Aki Riihilahti - The Official Homepage In English Suomeksi På norsk
News Questions Facts History Pictures Special

News

Back to News

7.7.2002
Post World Cup thoughts

This is what I think about the World Cup:


You have to wake up too early to watch the games.
Watching China play would have made you sleepy anyway.
The surprise is World Cups middle name.
However Brazil or Germany always wins it in the end.
Hasan Sas is damn good player but sounds like hidden airline commercial.
How the hell can these Asian people run like that!
Don’t they have barbers in Argentina?
Many times Daavid beat Goljat.
Have you ever heard any of these great Senegal players before?
It is nice too see some new fresh countries in the late stages.
It would have been even nicer to see in the late stages the classical teams and have more classical games between these legendary nations.
Have some of these referees won a trip in a lottery!
I did lose my money in betting wrong teams every time.
Where did a month dissapear from my life!


The good news of the tournament is that now it is justified to argue that Finland could have been the fourth best team in the World Cup. The two teams that we evenly competed in qualification group, Germany (2-2, 0-0) and England (0-0, 1-2), both lost only one game and that was against the champions Brazil. Furthermore in the former qualifiers we beat Turkey, now bronze medallists. So maybe not all the best teams were involved in Japan-Korea because Finnish players were clubbing in Finland.

Well, actually should have been either in World Cup or clubbing. Instead I was commentating the damn thing (World Cup, not clubbing) in the telly almost every morning way too early. How wonderful summer holiday it is to analyse games like China-Costa Rica in the dark studio even before the morning paper has come. Or to try to pronounce any Senegal players name at the Mid summer festival day. On the other hand I had the chance to ridiculous myself in front of my whole home nation by playing drum symbals and wearing fire stations red South Korean shirt under grey Armani suite in direct broadcast.

My World Cup team will be this:

Kahn
Meltzeger, Ferdinand, Alpay, Roberto Carlos
Diop, Gilberto Silva, Ronaldinho, Hasan Sas
Ronaldo, Vieri

Be fair, there could have been many other good options as well but I chose these because I was in a hurry and couldn’t really remember any other players,

Aki


Copyright 2001 Aki Riihilahti, all rights reserved Go to the Top of the Page