Monday, June 22, 2009

Hard Days for Arabic Football

Arab teams had a terrible week. Egypt defeated the World Champs Italy 1-0 and hardly lost to Brazil 4-3 only to be humiliated by the US 3-0 (Don't forget that the Americans scored a 4th goal that the referee did not see). Iraq failed to score in 3 games and was relegated from the first round of the Confederations Cup along with Egypt. Tunisia failed to score at home against Nigeria and drew 0-0, Morocco failed to score against Togo and drew 0-0 and are now technically out of the World cup.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia failed to score at home against North Korea, drawing 0-0 and giving the North Korean the ticket to their first World Cup in 34 years. Bahrain, Qatar and UAE lost 15 out of their 24 matches in the qualifications.

Don't get me started on Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait and our national team (which lost to Bahrain 4-0 recently).

Egypt's great victory against Italy was a great one but apparently due to a lot of luck and a good goalie. To be fair they played a wonderful second half against Brazil. They can do something, but I'm hoping for Algeria to qualify instead of them to the World Cup. Algeria has been one wonderful surprise so far, they finally woke up after two decades of disappointing results.

Let's wish them the best.

5 comments:

Batir said...

I wonder how many people in the USA have realised the true magnitude of the miracle their football team acheived in the last match?

Lilia from Algeria said...

We are all with you Algeria!

One Two Three, Viva l'Algérie!!!

Algeria will be the winner Incha'Allah!!!

Lilia
Algeria

Hareega said...

Batir, the love for "soccer" is not as bad as one would expect, however it could have been better. I watched the game alone in a bar in South Dakota, and there was a youth girls' soccer team watching the game with me. They were a little happy that the US was winning, but had no idea that they qualified to the second round. Their coach who was watching the game with us thought that the US was playing Spain (because they were wearing red). I know there are many other Americans who are more passionate about soccer, in Seattle for example they started watching soccer like crazy. Still very disappointing overall. Besides, a lot of Americans still take sports as a form of entertainment.

Lilia.. good luck to Algeria, I'm really impressed by them.

Anonymous said...

What the hell were you doing in South Dakota?!

Hareega said...

Acutally.... uuhhm... I'm going to live there for 3 years ...