Next, I watched the France/Honduras game, which wasn't terribly interesting. Although Honduras tried to cover it up with physical play, they were badly overmatched.
It did take France a while to score, but they'd already hit the crossbar twice by the twenty-third minute. Palacios was sent off for a foul in the box in the forty-third, and that led directly to France finally scoring on the PK. Think we can attribute lack of earlier scoring on some bad passes in the box (and those two crossbars).
In the forty-eighth, we finally got use out of the goal cam, as another french shot bounced off the woodwork, this time going all the way back across the goal to the goalie. But the goalie fumbled it a hair into the goal, and the goal cam caught that. It didn't decide the game, but it was far from obvious that it had gone in, when watching.
The one thing I wonder: they stated that it had gone a couple millimeters over the line; what is the accuracy of that system? If it's only a couple of millimeters, then the system can't say that that was a goal (not with confidence, anyway).
Regardless, it was pretty neat.
France scored a third time in the seventy-second minute, and I turned it off shortly thereafter.
Basically, the outcome was never in doubt; France was, and played like, the better team. In a way I'm glad; you want to see the good teams play well, but I would have liked it to be more competitive. I wonder if the red card will get the Hondurans to play a bit more in control, although I doubt it. I hope so, though; I'd hate for them to injure players on the other team. Even on France, despite my long-time dislike of Les Bleus.
I guess we'll see.
And kudos to the blues for keeping their cool when faced with that kind of opposition.
No comments:
Post a Comment