Okay, here's what I really have to say about this game. If Australia could have put anything away, they'd have advanced. But they didn't, they missed opportunity after opportunity, and that being the case they can't complain about the end result. The biggest blown opportunity was after Materazzi was given a straight red for taking down Mark Viduka with a clear path to goal. Australia didn't get anything off of the free kick, and didn't take advantage of being a man up early in the second half, sticking with Guus Hiddink's strategy of always waiting until late in the game to sub in attackers. And I mean it when I say, had Australia brought on a sub and scored, I would say Italy had no business blaming the loss on bad luck and Materazzi's red card, since Luca Toni certainly had his chances as well.
So here's the rest of the deal, in what had to be the final minute of the game, Fabio Grosso came into the Aussie penalty area down by the endline on the left side, and Lucas Neill basically dove into his path to stop him, but Grosso played the ball forward to his right, away from Neill. Neill made contact with neither player nor ball, but then Grosso rather than going around went over him, fell over, and was awarded a penalty kick. Many accusations have been made of blatant diving, and Grosso was probably expecting a foul when he jumped over Neill and certainly put on a performance to sell it. If you watch the replay that was shown on the world feed immediately afterwards, Neill clearly trips up Grosso's leg with his outstretched elbow, and throwing yourself on the ground in your opponent's path is more NFL cut block than Jogo Bonito. Anyways, Francesco Totti put the PK in the upper left hand corner with no chance whatsoever for Mark Schwarzer and that was it.
Italy advances to play Ukraine, who apparently hate being called The Ukraine.
Italy 1-0 Australia
'93 Totti (pen)
Red card: Materazzi ('50)
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