World Cup Qualifier 2005

 

 

Part 2- The first leg - Uruguay v Australia, Montivideo

 

 

The first game in Montevideo turned on the first goal, scored at the half hour mark by a diving Dario Rodriguez header from yet another magical Alvaro Recoba set-piece. Vincenzo Grella, the blonde Italian boy from Noble Park, despite a starring role in both matches in the Claude Makelele role anchoring the Aussie midfield pentad, was caught napping like the British chicks on ‘Wolf Creek’ and mercilessly brutalised as Rodriguez scooped to score Uruguay’s only home goal. Up to this point in the first leg, Total Football Oz Style, with the new-look pressing midfield and the unconvincing back three of Popovic, Neill and T. Vidmar (his fourth World Cup campaign – the ultimate masochist) was serving it up big time to the talented, yet unscrupulous Uruguayans, whose reputation for the professional foul, play acting, spitting and other assorted immoral acts is well earned. Up to that point in the first game, the Uruguayans had been strangely timid, contrasting with the crash through or crash approach of four years ago in the home leg. Man United reject and subsequent European Golden Ball winner Diego Forlan came off after just twenty minutes, and the vibe was positive from an Australian perspective.

 

After the goal however, each Uruguayan player seemed to spontaneously grow a third ball, and terrorised the Australians for an hour. Recoba was clearly the best player on the park, (inventive little prick – walks like he has severe cerebral palsy sans ball; with ball, it’s poetry in motion) and in the end, that one ingredient that had deserted previous Australian World Cup efforts, lady luck, stuck by the Aussies, giving the boys at least half a chance in Sydney. If a second unanswered goal had been conceded, the Argentinian B team would have been through and the Sydney game no longer relevant. No question. Period. And yes, it was that close.

 

 

Hero of the First leg: Alvaro Recoba - El Chino – the best dead ball specialist since Sinisa Mihajlovic [the ‘Cheetah’], who is inarguably, the most racist Serb since Radovan Karadzic, but what this Balkan hero can do at the set pieces, Becks can only do in his wet dreams.

 

Cult Hero of the First leg: John Kosmina - the Adelaide United coach, one-time record Socceroo goalscorer, and bitter Farina rival during his playing days, was both prescient and faintly disparaging in his pre-match prediction, with just a subtle, yet delicious hint of Farina-bashing thrown in for good measure: ‘There is no way that we’ll cop three goals in Montevideo with Hiddink as coach.’.

 

Clanger of the First leg: Jorge Fossati - needed TWO goals at home, not one – he should be reminded that he is not coaching Arsenal, and he is certainly no George Graham.