good to see fox sports is the first to roll out an article (which i won’t be linking to) dedicated to reminding us of the italian heritage of a number of the socceroos. could we not let this lie?

i also read that over 50% of fox sports readers have voted our qualification to the round of 16 as australia’s greatest ever sporting achievement in a recent reader poll. suggests to me that the average fox sports reader is about as intelligent as the average fox sports columnist. kieren perkins win in the 1500m at the ‘96 atlanta games was a distant second with 7% of the vote. i’m certainly proud of australia’s achievements at the world cup, but i don’t think i’d go that far. besides, it’s not over yet is it?

two very contrasting games tonight saw both of my ’second teams’ knocked out of the cup. firstly a pretty uninspiring effort from sweden against germany. it looked a fairly limp effort to go down two goals in the first 10 or so minutes, but they did pick up a bit after that. having lucic sent off was a real killer though, and a pretty questionable decision from the referee, especially in the circumstances. on that effort, he should really have been giving out yellow cards like candy, but nobody ever accuses refs of being consistant, right?

as if it’s not hard enough to come back from two goals with a man down, henke larsson then goes and misses a golden opportunity to spur his side on by blasting his penalty kick into row z.

to their credit, the blue and yellows did manage to keep germany scoreless for the rest of the game with keeper andreas isaksson making a number of excellent saves. sadly it hasn’t been a brilliant tournament for sweden in general, with a couple of slow performances in group play and whilst they showed plenty of spirit to draw with england in their last group match, today that seemed largely lacking for long periods of the game.

second team out for me tonight was mexico, and what a great match this was to watch. i missed both the goals at the beginning of the game unfortunately, but what i saw afterwards was a fluid, open game with mexico going toe-to-toe with (arguably) cup favourites argentina right until the very end. mexico, too were slow in the group stages, particularly in their draw with angola, but today showed why they still attract a great deal of neutral support. in particular, they look a completely different team with jared borgetti on the park. he’s the team’s leading goal scorer by a country mile and although it was captain marquez who scored for them tonight, borgetti gave the argentines all manner of headaches up front with his amazing aerial ability. for an old guy, he’s certainly got some springs.

at the end it came down to extra time and one of the most remarkable pieces of individual brilliance we’re going to see at this and maybe any other world cup. in the 7th minute of the first period of extra time, argentine captain juan pablo sorin sent a long cross from the left wing to the right edge of mexico’s penalty area where it was met by maxi rodriguez who chested it down onto his left foot and struck a stinging, dipping volley into the top left corner of oswaldo sanchez’ net. it was a freakish piece of work and one that mexico sadly wasn’t able to recover from. up to that point, even though argentina had looked slightly more likely to score again than mexico, it looked like the match was destined for penalties as both teams were well organised at the back. so well organised in fact that it took this incredible piece of work to seperate them.

it’s a shame to see mexico play their best football of the competition in a losing game, but they should be proud of themselves for taking it to an argentine team that’s been in brilliant form so far.