a great tournament comes to an end. true there were very few goals, but then again it was largely due to the excellence of the defenders and midfielders. italy deserved to win it in the end, having played as a team throughout. i'd thought either canavarro or buffon would've taken the golden ball, but i guess they'll have to be satisfied with the silver and the Lev Yashin respectively. not that they'd mind, though
however, two teams that really impressed me in this competition are germany and ivory coast. germany because their young coach klinsmann really turned a monotonic/robotic team into one that will be remembered for their fast and attacking style for a long time. if this trend continues, we might see another entertaining display from the germans next time.
ivory coast, on the other hand, qualified for the first time, and they impressed me because of their extraordinary interception in the midfield and their ability to attack. too bad they were in the same group as argentina and holland. they would probably have qualified otherwise.
one thing that hasn't been mentioned much in this forum is the contribution of the coaches. klinsmann, scolari, lippi and domenech have all done excellent jobs for their respective teams, whereas the likes of pekerman and eriksson deserves a latthi in the rear, especially eriksson for the way he just sat on his butt while england were losing against portugal and let mc claren do all the shouting.what a waste of good money it has been.
overall, this world cup has seen a new germany, the france of 98, a new portugal and the near-impossible: brazil defeated by a team that had been pretty ordinary in the first round.
now that we move on to south africa, i bet a couple of african teams (nigeria, maybe) will make it to the top four next time. another four years, oh boy.
finally, i think we Bangla Cricketers have shown that we are equally adept in analysing soccer as we are in cricket!
the FIFA World Cup Soccer 2006 forum has featured excitement, some excellent analysis, and game-time passions that we can look back to time and again as we await the next event in Africa.