Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

YouTube has all the goals and Germany-2006: The Goals is acting as a repository for the lot. Have a look. It's a total of 12 so far, and some are real gems. For the severely attention deficited, this is enough, but if you belong to the dwindling demographic that's sticking with words, the Rainy Day nutshell summaries of the games to date will please you. For the irredentists, who prefer screeds instead of thimbles of text, each synopsis below is accompanied by a link to a lengthier posting out on the blogoshpere:

Germany 4 — Costa Rica 2: Lahm and Frings netted two superb goals, while Klose marked his birthday with a brace. Costa Rica got just two chances, and scored twice. Here's how Strategy or Soccer saw it:

Ecuador 2 — Poland 0: Big lads, those chaps from the Andes. And they can move the ball about very nicely, as well. Poland were dreary, dull, dismal. Check out the NYT blog play-by-play commentary:

England 1 — Paraguay 0: Horribly familiar. Rarely has a win been so unfulfilling. England were drab and Paraguay were incompetent. This is how Planet Soccer took it:

Trinidad and Tobago 0 — Sweden 0: The tournament's first major upset. The Soca Warriors were magnificent. The Scandinavians' lack of pre-tourney match practice could cost them. World Cup Blog has the round up:

Argentina 2 — Ivory Coast 1: Passionate, vibrating, pulsating, throbbing… Yes, we're talking about football here. This was the best game so far. Both teams were tremendous. A similar pov can be found over at My Sofa World Cup Blog:

For those who like their footie with a bit of bite, today's agenda offers three treats. The game between Mexico and Iran presents a dilemma for many of our American friends in that the choice is between a country that wishes to flood the US with illegal immigrants and one that hopes to start World War III. Because the mushroom cloud over Boston would be worse than the alternative, Mexico gets our vote. Then there's Holland vs. Serbia-Montenegro. The really funny thing about this encounter is that one of the two countries does not exist. Seeing that Serbia-Montenegro is the dying gasp of Balkan tribalism, we're going for the team that helped give Ireland the Orange Order. And then, there's Portugal-Angola, which pits former colonial master against former colonial subject. The PC thing to do is to root for Angola, but everyone else will be doing that so it's tiny Portuguese flags that we'll be waving tonight.