &#8211; three countries where football is still in its infancy are through to the second round. Can&#8217;t be bad for the competition. Or the advertising revenue, either, come to that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-korea"],"geo":null,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}