Denmark looked very loose at the back in falling 2-0 to Holland. Never mind Simon Poulsen's own goal headed in off teammate Daniel Agger's back. The entire back line gifted Holland chance after chance. For my money Simon Kjaer is the early front-runner for the Jeff Agoos Award (worst defender of tournament). First prize is a week's holiday in one of the atrocious slums that reporters keep driving camera trucks through for "human interest stories" instead of giving us extended halftime highlights. Second prize? Two weeks' holiday, same spot.
Holland were a little bit wasteful with their chances but were certainly the better team. They'll build in hopes of an Arjen Robben return prior to the knockouts.
Denmark might have little to fear in the struggle to advance. Japan looked poor in a 1-0 win over Cameroon. Cameroon looked worse. There were very few chances for either side in this game, and the 18,000 fans dressed up as empty seats had the best view. Denmark—Japan goes on the last day of group matches, and that fixture should decide second place.
Whoever comes out of Group E are going to have their hands full with Italy and Paraguay. Those two countries battled to a 1-1 draw in the late game and looked reasonably good doing it. Paraguay goalkeeper Justo Villar carried on the tournament's tradition of brutal goalkeeping in allowing Italy's equalizer, flailing hopelessly at a corner kick. Paraguay opened the scoring on a set piece themselves in a game that was energetic and played in good spirits. Both countries should advance.
A couple of takeaways from Paraguay—Italy: First, Paraguay faded badly in the last ten minutes. One gets the idea that if these clubs played extra time, Italy might have won 4-1. Second, Italy's starting goalkeeper Gigi Buffon, not at fault on the Paraguay goal, was substituted at halftime. Sky Sports Italia reports a hamstring injury; we'll know more in the coming days.
Finally, I'm resigned to watch the rest of the tournament with the volume off after the ubiquitous vuvuzuelas were allowed to stay despite protests from teams and TV networks on the weekend. The horns make on-field communication almost impossible and will likely force TV networks to move commentators away from the grounds and into the studio. First the funny ball, now the incessant noise. What's next? Bringing in a bunch of Vancouver Canucks fans to try to blind players with laser pointers? Goals and great plays are hard enough to come by in this tournament; why not give us a break from the incessant noise?