Officially bad

With an average of 5 yellow cards per match and a number of reds it would seem that this World Cup could be considered a vicious dirty affair. Well not really. Leaving aside Italian Elbow Jobs there have not been that many really bad fouls or dirty games. I mean even the France Korea match attracted 4 yellow cards and there was hardly a bad tackle. I have watched many EPL games where only one or two cards are issued and there are many more physical challenges. I am obvioulsy not going to comment on Turkish ref's in this regard!!

One thing I have noticed is that in the World Cup the referee's appear to belioeve they just have to shout at players and not talk to them like the refs in the EPL do. Markus Merk set the tone in the Brazil Oztrailer game by basically shouting at the players after the first tackle. Then of course every time some poncy overhyped girly hair sporting Brazilian fell over he awarded a free kick. Obviously the Brazilians have been checking up on Nobhead's art of cheating video collection which by now runs to many DVD's. One thing else I noticed is that every time the Brazilians fell over they grabbed the ball with their hands effectively forcing Merk to give a free kick or daring him to red card them for deliberate hand ball! And lets face it who is going to send of Kaka or Ronaldinho!!! Talk about cheating, I wonder what Splatter would say about that!!!!

Having seen how the Ozzies took the game to Brazil and the very ordinary defending that was present I have a feeling that if a team with a really good playmaker, which lets face it is something the Ozzies do not have, but the same attacking attitude to take on the Brazilians could probably get a result. I hope so.

Bye for now....