Day 24 (July 1st)

Ivan, Dean, Gwen and I travel to Gelsenkirchen for the next day of quarter finals. It was only an hour away by train, but really crowded - not sure that this was what Ivan had pictured as 1st class travel However, Gelsenkirchen was trying to vie with Kaiserslautern as the worst venue. That is, it took us over an hour to get to the stadium once we reached the city. We were packed in herds waiting for trains, but no order to their stop on the platform or such. But since we had allowed for getting there over 2 hours before the game, we were still okay, just no time for food.
The England fans were as obnoxious as ever for the pre-game. However, during the match they raised their offensiveness to a new level – no wonder everybody hates the Brits (sorry to my friends back home). The “funniest” of their screaming was that Portugal was a bunch of cheating “diving” bastards (that deserved to die). But as soon as England got in the box, the calls were for their players to take a dive! The game was pretty evenly matched – neither team playing very well, but both have a few odd chances.
After losing Rooney to a questionable red card, the England squad seemed unaffected, to their credit. Without 3 of their starters, Portugal could do little to mount a real attack, even in the extra time. You might think that Portugal would lose on PKs when you know that they missed 2 of them, but the Portugal keeper guessed the right way on every kick and stopped 3 of England’s poor shots.
The group had enough of the armpit to armpit travel, so we passed on the wonderful 302 and walked the 3-4 miles to the fan fest. We made it in time for the start of the Brasil/France game. The fan fest was mostly empty – presumably the bulk of the English fans when home pouting. Brasil was on their heals the hold time, while France outplayed them the whole game. France had looked quite bad in the first round, but has really come on in the playoffs. Brasil played a new, weird line up (similar to the weirdness that Argentina had done). The Argentina coach had already resigned for his poor decisions; we expect Brasil’s tomorrow. Ivan joked that instead of buying referees like some (nameless Italians), the other Europeans bought the opposing coaches But Brasil just got it handed to them, no question – France continued to have their number.
So, like the announcer rubbed it in, the World cup is over, on with the rest of the European cup.