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A mighty drubbing
In another of the “big clashes” that was anticipated in the group stages of this year’s World Cup, Germany absolutely slaughtered the Portuguese left, right and centre.
On Monday morning the Portuguese would have been flirting themselves with idea of qualifying from the group as group leaders. Forty minutes into the game at Salvador and their dreams had turn into nightmares.
By full time, Germany had pumped in four goals courtesy of a Thomas Muller hat-trick; while the men in purple and green had lost Pepe to a red card, Hugo Almeida and Fabio Coentrao to injuries.
The onslaught began early as the Germans were awarded a penalty in the tenth minute when Mario Gotze was blatantly hacked down in the penalty box. Thomas Muller stepped up to duly convert from the spot.
The Germans, who were running the show with the utmost ease, doubled their lead in the 37th minute with a bullet header from Mats Hummels.
To help the German cause further, Pepe decided it was time to get his head in, literally. In the last minutes of the first half the defender, not taking a liking to the theatrics from Thomas Muller. The hot headed defender decided to bang heads with the German forward; only to get a straight red for his troubles.
Thomas Muller put in two further goals in on either side of the half to help Germany to a 4-0 win over the Portuguese.
Late goal to the rescue
Meanwhile at the Estádio das Dunas, Natal, the United States defined the term “winning ugly” in football. The Americans probably had two moments in the game, and luckily for them, both were goal scoring ones at either extremes of the game.
Clint Dempsey put USA in front in the first minute itself, which was also the fastest World Cup goal in United States History. The rest of the game looked like an exhibition of offensive prowess for Ghana as they kept on knocking on Tim Howard’s goal.
The game was slowly turning into a disaster for the States as two of their players had to be withdrawn with injuries and the eleven on the field were a shambles.
With the 82nd minute winner from Andre Ayew, the game looked capable of finishing with only two possible results, a Ghana win or a frustrating draw for the Africans.
However, come the 86th minute, John Brooks scored against the hurricane rather that the play to give Jurgen Kilsmans’s men a vital albeit an improbable victory.
The 2-1 puts the United States in a great position now to qualify to the next stage, while it has be back to the drawing boards for the Ghanaians.
Dull stalemate at Curitiba
In probably what was the most boring game of the tournament, Nigeria and Iran played out a dull scoreless draw at the Arena da Baixada in Curitiba.
The drowsiness started when the starting line-ups were announced. The XI names on either team had failed to generate any kind of thrill in the hearts of the casual football and that was duly followed in the actual game.
The early stages of the game brought us a flurry of goal mouth action and a hope for all that this might actually live up to this World Cup’s standards.
However, as time rolled on the game rolled on into a heap of boredom with chances at either end hard to come by. Ashkan Dejagah did bring Iran a glimpse at goal-mouth action but Nigerian goalie Vincent Enyeama was equal to the task.
Nigeria however were the aggressors for most of the game, but failed to overhaul the Iranian defense which stood up to the test well for the whole ninety minutes.
