Futile fight

Next up was Colombia and Cote d'Ivoire, which was a game right at home in Brazil, with yellow going against green (my son would have loved it, as those are his two favorite colors).

Colombia got the first scoring chance in the fifth minute, but the shot went a couple feet wide on the left.  A second came only a couple of minutes later, but an Ivorian defender managed to break up the pass in the box.  And a good thing he did, as it would have been an easy goal.

The Ivorians finally got a chance only a minute later, as a decent header off a corner kick was put on goal, but it went right into a defender who somehow headed it out.

By the fifteenth minute, it was looking pretty even, though perhaps with a slight advantage to the Colobians.

A nice Colombian counterattack in the 27th minute fizzled when the pass came across the box to a striker, and he failed to kick, or even deflect, the ball on-net.

After that, it was pretty quiet until a ways into the second half.  In the sixty-fourth minute, Colombia finally managed to score on a nice header off a corner kick.

A couple minutes later, Drogba, who came on an hour in, makes his presence felt by drawing a free kick just outside the box with a really terrible dive.  Indirectly, it led to a very nice goal attempt when the kick was a dud, but the Ivorians worked the ball around to the right side, where they got a decent shot.

More interesting was that Yaya Toure was yelling for a handball call on that free kick, and had a decent case.  It was certainly blocked by a hand.  Which was probably accidental, but did keep the ball from going to an undefended portion of the goal.

Be that as it may, Colombia scored again a minute later when a really bad midfield turnover led to a three-on-one counterattack.

It only took a couple of minutes for the Coastal team to get back into it.  Gervinho got the ball around the top of the box on the left hand side, and drove through three defenders (two of whom fouled him) before striking the ball into the net.  Phenomenal individual effort on that one.  I wouldn't call it a pretty goal, but it was an impressive one.

But there was really only one good chance after that; Quintero caught the Ivorian goalie a bit far out of his net, and took a very long shot.  What was interesting about it was that the goalie deliberately didn't catch it; he knocked it down right in front of the net while his momentum carried him into the net, then came back out to get the ball.

But that was basically it for the last twenty minutes or so; there just wasn't much of anything going on outside the midfield.

That pretty much assures Colombia of moving on, but Ivory Coast will need to beat Greece.