World Cup 2006

This was a long anticipated day of great games – Mexico verses Portugal and Netherlands verses Argentina (and of course, the other games in their groups). We headed to the fan fest near downtown Frankfurt.
The setup there was interesting with the big screen TVs sitting on the river – and viewable from either side.
It was a sea of orange everywhere we went – the fan fest, the squares, the streets. I’ve been getting grief from the Germans whenever I’ve shown my support for Holland – but this day, they were playing my pick for winning the cup, so now I was getting grief from the Hollanders for support Argentina – oh well. Next to the England fans, the Hollanders were probably the drunkest and crudest fans we’ve seen – not a good thing. But after missing the cup last year, I guess they were just really excited to be there.
But first was the Mexico game. We finally found out that Borgetti was done due to injury and so we figured Mexico’s chances were getting slimmer. But nonetheless, they could still win their group by beating Portugal. Mexico didn’t play too poorly, but conceded an early goal after dominating the first several minutes of play. And between Bravo missing the PK and then dropping to 10 men, their chance was over. But as luck would have it, they made it through even with the loss. But unfortunately, they’ll have to face Argentina next.
Tickets for the Netherlands/Argentina game were rumored to be selling for about 1000-1200 euro – way to high – especially for a non knockout game. Both teams were cautious and chose not to play many of their key players (especially those that already had a yellow). So, with both teams already in, the game really wasn’t very good despite the big billing – but perhaps these teams could meet again in the finals and it will be a better game? The next games should be really good with Argentina/Mexico and Netherlands/Portugal – once the groups were drawn, we knew that these first round games would be great games regardless of how these four teams finished.