France 0 Uruguay 0

An absolute abortion of a match given the teams on paper. Uruguay have nailed shut the prospects of me ever looking forward to seeing them play; it is clearly in their nature to be dour and rely on individual skills. Forlan should have scored in the second half, Suarez was, as predicted, a failure. It's almost as if the world's pundits are completely blind to the successive failures of forwards who are prolific in Holland to score goals anywhere else: Kuyt, Huntelaar, Kezman .... and now Suarez.

France were even worse; despite a bright opening from Ribery, Govou, Evra and Diaby, they got worse as the game went on, and their tactical approach seems bizarre. Apparently there has been some small system switches from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3, but the system will be completely irrelevant if the French do not manage to inject some pace to their play. While they kept and switched the ball reasonably well, you could count the number of times they actually changed the pace on two fingers: once when Ribery got one-on-one, fortuitouosly beat his man and laid a sitter on for Govou, and once when Evra beat two challenges, and was fouled.

Hopefully the French will labour to a draw with Mexico (who will probably test them a great deal more than Uruguay, yet be more profligate), and then lose to the vuvuzelas. Either way, this match was a load of old bollocks.