The Oranje Peel Sessions

While I only caught about 70 minutes of the Holland/Serbia & Montenegro game, I have to say that I was disappointed with both sides–Holland certainly didn’t look any more like a world-beater than Argentina did in their matchup with the Ivory Coast. As far as favourites go (and a lot of people on this site seem to have them picked as cup-winners), I don’t fancy their chances based on that performance.

Reading reports about the Portugal-Angola match, it seems that similar sentiments are warranted to Scolari’s boys; not to mention England’s inert performance against Paraguay. These are four big guns who have been unimpressive thus far, and I’ll reserve judgement until I see their second matches. I’m especially eager to see the Japan-Australia and Ghana-Italy matches. Performance of the night? Trinidad & Tobago vs. Sweden–substitute goalkeeper Hislop was amazing, and denied Allback, Mellburg, Ibrahimovic sure goals on the way to a stunning 0-0 tie.

I never thought I’d say that about a scoreless game.

Here in Pusan, the coverage of the games has been pretty good, actually. A local fried-chicken chain has done it’s best to promote the matches, offering complete schedules with every order. Most of the big hotels have also been advertising big-screens, barbeque, and beer–for many, an unbeatable combination.

The most disappointing thing will be the timing of the matches; Korea-Togo will be on around 10:30 our time, but later matches against France and Switzerland will be in the early hours of the morning. Same problem as the games during Euro ‘04.

P.S. if there’s anybody in Korean communities around the world who have photos of your World Cup experiences as you’re watching the games, please mail those photos to me so I can post them on the site (with your permission).