Frogs leg, Roos, Incas and Mermaids Group C Preview

We now move onto group C comprising of the national teams of France, Australia, Peru and Denmark, this is a much harder group to predict and should also hopefully provide us with some interesting football.

The French are an enigma, pound for pound to use an analogy drawn from the world of boxing they have one of the best squads in the tournament, however that moody Gallic temperament gets in their way and as so often happened in French history, the white flag is raised at an early stage and recriminations abound as to who was to blame.
Will it be any different this time ?  I certainly fancy the French to be there or thereabouts as hard as that is for me to admit in public.

Growing up, my knowledge of Peru was limited to Paddington Bear and Tintin and the Prisoners of the Sun and that I had a classmate who had somehow been born in Lima. This was until as a twelve year old in 1978, Peru qualified for the world cup held in Argentina. They were drawn in the same group as the Tartan army otherwise known as Scotland which meant it was compulsory to watch that game as it is nice to know when you can be guaranteed a laugh, i.e. watching Scotland play.

The player who wore the number 10 shirt in any team was always my favourite, unless of course he was Argentinian, and Peru had a real gem in Teofilo Cubillas who scored one of the best free kicks in world cup history in my humble opinion as Peru defeated Scotland three goals to one.

Unfortunately that world cup will always be remembered as the one where Peru conveniently lost six nothing to Argentina, but as that is a possible match up in the next round, I will leave it at that and let you enjoy this wonderful piece of skill.

Cubillas against Scotland

A mention must also be made of the Scottish keepers Hairdo. What was he thinking ?

The Australian team are know as the Socceroos, seriously. Football in Australia usually refers to what they call Aussie Rules football or Footie for short, which to the casual observer would appear to be a misnomer as there do not seem to be any rules, or at least those which the uninitiated can understand.

They qualified this time by scraping through a play off against that well known power house Syria. A week after they qualified their coach resigned and we do not really know what to expect from the new coach.

However to be fair dinkum,  in general, Australians are a competitive bunch and love their sport, for example, they have a national sheep shearing competition and it would not surprise me if they have "a how many shrimps can you cook on the Bar B while chugging a tinny competition". It must get quite boring living so far away from civilization and only having New Zealanders for company. Despite all that they have been involved in a number of interesting games in world cup history as well as have one great goal to their name.

In 2006 Australia were involved in a game against Croatia, where the English referee Graham Poll mistakenly showed three yellow cards to a Croatian player, which should of course never have happened because a second yellow card translates to a red one and a sending off. The goal I refer to was scored by Tim Cahill in the last World Cup.

Cahill against Holland 2014

Last but not least we have Denmark, the Danes are nice people, well at least today they are, but ask a resident of Northern Britain or  France in the ninth century and the mere mention of the Danes would have them quaking in their boots. They were masters of the lighting attack, pillage and plunder and of course one other thing, that we do not need to mention here.

Denmark have only played in four tournaments but they have been involved in some high scoring games. In 1986 they beat Uruguay six-one before losing five-one themselves in the next round.
In 1998 they beat Nigeria four-one before losing three-two to Brazil.

In Norse mythology, Loki was the wily trickster of the gods and apparently according to my children, has become known to a wider audience thanks to the Marvel comics recent films.

Both those Danish squads were gifted with a magical player, one of the Laudrup brothers and this edition of the Danish squad is also blessed with another incarnation of Loki in the form of Christian Eriksen. So that we may all enjoy, may his exploits resonate in Valhalla..