We Were Looking At the Wrong Group G Match

The biscotto (prearranged result to benefit both teams in a group-phase situation) did not come into play, Germany gets the 1-0 win in a flood in Recife to win the group.

It's the other match people needed to see.

In just the last couple of days, the Ghana team basically fell apart:

• Two of it's best players were thrown off the team (Kevin Prince-Boateng and Sulley Muntari), one for cursing out his coach, the other for an attack on an official of the Ghanian soccer federation.
• The president of the country airlifted $3,000,000 to the team to prevent them (ostensibly) from boycotting the match with Portugal as part of a dispute...  over pay.

Declan Hill on line one, thankyouverymuch.

So what happens in the match?

As I said, Germany won 1-0 .

In the 30th minute of the other match, this happened:




John Boye scored an own goal to give Portugal the 1-0 lead.

Within 3 minutes of the Muller goal in Recife which had Germany win their match, Ghana equalized, and, under the "goals scored in group" tiebreaker, Ghana would need only to win 2-1 to oust the USA from the World Cup for the third consecutive time.

Then, THIS happened in the 80th minute:



Ball is headed high into the air by the Ghana defense, and usually, the goalkeeper is able to go up and get the ball in a two-handed catch.

What happened instead was the goalkeeper fisting the ball down with both hands right to the feet of an unmarked Cristiano Ronaldo, who cashed in, and didn't even celebrate the goal which would win the match.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....

I don't think there's much doubt on this one.  USA gets at least one more game of big ratings (and, I would assert, a very realistic shot at at least two!)....