中国 v Danmark

Despite a real serious slump in recent years, the Chinese dominated the early going on this game in the form I remember from the great Chinese team in 1999, swarming around the ball like bees: small, yellow, highly organized, and deadly. I saw Denmark play live once back in New York in '99, when the over-matched Danes lost the opener to the US, and a slew of cute little blonde Danish girls with red and white flags on their cheeks spent the afternoon commiserating with the slew of cute little Mexican girls with red, white, and green flags on their cheeks as the Tricolores got stomped by Brazil. I had to feel a little sympathy for the Danes opening against the hosts yet again. The Chinese took the lead on a free kick by Li Jie, proving again how important set pieces and long shots are, which may be why I like the women's game so much: tactical fouls are not good strategy with keepers that can't get to the corners on the resultant free kick.

The rest of this game proved the adage that the most vulnerable time for a team is immediately after they've scored a goal. It also highlighted some of the difference in style of play for me, when Bi Yan scored the second Chinese goal through controlled short passes in the midfield, setting up Bi in space for a dipping shot from 25 yards out. The Danes got back upfield quickly, winning a corner, and Anne Got Eggers Nielsen took advantage of indecision by the keeper to head a ball back across into the net. The Danes played a much more up-tempo Scandinavian game after that, keeping the ball in the air making long passes and looking for headers, and it paid off late in the game when Paaske Sorensen headed a cross off a Chinese player and into the goal to tie it up at 2-2. Even a draw against the hosts would be a huge upset for the Danes, but again, another goal came within seconds, on a long shot by Xiaoli Song at the top of the box when nobody closed her down.

I was crushed, because I was really pulling for the Danes with the upset to make things interesting in some of these silly groups FIFA drew up, but if you don't close down players at the top of the box, you're going to have some problems.

China 3 – 2 Denmark
'30 Li
'50 Bi
'51 Nielsen
'87 Sorensen
'88 Song

Disclaimer: By “yellow” I of course am referring to the yellow stripes on their shiny red uniforms. And if I got anybody's name backwards, I apologize but I'm working off of American TV, where sometimes they say Asian names the Asian way, sometimes the Western, and occasionally even the players in Western leagues give up and just switch them around or just don't fuss about it (see Zheng Haixa and Yao Ming).