Holland and Portugal fail to convince By MSN’s Matt Ball
Last updated June 12 2006
Day three. Three matches: wins for Holland, Mexico and Portugal.
Dutch domination
Holland had an easy ride in what should have been a close contest against Serbia & Montenegro (or S&M as the BBC pundits could not resist calling them).
Quite why the Serbs did not start trying until the second half is beyond me – they looked quite good and on occasions made the Dutch seem like an ordinary side. However, they missed an obvious ploy: once they brought on Zigic, their 6’8” striker, they failed to cross the ball once for him to head goalwards. When you have a player that tall you have got to make use of him.
Holland passed the ball around nicely and created some good openings in the first half but did not do enough to suggest they are world champions in the making. Sure, Arjen Robben scored a good goal and had the odd shot but I'm not yet convinced the Dutch are going to go all the way.
Mexico in control
When Iran equalised after 36 minutes this match looked like it was going to be close but Mexico kept possession better and created chances while Iran toiled to little effect. The 3-1 scoreline was a fair reflection of the two teams’ merits.
As the game petered out I turned to my notes and realised that days two and three had been seriously lacking in good punditry except for during this match. The BBC’s Lee Dixon was the first to give us a moment of genius. The former Burnley, Chester, Bury and Stoke defender suggested that 37 year-old Iranian striker Ali Daei might not enjoy playing in the heat of Germany, given that it was about 29C. An interesting, if somewhat ill-informed view: guess what the average summer temperature in Tehran is? Yes, that’s right: 29C. Nice one, Lee.
Not to be outdone Jonathan Pearce offered a couple of corkers. First was a mention of a discussion he had enjoyed with an Iranian journalist about a spelling error in one of the player’s names. Pearce had felt moved to point out the error to his media colleague because he wanted to discover the truth behind this heinous crime. It turns out that Fifa had simply misspelt it.
Second was a bizarre story of a player who, as a boy, had got out of the shower only to be electrocuted by a fridge.
Portugal: a win but not much more
After 11 seconds Portugal should have been 1-0 ahead against Angola, Pauleta hitting his shot just wide. Four minutes later he made up for it by tucking away Luis Figo’s neat cross. Game over.
Portugal looked like a team that knows what it is doing but somehow they lacked a cutting edge to kill the game off.
Angola, by contrast, seemed happy to sit back and accept a 1-0 defeat rather than take a chance and try to force an equaliser. It made what could have been a good match rather unexciting. | 
