World Cup 2010: Day Six

What a day, huh?

Chile 1-0 Honduras

I already covered this in the live blog, so I won't add much except to say that with the other Group H result, Chile's three points go a long way toward their advancement.

Switzerland 1-0 Spain

Enormous stunner, of course. I didn't see it live, but I did go back and watch the replay to see if I could get a sense for what happened, and what it comes down to is this: Switzerland set up for a draw from the start. Even in the first few minutes they were playing with eight men behind the ball. They knew they couldn't hang with Spain if the game were wide open, so they didn't even try. In many ways I was reminded of the US upset of England in 1950 - Spain dominated possession (74%), had a ton of shots (25, though only 5 on goal), and spent much more time in the attacking third... but they just could not put a shot in. Swiss keeper Diego Benaglio deserves a lot of credit for this, although so does the crossbar, which helped deny a Xabi Alonso bullet in the 70th minute. Meanwhile, a long kick from Benaglio started the play which led to Switzerland's goal, a bit of a messy affair that came completely against the run of play. Spain tried to push, but in the last few minutes the Swiss put all ten men behind the ball and the Spanish just couldn't break through.

So what does this do to the group? We'll address that, along with the other groups after one set of games, in a follow-up post.

Uruguay 3-0 South Africa

Whatever hope was generated by South Africa drawing Mexico in the first game was pretty well extinguished by the foot of Diego Forlan. I listened to this game on the radio and Uruguay seemed to be the better team rather easily; while the South Africans had a significant possession edge, this was mostly in midfield; Uruguay had 19 shots, six on goal, to South Africa's 11 shots, of which three were on goal.

The critical moment of the game, of course, came in the 76th minute, when Uruguay's Luis Suarez broke for goal. South African keeper Itumeleng Khune came out to challenge the ball, but ended up tripping Suarez - or at least, he ended up making contact with Suarez and Suarez went to ground. The referee called a penalty, which was reasonable, and then showed Khune a red card, which was probably extreme. Forlan converted the penalty, and at 2-0 and South Africa down to ten men the game was effectively over. So, for that matter, is South Africa's World Cup.