Looking back at my Groups G and H Predictions

So in Group G Brazil and Portugal went through just as I had predicted. Unfortunately, my standing in my Yahoo sports group suffered because I picked Brazil to defeat Portugal today and after a very physical, yellow-card-studded first half, the two teams came out to have a damn kickabout for the entirety of the second half.


With the match finishing in a draw, both teams would advance. Surely both managers had a talk with their teams  during halftime and realized there was no sense in risking a player getting suspended for the next round, or an injury. There was also little reason for either team to try desperately to win the group because it was still undecided who their opponents would be from Group H. Spain would top that group with a win over Chile, but that was far from a certainty. And with Ivory Coast only up 2-0 at halftime, Portugal had little to worry about. So Brazil and Portugal were satisfied to play the most boring half of soccer I think I've ever seen.

Group H also worked out well for me as far as my earlier predictions, with Spain topping the group ahead of second place Chile. On my Yahoo group, however, Switzerland totally screwed me by failing to defeat Honduras. Switzerland managed only a single scrappy lucky goal against Spain in this tournament.

Now it's on to the knockout stages. Of course I only nailed 12/16 of the teams to advance (Mexico; Argentina; Korea; USA; England; Germany; Netherlands; Paraguay; Brazil; Portugal; Spain; Chile) and only got 7 of them in the correct positions (Argentina; Korea; Germany; Brazil; Portugal; Spain; Chile). So I'll be putting together a new set of knockout stage predictions to match reality.