THE GAMES OF THIS SATURDAY (This article is available in English and Español)

This Saturday, the Football National teams played qualifier games to the World Cup 2010, being possibly the most interesting, a priori, the South American classic between Argentina and Uruguay, played in the Monumental de Buenos Aires, where “albiceleste” team won a complicated game (2-1).

The first half of this "classic" can be described as interesting, because we saw many things, on the one hand we've seen a good Argentina during the first 30 minutes of the game, helped by a very comfortable Juan Roman Riquelme and by the 2 quick goals-the first goal was a very lucky play, since the referee stopped an Uruguayan´s shot and the ball arrived to the magnificent Roman Riquelme, who assisted excellent to the head of Leo Messi-and on the other hand, we have suddenly seen as the Uruguayan team began to grow, to gain in confidence and finally Uruguay scored in a free-kick thank to Fenerbahçe defender, Diego Lugano, and thanks to the Argentine defensive line, because it was horrible in this play, since all the line was “sleeping”. Since this moment Argentina´s defensive line was very nervous and imprecise-by the way, I do not understand ¿why is Martin Demichelis in the Argentine squad (he is playing very bad)?- and of course Argentina was praying to arrive to the half-time with the same score (2-1) in order to calm down, to clarify the ideas and to break the “Charrua” rhythm.

The half time did not serve to clarify the ideas, since in the second half, the football did not exist and the only thing we saw was a carousel of fouls and yellow cards (8 in 45 minutes is a “good” number), so we had a very poor second half, since Argentina expected to pass the time and to see if any play of Messi, the Kun Agüero or Diego Milito sentenced the match and that the Uruguayan strikers- we could see in the lat minutes together Luis Suarez (Ajax Amsterdam), Carlos Bueno (Peñarol Montevideo), Ernesto Chevantón(Sevilla FC) and Édison Cavani (US Palermo)- were not fortunate. So, it was a pity to see this second time, but of course for Argentina the important thing is the final result, although one thing is clear, if Argentina continues playing in this way, it will have difficulties to be in the World Cup, so "Coco" Basile should reflect and take any decision to change the situation.

Besides we had other international games and we remark the comfortable victories of Spain over Estonia (Spanish team continues with its good defensive level, since this is its seventh continue game without any goal received) and England over Kazakhstan (5-1) and Serbia over Lithuania (3-1); and the suffered triumphs of Germany over Russia (2-1, Lukas Podolski continues with his excellent level when he plays with the German National team(he has scored 31 goals in 59 games)-I do not understand his Bayern´situation, since he has only played 2 complete games-) and of Turkey over the competitive Bosnia and Herzegovina thanks to the goals from French-Turkish Mevlut Erdinc of FC Sochaux-he has scored 4 goals in Le Championat this season-and an own goal of Edin Dzeko-a powerful striker of VFL Wolfsburg-, who was the scorer of the first goal of this complicated game to Turkey; and poor result of Italy (0-0 in the game against Bulgaria) and of France(it drew(2-2) the game played against Romania, which I do not know whether or not it is good for the French team, because if this pyrrhic draw means that the harmful Domenech remains on the bleu bench, I think it is a bad news for the French fans. Anyway, few surprises and this Sunday at 17.00 Venezuela´s hour-22.00 c.e.t- it is the Brazil´moment –it will play against the Venezuelan of Juan Arango and Giancarlo Maldonado-.

Cheers,

J&F