Everything has its ups and downs and the football WC'06 had its major down yesterday.
The much awaited match between Portugal and Netherlands was expected to be a nail biting affair expected to go all the way to the penalties. A matchup of two teams so equal that almost everyone was having trouble picking the winner. Unfortunately the match turned out to be "bruiser" with regular fights breaking out. 16 yellow cards 4 players sent off, Luis Figo the captain and senior player of Portugal head butting a Dutch player. Any time there was a foul there would be a huddle with heated arguments between players and then suddenly players would fly out of the huddle...

Portual won 1-0 but they paid a heavy price and may be without their top 3 playes Figo, Deco and C Ronaldo when they meet England (#$%@#$ England have really gotten lucky) next. At full strength Portugal would have beaten England fairly easily but now England have the upper hand...

I played football :)))
God knows after how long I stepped on to a proper playing field (not court, mind you) and played for nearly 2 hours with a fairly serious set of players :)))

German Engineering...
That's how I would describe Germany's 3-nil victory over Ecuador. Engineered as well as their Mercs or BMWs...
Obviously with this result I take away the "Dark Horse" label from Ecuador...

Couple of funny incidents:
- During the Croatia vs Japan match, Croatia's player Srna who had already missed a penalty and in the 4-5 corner kicks he had taken he had stupidly curled 3-4 of them over the side lines (rendering them "out" from the time he had kicked them), so at the 6th or so corner the commentator goes dryly "Mr Srna, if you want to have a professional career after the world cup, you better not curl this one over side line". :)))

- In the England vs Sweden match, after England had made about 10 or so dry, and harmless passes in the backfield the Swedish crowd started boo'ing them and the commentator goes "The Swedish crowd boo'ing England. England maybe think they are Argentina" obviously referencing to the fabulous 24 pass goal by Argentina. :)))

Here is how I think the teams are stacking up...

The top 4 (in descending order):
- Argentina
- Germany
- Brazil
- Spain

Teams that are waiting at the front gate:
- Netherlands
- Italy

Teams that are knocking on the back door (trying to sneak in when everyone is looking away):
- Portugal

Raauuuuul!!!

Thats the sound of the pressure being released from the pressure cooker situation in the Spain vs Tunisia match when Raul scored a goal to equalize 1-1. Tunisia scored early in the 8th minute and it took until the 71st minute of the match for Spain to strike back. Spain played an amazingly controlled and patient game never deviating from their style and kept bulding the pressure until it all paid off with Raul's goal...

Since then they have scored again and are now winning 2-1...

This is the 32nd match of the 2006 world cup. Half the world cup is over :(((

In vein with the Da Vinci Code here is a riddle...

The orb that can't be handled by anyone except by one in the rear and was used to escape to victory

Got it??

It’s a football!!! Escape to Victory

So after watching endless hours of the 2006 football world cup matches here are some thoughts…

- Argentina is my pick to win the whole thing and it is the only team that can challenge the Brazilian team. Messi is all that he is made out to be and he is still 18 (till 24th June).

- Czech Republic who I thought would make to the last 4 have done themselves in with their performance against Ghana. Kudos to Ghana. Their group "The group of death" (Italy, Ghana, USA and Czech) is down to the wire on 22nd June. Do not miss those matches. Italy vs Czech and Ghana vs USA.

- Asian teams will probably not shine like the last world cup. Rooting for Korea, they will have to play really well to beat France next. Saudi Arabia really lucked out against Tunisia.

Awesome matches
- Australia vs Japan. 3-1. Australia score 3 goals in the last 8 minutes after being down 0-1.

- Argentina vs Serbia & Montenegro. 6-0. School is in session :)

- Czech vs USA. 3-0. Total football by Nedved and Rosicky.

Bad matches
- Anything with England :). Seriously.

- Italy vs USA. The players are not to blame the referee just got it all wrong. The 2 red cards to the USA were totally out of whack.

Dark horses
- Ecuador

More later...

Rwanda Rwanda...

...can anybody hear our cries, can't you hear us calling you...Wyclef Jean sings in "Million Voices" from the movie "Hotel Rwanda".

Over the weekend I got some "education" on the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. A friend gave me the movie "Hotel Rwanda" and a documentary called "Ghosts of Rwanda" with a warning "Hey they are disturbing". I had had some exposure to various civil wars in Africa and the horror of their killing methods. Wilbur Smith in his books describes some of the horrific ways in which people are killed in these African wars. In the mid 90's I also remember the news of the tens of thousands bodies floating over a lake into neighbouring African countries. Anyway, so I watched the movies...

In about hundred days following the assassination of Rawandan President on April 6th 1994 about 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus were slaughtered by militant Hutu groups. One of the groups called themselves the Interahamwe ("coming together") and Machetes were used as the main weapon for the ethnic cleansing.

Despite pre warnings sent by both the Red Cross and the UN peacekeepers the world didn't react until it was too late. No one in the world, the UN, the powerful countries, no one reacted. Everyone just sat and watched about a million people being hacked to death.

UN had a decent sized peace keeping force but at the start itself Belgium pulled out most of its troops and the commander of the UN peacekeepers Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire was then left with some 450 ill equipped troops to guard the whole country. He had requested for only about 2000 peacekeepers to handle the situation. 80 countries in the UN were approached but none of them agreed to lend any troops. And to think a few thousand troops could have saved maybe half a million human beings. It was a gut wrenching ordeal to see Dallaire as an individual take full responsibility and say:

"I was the commander and my mission failed and hundreds of thousands of people died and that I can't find any solace in statements like "I did my best". A commander can't use that as a reference in any operation. He succedes or he fails and then he stands by...to be accused of and to be held accountable for...and my mission failed".

The UN tied Dallaire's hands by telling him that he should not take any pre-emptive action and "avoid armed conflict". Before the killings started he had requested Kofi Annan, who was the heading the peace keeping department at that time, for a strike at the arms cache of the militia and was told not to do so saying "you do not have enough data".

The Clinton administration still suffering from the setbacks of peacekeeping at Mogadishu, Somalia also did not do anything to prevent or control this tragedy. (On a quick side note "Black Hawk Down" is an awesome movie about the Mogadishu incident, one of my favorites). The Clinton administration made excuses and played with words like "We don't know yet if this is a Genocide. Genocide has a legal meaning to it and we don't know if we can say that". Only later in 2003 Bill Clinton would accept that "...I will always regret about the Rwandan thing...".

Here are some Wikipedia links:
Rwandan Genocide
Genocide
Genocide in history
Rwanda