In
Algeria, Greece, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Uruguay = 100%. The Algerians pulled themselves together after a trying final match and Antar Yahia’s goal sends them through to the World Cup. Excellent perseverance by them. Watched the Greece/Ukraine matchup and Dimitris Salpigidis’ goal came pretty much out of the blue and Ukraine couldn’t seem to break apart the Greek defense from there. Full credit to Greece for a well taken goal and excellent team defending. And then France vs. Ireland and… Well we’ll get to that. The Portuguese wound up winning both matches by identical scorelines to send Bosnia-Herzegovina home. Now they hope Real Madrid bombs out of as many competitions as possible to try and keep C. Ronaldo as fresh as possible for next summer. Road goals can be big, but few have been bigger than Nejc Pe?nik’s in the previous Russia/Slovenia encounter. Zlatko Dedi?’s goal in the 44th in this one sends Slovenia to their 2nd World Cup and sends Guus Hiddink’s Russian team crashing out. Any Uruguayan fans who bought into the theory that they were going to waltz over Costa Rica are now disabused of that notion as the Ticos put a big scare into them. Uruguay nevertheless held on with a 1-1 home draw, sending them through 2-1 on aggregate as the 32nd and final team to qualify.
Out
Egypt, Ukraine, Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia, Costa Rica = 100%. Heartbreak to come up short at the final hurdle. Egypt needed an awful lot of things to go their way just to get here and they couldn’t quite get it done in the final playoff match. Ukraine looked good today, but just couldn’t get the goal. A bit of a shame since they would have been a very entertaining team to watch next summer as a neutral. Ireland… Like I said I’ll get to that. The Bosnia-Herzegovina team was the only one you could argue that was overmatched in its playoff, but they really didn’t play that badly. They simply lost to a better team. The Russians will rue that goal they allowed at home for a long time as they bow out in a major upset losing 1-0 on the road. And it’s fitting that Costa Rica is the last team eliminated, because they’re probably the correct answer to “which team came closest to qualifying that didn’t.” They were only seconds away from qualifying directly from CONCACAF. They fought bravely and Walter Centeno’s goal certainly kept things interesting. They are one of the favorites to qualify out of CONCACAF every cycle, so they’ll be back.
Voros Takes on Organized Gambling!!
In a previous installment I compared my percentages to the bookies. For no particular reason and with no particular meaning ascribed to it, I thought I’d just check the results versus our predictions:
Winning Team Voros Bookies France 74.78% 70.91% Portugal 84.52% 70.91% Greece 46.65% 46.67% Slovenia 28.93% 21.69% Uruguay 73.09% 73.13% New Zealand 38.27% 42.34% Cameroon 72.20% 74.38% Nigeria 31.35% 26.04% Algeria 70.01% 63.75%
I suppose if you wanted to keep score, you’d throw out the two which were essentially equal, and that would be 5 for Voros and 2 for Bookies. The only one I might even think about taking credit for was Nigeria having maybe a better shot than the bookmakers’ odds predicted. Other than that, there’s really not much to any of the disagreements. The Portugal odds difference was due mostly to the Ronaldo injury though I bet if I had some way to make an adjustment I wouldn’t have adjusted it down quite that far. I don’t know if folks have been overrating Russia since Euro 2008, but at this point it’s a possibility worth considering.
main de Dieu
Oh dear, whatever happens from here, it just can’t be good.
**sigh** I know how this feels, really I do:
But I can’t sympathize with calls for instant replay for these kinds of decisions. A 2nd on field ref? Sure, that seems to me a reasonable suggestion even if some disagree, but I just loathe the use of replay in American sports. It creates all sorts of bizarre rule changes that force refs to then micromanage every call. The problem is one of bad refereeing, not of a lack of replay. Having to stand around for 10 minutes trying to figure out whether you should celebrate or not kinda sucks, and there’s already too much of that in this sport IMO. If they want to limit it very strictly to “ball crossing the line” technology, I’ll live with that. But reviewing handballs? No way.
The Irish have been screwed, no doubt, but they wouldn’t necessarily have qualified anyway and are just going to have to live with it as best as they can. No fun, I know, but there’s little else that can be done now.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Daniel Burnier // Nov 19, 2009 at 1:50 am
just one detail: you put the flag from Costa Rica instead of the one from Uruguay in your flag mosaic,
regards
Daniel
2 Daniel Burnier // Nov 19, 2009 at 2:31 am
Any news about about the WC draw? Are the countries in each pot already defined?
3 Cramer // Nov 19, 2009 at 6:04 am
If you are mentioning referee faults, tou should take a look at Kerzhakovs red card too. No where near a foul there. A free kick would have been overreacting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO-WF1aKFY4
4 california viola // Nov 19, 2009 at 9:53 am
What I feel is a disgrace is not so much the referee’s mistake but Henry’s actions after the goal – celebrating, consoling Irish players after the end of the match, tiptoing around the issue with the press. [I was also very critical of Pazzini’s actions after he scored with his hand in a friendly against the Netherlands last Saturday.]
However, one must say, the Irish reaction after France vs Ireland was inconsistent with their reaction after Georgia vs Ireland’s penalty kick. [if you want to see an absurd penalty kick do a search on youtube for it] You can’t cry foul only when it goes against you.
As far as the use of technology, I’m with Voros on that one. I don’t think using replays solve very much and the example of the 2007 Rugby World Cup shows that sometimes tv make things worse. Referees abused the use of instant replays to cover their behinds, games were often stopped for five or ten minutes to view and review the same three seconds of inconclusive images, and in some cases the tv judge still took the wrong decision.
5 california viola // Nov 19, 2009 at 9:57 am
This article by goal.com ( http://www.goal.com/en/news/1863/world-cup-2010/2009/11/19/1632227/world-cup-draw-seeding-pots-the-possible-setup ) deals with an issue we’ve been discussing – the possible scenario for the draw.
6 Voros // Nov 19, 2009 at 10:45 am
“you put the flag from Costa Rica instead of the one from Uruguay in your flag mosaic”
Doh!! Will fix.
7 Voros // Nov 19, 2009 at 11:00 am
Looks to me like Kerzakhov got the red not for the initial foul but for the second kick while he was lying there. Couldn’t see how badly that kick connected, nor could I see what the keeper deserved for his initial reaction and subsuquent reaction to Kerzakhov’s kick.
Can’t say I think much of Kerzakhov’s play acting in holding his face though.
8 Cramer // Nov 19, 2009 at 11:11 am
I don’t see any initial foul neither. But it’s clear that he only hits the ball as he kicks second time.
9 Hosehead // Nov 19, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Thank you for you continued analysis. I have been enjoying your commentary since this spring and will continue to follow through WC’10.
10 Paulo Sanchotene // Nov 20, 2009 at 9:53 am
Please, FIFA, split AFC!
http://tiefschwartz.blogspot.com/2009/11/please-fifa-split-afc.html
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