I haven't seen a lot of football today, nor taken the background research very seriously, I'm afraid. I have had too many other important things to do. Had to order waterproof protection for my plaster cast so I can at last shower or bath - I will soon not be able to be in the same room as myself if I don't. Also had to go out to lunch and then take a road tour around the local area to avoid getting cabin fever. So I only managed to half watch the Brazil-North Korea game this evening while at the same time swotting up from today's paper and gleaning what titbits of additional knowledge and opinion I could from those watching with me. So today's musings are more just random thoughts, and fairly brief at that.
First random thought - I do seem to have been unlucky that all but one of the matches I've ended up watching have been on ITV, including tonight's. I really am not impressed by their panel, and tonight they really irritated by making the assumption that everyone watching was well-informed about football. Why should Adrian Chiles assume that "the Brazilian team need little or no introduction." Well, I'd never been introduced to this Brazilian team but thankfully I had my family on hand to help me out.
The match itself started off pretty dull. It feels as though most of the games have had really quite pedestrian first halves, but I gather that's not altogether unexpected at this stage of the tournament. The stats I've seen, though, show that the level of goal-scoring is still below the norm for the first round of group stages for the last three World Cups and that the average goes down thereafter. Lets hope things perk up for the later matches in this World Cup. They did for this game a little anyway even if the flair I was expecting from the Brazilians seemed to be missing.
I thought the first Brazil goal by Maicon was pretty impressive, although there were comments from my right about rubbish goalkeeping (not for the first time in this competition) and another suggestion that it might not have been a deliberate attempt on goal. It was a good one though, in my humble opinion. And even I could see that Robinho had set up the next goal brilliantly - made it all look so easy.
The best part of the match for me though was the N. Korea goal scored in the 89th minute by Ji Num Yan. They played much better than I'd expected (not that I had any grounds or knowledge for any expectations from either team) and I so wanted them to do well. They defended well all the way through the game and played solidly throughout. To score against Brazil must feel so good. You certainly can't question the passion and commitment they brought to the game - no other team has shown so much emotion during their nation anthem at the start of a match! Although I did notice that the Danish team and supporters have been the loudest singers during the anthems I've seen/heard so far.
Which brings me back to the vuvuzela. It seems I was wrong in my assumption that a 20decibel reduction in sound is relatively insignificant (thanks for the comment, James). Apparently just a 3db reduction results in 50% less noise, 6db reduction gives 75% less, so 20db less must make a massive difference. Will they be as popular though? Anyway, it seems that if it's a real problem for people at home it's possible to download something from antivuvuzelafilter.com which shouts back at the television in the same frequency as the horn, so neutralizing it. Hmmm! Do you think it's a scam? It's not free, naturally.
And to finish off, a nice little quote from Giles Smith in The Times today. He seems to feel the same about Edgar Davids (ITV team) as I do.
" If anyone involved in this tournament needs somebody to creep up behind them with a vuvuzela, it's Davids. Just to blow into it, I mean."
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