France fail as Argentina shine
Here's some goalscorer age stats:
The youngest goalscorer is unchanged from last time: Germany's Mueller, aged only 20. The oldest goalscorer is Mexico's Blanco, who scored a penalty against France aged 37. The mean age of a scorer is 27.2, and the median is 27.5, with a lower quartile of 25 and an upper quartile of 29, suggesting most goalscorers are in their late 20s. Indeed, the age with the most goalscorers is 29.
A fantastic game for South Africa, but disappointingly they failed to get through to the next round of the World Cup as Uruguay only won 1-0 against Mexico - goal difference was the deciding factor. France have shown themselves to be a terrible team – they went through more than 338 minutes of World Cup matches without scoring a single goal – which is two-and-a-half matches from this year's cup, and one-and-a-half matches from last year's cup. So Mexico go through on goal difference (+1) as second in their group.
The referee of the France-South Africa game did not do a fantastic job – the first goal was off the shoulder of South African KHUMALO, and the red card against GOURCUFF that brought France down to 10 men was probably undeserved. There has been a lot of bad refereeing in this tournament so far, but let's hope we have a few good refs to choose from to take the Final.
France head home to face a government enquiry into the mess they've ended up in. The only two previous times they have failed to get into the knockout stages – 1966 and 2002 – they were in Uruguay's group each time, and failed to get more than a single point. South Africa are already at home, so there's no long distance to travel for their players, but they put on a great final performance.
Argentina played Greece as South Korea took on Nigeria in the second pair of games today. There was fantastic play in the South Korea/Nigeria game that kept the other two teams guessing as to who would go through. After missing an easy goal in the second half, Yukubu then scored a penalty his team earned to get them on level terms again with the Asian side. All the players were flagging by the end, and struggling to keep going.
Despite a terrible lack of possession for Greece, they held Argentina off their first goal for 77 minutes before DEMICHELIS finally scored to bring the South American side in the lead. They eventually won 2-0 with some fantastic play. To nobody's surprise, Argentina successfully qualified winners of group B to play against Mexico. South Korea go on to face Uruguay.
Predictions for tomorrow: England and USA to qualify from group C, Germany and Serbia to qualify from group D. I would say Germany and Ghana if they weren't playing each other, and I expect Germany to win this game, and Serbia to beat Australia.
We have two South American, one mid-American and one Asian side through to the next round of the World Cup so far. If my predictions prove correct, then three European and one North American side will join them.
Goals per game: Mean – 2.14, Median – 2, Mode – 2, Range – 7
Cards per game: Mean – 3.92, Median – 4, Mode – 2,3, Range – 9
It seems goals are increasing, and the roughness of the games is decreasing.
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