I have messed up....again!

I had meant to do another post after Andy Murray's quarter-final with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, but I totally forgot and so in this post, I will summarise, Japan-Paraguay, Spain-Portugal and Murray-Tsonga. I think we should get on with it seeing as how right now I am trying to do this, and watch Ghana-Uruguay so I can post on that and Holland-Brazil very soon. Having said that, I may just post all the quarter-final's together as the other 2 are tomorrow anyway.

I believe the last sentence of my last post said I was hoping for a Keisuke Honda thunderbolt against Paraguay. I was obviously expecting a little too much there as both teams played out a dire 0-0 draw. The match itself was annoyingly pathetic as neither team showed any desire to win a match to put them into a quarter-final. There was none of the Japanese industry and skill that we had seen against Denmark last Friday, and none of the South American flair that we have seen in such abundance at this World Cup from the Paraguayan's. I had thought that my award for worst game in this competition was definitely going to France-Uruguay, but I've gotta be honest, this game has given it some major competition and maybe the French won't win anything at this World Cup, not even one of my sought after World Cup awards. The game then was undecided and goalless at the end of extra-time, so, in total contrast to the rest of the game, we got the high drama of a penalty shoot-out for the first time at this World Cup. The Paraguayan's qualified after they scored all their penalties and Camano missed for Japan with the end result appearing as 5-3 after penalties. Cue Japanese tear's and I have to admit, I was a little bit gutted for them myself. Well, I say I was gutted for them, but I was more gutted that Keisuke Honda, a player who has looked magnificient at this World Cup A) did not have a good game at all (although who did??) and B) we don't get to see more of him, that is unless he signs for a Premier League club, and he has been linked with many so hopefully that will come to pass.
So Paraguay would be the quarter-final opponents for the winner's of the Iberian derby between Portugal and Spain. Many would have assessed the Portuguese chances as very, very poor before the match as the European champions had seemed to regain some form towards the end of their group games whereas Portugal had never really looked like they had got going despite their 7-0 drubbing of North Korea. Mind you, after the first-half, the game looked too close to call after some brilliant Portuguese play inspired by Cristiano Ronaldo, but unfortunately, they couldn't continue this brilliance in the second half as the Spanish got their passing game together and a wonderful passing move was finished by the one and only David Villa to send the Spanish into a 1-0 lead over their local and most hated rivals. Despite Portugal then trying to exert some pressure and get back into the game, their effort was not enough to bring down the European champions who progress to the quarter-finals with a 1-0 win. One of the big stories to come out of this was post-game when Cristiano Ronaldo appeared to spit at a TV camera as he walked off the pitch, although for my money, I don't think he saw the camera and intentionally spat at it, I think he just needed to spit as the camera followed him. It wasn't as if he walked up to it, spat, and then walked off in a completely different direction, but obviously a lot was bound to be made of it as he is one of the best player's in the world.

Talking about best player's, Andy Murray was back in action at Wimbledon on Wednesday as the 4th seed took on 8th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarter-finals. With all the country looking on, how would Andy Murray fare?? Would he crumble under the pressure as he has done at times this year, or would he deliver a confidence-boosting victory over a rapidly improving and widely talented player?? The first set went with serve as both player's looked intent on taking the advantage, and after a tie-break, it was Tsonga who had the advantage over a player who was doing his best impression of Tim Henman out on Centre Court. That tie-break also incidentally meant that Murray lost his first set of the tournament. After the excitement of that first set, the second followed in much the same vein with both players holding their serve to take us into another tie-break. At 5-4 to Murray in the tie-break, Tsonga served a big first serve into Andy Murray who manage to block the ball back into play, and over the advancing Tsonga, who, thinking the ball was flying out, decided not to go with the easiest of volley's to get back level in the tie-break, however, as Tsonga turned around to watch the ball, he saw it drop onto the baseline and give Murray a 6-4 lead, and 2 set points. Having managed to save the first one, Murray served an ace to equal the match at 1-set-all. Murray then produced some stunning tennis to take the 3rd and 4th sets 6-2, 6-2 and dump the 8th seed out at the quarter-final stage and set up an appetising semi-final against World number 1 Rafael Nadal. I witnessed that match today, but if I'm going to do a post on the quarter-finals of the World Cup tomorrow, I think I'll include that match report just to beef it all out a bit. Just to summarise the final score of the Murray match, it was as follows: 6-7, 7-6, 6-2, 6-2. As a quick afterthought, Roger Federer was surprisingly knocked out at the quarter-final stages of this year's Wimbledon by 12th seed Tomas Berdych who faced Novak Djokovic in his semi-final. I will bring the result's of that tomorrow as well.

One of my last Fifa drinking rules then, which I think I will end tomorrow when I bring you the quarter-final round-up, so this is my penultimate one. This is the dance rule. Whenever a goal is scored in the remaining matches, everyone must do a dance (which obviously is pre-agreed) in celebration and anybody that does not do it receives their drinking punishment. The personal favourite amongst my group of friends is the samba, but again you are welcome to pick your own before the match, with examples including the robot, the saturday night fever and the moonwalk. That is actually one of my favourite rules and so I hope you really enjoy that one.

Right, that's your lot for today then guys, hope you have all enjoyed today's post and come back tomorrow for your quarter-final round up. As I always say, I can't thank you guy's enough for reading this and for being so complimentary about it because I do genuinely enjoy writing them knowing that I might be bringing a smile to the faces of you reader's and that you guys get a bit of a kick out of it. Cheer's everyone, see you tomorrow, I'm off to enjoy the rest of my Friday night