Witney Toyloy (Miss Switzerland 2009)
Islam v Christianity, Catholicism v Protestantism, Fascism v Socialism and that's just Spanish history. Spain are probably, in terms of who people think will win, everybody's European team, they are a match for Argentina but whether they can beat Brazil, should the need arise, remains to be seen (without stating the bleeding obvious).
The team of 2008 is two years older (who writes this rubbish), more experienced and most importantly they all seem to be in form. In one of the pre-World Cup friendlies, the team that started contained six Barcelona players, four Real Madrid players and David Silva who come August will probably be at either Barcelona or Real Madrid. Spain were in, what one online betting site described as, a competitive group, so competitive in fact that they played 10, won 10, scored 28 goals, conceded 5 and finished on 30 points, 11 ahead of second placed Bosnia-Herzegovina - who were supposed to come fourth behind Turkey and Belgium.
Unlike the 'golden generation' of English football (2002-2010), Portuguese football (2000-2006) but like the French one (1998-2000) the Spanish team have fulfilled their promise and but for some bad luck and dreadful acting by Theirry Henry in 2006 (I seem to remember Span and I having differing views), would have progressed beyond the Round of 16.
Switzerland will be England's first away game in the Euro 2012 qualifiers so at least this will give Fabio Capello the chance to see them in competitive action before 7th September. Switzerland qualified via Group 2 of the European Qualifiers, they topped the group that included Greece and Israel who they drew with 0-0 in the final game of qualification to beat Greece by one point. Greece still qualified by beating Ukraine 1-0 in Donetsk to win a two-legged play off 1-0.
Switzerland will probably be suffering a persecution complex by the end of the group games, or possibly an Inquisition complex, as they are the only non-Spanish speakers in a group that also includes the truly useless Honduras and the only slightly better than they think they are Chile. Switzerland should qualify for the knockout stages as the second placed team in Group H and go forward to play either Brazil or Portugal, whilst Spain will play the other option.
After five days of this World Cup the competition is crying out for a team to take a game by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shaking - let's home it's Spain.
Meanwhile on the culinary front, Nathalie's attempts to create a meal each day of the competition for one of the teams playing that day is continuing. So far we've had Burritos (Mexico), hot dogs (USA), chicken with spinach (Ghana), pizza (Italy), chicken with noodles (South Korea) and tonight it's paella.
5 comments:
good post! Nic eidea re the food. (hot dog last night too? For North Korea?...not the frankfurter type either) They wer good! pity they have now fore-warned the other sides in the group...or maybe it was just Brazil being bad...except for Robinho (never thought i'd say that!)
Very good about the hot dog!
Robinho and Kaka both looked as if their places had been taken by dopplegangers, one good and one not very good at all.
Kaka should have stayed in Italy.
Well done to Nathalie for the food idea! We've done that in the past for the Eurovision Song Contest but this year we just got utterly mullered instead : I didn't recover till the Tuesday.
Miss Switzerland looks quite delectable. I'd delect her!
Oh shit, I forgot about the football... ... Quite a turn up Switzerland beating Spain. Like many, I suspect, I was surprised at how good the North Koreans were last night. I'm glad we didn't play them first : we could've had an even nastier surprise than the one the USA gave us.
I thought North Korea were vey good, I even applauded when they scored.
Spain resorted to route one at the end which wasn't pretty or effective.
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