Purple Coco's Musings

Match fixtures 1st July 2006 1700hrs (2300 hrs Malaysia Time) England vs Portugal. Portugal won 3 goals via penalty kicks and England didn't managed to strike an even or more penalty kicks to get it's team to march into the semi-finals. My favorite team, England, lose the match against Portugal but it was a fair way to exit the World Cup 2006 football arena.

This was a heroic England performance, especially with ten men following the sending-off of Wayne Rooney in the 62nd minute. Despite this disadvantage Sven-Goran Eriksson's team continued to both defend and attack intelligently, creating more goal chances than their opponents.Owen Hargreaves was the best player on the pitch. The whole of the back four did extremely well. If you pick out one it would be Hargreaves, who encapsulated the England performance. His work rate was incredible with the number of balls he won in midfield and he still found the time to get forward.It was a pity such a game had to be decided by penalties but once the game goes to penalties, it becomes a question of which team can handle their nerve and once again England were found lacking in a shoot-out. But over the 120 minutes they were the better team and Portugal can consider themselves quite fortunate to have survived this one. Source

Labels: Sports