The most interesting thing in last night’s Brazil-Mexico snoozefest? The continued bafflement of Jonathan Pearce at something a child could understand.
It is not even a week old but the 2014 World Cup hasn’t been short of ‘viral’ moments thus far. From RVP’s diving header to Eamon Dunphy’s ‘are we on’ moment, the Twitter machine is more wrecked than Wayne Rooney following 90 minutes running around after the Italians.
But the most sensational moment online thus far has probably been the reaction to BBC commentator Jonathan Pearce’s bizarre take on an incident in the France Honduras game on Sunday. A Karim Benzema shot struck the post, rolled across the goal-line before being palmed into the net by Honduran stopper Noel Valladares.
The incident went to the goal-line boffins and they showed the ball hitting the post, ruling no goal (correctly) before going on (correctly) to award the goal for the second piece of action.
This was so obvious that even Sepp Blatter would have understood but Pearce slammed the decision, saying: “First they’re saying it’s not a goal, then they’re saying it’s crossed the line. Which is it?”
While co-commentator Martin Keown tried to explain it to him, Pearce continued to bizarrely dispute the ‘controversial’ decision and Twitter had a field day with him.
Anyway, we thought it was all over but Pearce was duty for the Brazil/Mexico game last night and, unprompted, he brought the French goal up again.
Just let it go…
Even Pele can’t escape the Brazilian traffic
We have all heard stories about how tricky it can be to get around Brazilian cities on match days but we thought that if you were a living legend, you would probably be okay. But no, as the great Pele couldn’t get through it to see the clash with Mexico in Fortaleza last night.
Pele told Globo TV: “For the first time I had to listen to the first half of a Brazil game inside a car, we were stuck in traffic.”
The gridlock in Fortaleza was bad, but in Sao Paulo it was worse. There, as folks rushed home from work for the game, police reported that 302 km of roads in the city were backed up. Yikes.
JOEpan update
Tomorrow at 11pm our Samurai Blue boys will play Greece in a win-or-go-home game in Natal. And it seems our boys will go for it or come back on their shields, which we think, unfortunately, might be a Greek saying.
“For four years now we have focused on attack,” goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima told FIFA.com. “We want to keep the ball and move it forward, using all of our qualities and technical ability to score goals. This is how we will play. We will attack.”
Fingers crossed…
