It is a bit disappointing even though some may say that, the teams have only played one match each. But one has to think of a team's chance of qualifying to the second round of the tournament. A team's chance of going through to the next round is very much reduced, if they fail to win a less difficult match. Then the more difficult ones becomes an uphill battle.
In the Group A, the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon were anything but domitable. The Mexicans played much better than the Lions in the match, they even had two goals disallowed.
The lone winning goal for Mexico came after the Cameroon goalkeeper, Charles Itandje, blocked a shot from Giovanni dos Santos but none of his defenders were around to clear the ball from danger. Oribe Peralta, then pounced on the ball and released a match winning goal into the net.
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| Gervinho celebrating winning goal with Drogba |
In Group C, the Ivory Coast's Elephants were down one goal in the first half against a resolute Japanese team. Some football fans did not understand why the Ivorian coach, Sabri Lamouchi, left his star striker, Didier Drogba on the bench for over an hour. Read also: melvinsports.blogspot.com
Anyway, two minutes after he was introduced on the 62nd minute, he inspired a big fight back, which resulted in Wilfried Bony equalizer on the 64th minute. And a couple of minutes later Gervinho headed into the net, the winning goal, putting the scoreline at 2 - 1. Who knows what could have happened if Drogba did not come in and inspire his team to fight back.
That was the only African team that won their opening match. In Group F, the performance of Nigeria which many football fans tipped as favourites to win the match against Iran convincingly was very disappointing to say the least. A couple of things were wrong with the Super Eagles of Nigeria.
First it seem like Nigeria did not research and investigate/scout the Iranian team, before the tournament began, thereby under estimating them. The Nigerian players thought they will walk-over their opponents. Another reason was that they were so slow in their passes. There was no speed and urgency in their game. Even though the Iraians packed the bus like Mikel Obi claimed, which I think was a lame excuse, they still should have won the game.
The Iranians played to their game plan, which was not to loss the match, but the Nigerian players did not put big pressure on their defence and even the few chances they had they could not convert to goals.
In Group G, it seem a bit like the same story with Ghana performance against United States. In the case of Ghana it may have been over confidence that was their undoing in the match. They may have thought that because they defeated the US in the last two World Cups, that it surely won't be a problem to defeat them again.
But they forgot that they now have the German coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who has shown that he can coach a winning team, after what he did with the German team in 2006. The Americans was itching for a revenge and it showed as soon as the referee blew the kickoff whistle.
The captain Dempsey, scored the fifth fastest goal of all World Cups in the 29th seconds of kickoff time, beating the defender Boye and released a powerful left shot that beat the goalkeeper.
Now the Black Stars knew that the Americans were there for a serious fight. They fought back and equalized through Andre Ayew, but defender Jones header in the last minute of the match, (2 - 1) gave USA a good start to the tournament.
In Group H, the Algerians started very well and even took the lead against the favourites Belgium before the interval. The star studed Belgians fought back in the second half and scored two goals to deny the Africans of victory. Read also: melvinsports.blogspot.com
With all these results from their first matches, the African teams need to improve their games and raise them to a higher level, if they are to qualify to the second round of play. It is still not late, many of them if not all can still qualify if they work hard and determine to qualify, after all this is football anything can happen. Goodluck to all the five teams.
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