Matchday three second day

More countries shaking out.  Nothing really unexpected about the rankings, but kind of a bummer for Peru and Iceland.  Not unexpected, just a bummer.  I feel like I'm repeating myself.  Like I'm stuck in a loop, on repeat, and everything I'm saying I have said before.  Before all of this and before the Darkness that is FIFA soccer came - The football in the darkness, the ball of madness.

But I digress.  No monsters today, just visions of our doom.  Inexorable and inevitable, instratingent and obdurate.  There we go.  

My screen went black partway through the France/Denmark game and then a voice whispered secrets to me - secrets that bled through my speakers directly to my mind, secrets of doom and misery.  France tied Denmark, apparently, which is enough for both teams to advance.  Was the game a good one?  Were there penalties and drama?  Perhaps, perhaps.

Peru beat Australia 2-0 but that was the battle for third, in their group.  If I was Australia, with what that team has seen, I would not be sorrowful to leave the accursed Russian fields.

Argentina over Nigeria 2-1.  I thought much more highly of the Argentinian team before the Cup; I suspect they thought they'd just let Messi sort it out, but "superstar scores a bunch of goals" isn't a very good Cup strategy.  I swear I saw some of the footage from this game in the last game Nigeria played, but I'm too tired to go back and track it down.  Things repeat inexorably.  Argentina have a few days to get it together but I doubt they'll make it much farther, especially since their next game is against France.

Croatia over Iceland 2-1.  Yup.  The Croatian keeper was phenomenal.  A good keeper is half of what you need, though, and I dunno if they've got the scoring power to advance much further.  Maybe the final four - they've been playing really, really good - but we'll see.

Okay.  More soccer tomorrow.  Mexico vs Sweden will be a tight game, Serbia vs Brazil might be interesting, I doubt we'll see anything amazing from Switzerland vs Costa Rica (boring) or South Korea vs Germany (the biggest mis-match of the tournament so far).

  -Dave