Cote d'Ivoire v Argentina (cont.)

Nice play in the 57th minute by Cote d'Ivoire's defenders, as Riquelme
held up the ball in front of the box, because his intended target,
Crespo, got himself into an offside position. As soon as Crespo figured
it out he tried to step up onside, great play by one defender who's
sliding back then looks at the open Crespo hustling back onside and
darts forward to move the line up, Riquelme passes the ball to Crespo
and the flag goes up. There has been a striking lack of organization to
Les Elephants, especially given that they all play for top teams. The
one-on-one offensive play is apparently a plague on African national
teams in the Cup of Nations, as players are mainly trying to raise their
own profiles, and it may be showing a bit here too as every offensive
chance they get is Drogba taking it in himself. Nobody makes any runs,
they just watch, so there's nobody to pass to if you want to.

With half an hour to go, Argentina takes off their target man, Crespo,
and brings in Rodrigo Palacio to apparently play a little deeper, so
they're not looking for more goals. That can be a dangerous mentality,
since the Italians, who are the Kings of defending a 1-0 lead, get a lot
of nasty surprises. This game has been completely Argentina's, but
given the expected tightness of this group, goal differential and goals
scored could be huge. The way Drogba got mugged in the box in the 69th
minute without a penalty being called really can't help.

In the 82nd minute, Cote d'Ivoire scores! Nicely played too, a lot of
team work going into getting Drogba a couple shots, the second one in
the back of the net. Over the course of the second half, Les Elephants
started to play a lot better and get more organized, and it really paid
off. If they've shaken off the jitters, things just got a lot more
difficult for Holland. Speaking of Holland, the stripes on the Dutch
flag go red, white, blue, so there's really no reason to confuse it with
the flag of the Russian Federation. Or Finland. (SO glad he's dead.)

On the topic of the offside trap, nice use of it again in the 85th
minute when Riquelme took a shot from the top of the box as two
Argentine players made runs in from either side of him. Argentina got
the rebound of the blocked shot, but Les Elephants had played 2
different guys offside on the shot. One of them put the rebound home,
but he was clearly offside. This is one of the benefits of the Jupiler
league importing a lot of African players who then go on to the bigger
European leagues: they all learn the Belgian offside trap. Belgium may
not have qualified, but the Diables Rouges are here in spirit.

The game ends 2-1, good for Argentina, but potentially not that bad for
Cote d'Ivoire, who should be putting some fear into Serbia and Holland.
And no Paul, I still don't want to know the score to the Serbia &
Montenegro v Netherlands game.