itsbeautifuloutside

Japan v Greece

Natal, 19th June 2014

Match Report

There's nothing to make your heart sink faster than turning on the TV to hear '… and first, Jonathan Pearce.' He is one of the worst commentators, he get's indignant, he over reacts and he doesn't seem to see the most obvious of things.

On the plus side, Yoshida is playing, and the Japanese fans seem to have blown up blue plastic bags; I do like Japanese idiosyncrasies.

It only took about ten minutes for the Mexican wave to start, that tale tell sign of increased crowd noise when not too much is happening on the pitch.

I don't know too much about the Greeks really (The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing), but I guess the fact that Socrates is playing means they've gone for experience.

The game was failing to hold my attention, and I was playing around with my phone (B was already asleep on the sofa) when the Greek captain dived in on the Japanese captain, received his second yellow card and trudged off. Greece then had a little flurry of activity around the Japanese penalty area, but the game soon fell back into the routine of Japan attacking and Greece soaking up the pressure.

At half time I pressed 'record' and went to bed.

Up bright and early and before 7am, even before putting the kettle on, I'm watching the second half. Japan have brought Endo on, and Samaras tries to score straight from the kick off; the goal was open and I thought he should have done better.

Japan carry on trying to play footer, while Greece look like they are trying to intimidate them. And then they nearly score, causing the keeper to make a good save from a corner.

Jonathan Pearce's voice is like an annoying mosquito, it's always there whining in the corner of the room that you just can't get rid of.

Karagounis is like an angry, sweaty Louie Spence, always in the ref's face, waving his jazz hands and staring manically.

Yoshida gets punched in the face by his own keeper, I guess it saved a Greek player having to do it.

The best bit of football came on 67 minutes, a flowing exchange of passes from Japan ended with the ball being blazed high and wide at the far post. Such a disappointing end to a decent move.

Although Yoshida ended up in the Greek penalty area as much as his own, it finished 0-0. Japan played well in places, but their final ball was a bit rubbish, Greece were roughty tufty and once they went down to ten men decided they weren't going to lose. Not the best game.

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