The Brazil World Cup 2014

Brazil 2014: Day 9

Hants

Day 9 of the 2014 World Cup. English fans will be nursing more than just a hangover this morning as their 2nd defeat of the tournament just about confirms their exit at the group stage.

Results for Thursday 19th June 2014
Group C
Colombia                    2-1             Ivory CoastW
Rodríguez 64′                                   Gervinho 73′
Quintero 70′
Ref: Howard Webb
Att: 68,748

Japan                          0-0               Greece
Ref: Joel Aguilar
Att: 39,485

Group D
Uruguay                      2-1                 England
Suarez 39′, 85′         Rooney 75′
Ref: Carlos Velasco Carballo
Att: 62,575

Fixtures for Friday 20th June
Italy v Costa Rica    Group D    5pm    BBC 1    Arena Pernambuco, RecifeW
Switzerland v France    Group E    8pm    ITV    Arena Fonte Nova, Salvador
Honduras v Ecuador    Group E    11pm    ITV    Arena da Baixada, Curitiba

Referee appointments for today http://www.exeweb.com/2014/06/18/brazil-2014-referee-appointmenst-for-19-june-and-20-june/
Referee appointments for Saturday http://www.exeweb.com/2014/06/20/brazil-2014-referee-appointments-for-june-22/

Luis Suarez team mates thoughts on him (as report by fifa.com)

Midfielder Egidio Arevalo commented “He’s phenomenal. To be honest, we should have expected thisuruguay_suarez_feat from him. We knew that he would be fit in time for this game, but we didn’t know exactly how sharp he would be, so he surprised us out on the pitch tonight.”

“Our team really revolves around him,” said Lugano

Cavani  reported“He did what he had to do. But we know that it can’tW have been easy for him, coming back from injury, with all the pressure that surrounds a World Cup and with everything that was being said and speculated about his fitness.”

Goalkeeper Fernando Muslera on Suarez “There was a lot of criticism coming his way, saying that we’d be left with a player only 50 per cent fit. But when I heard that I thought, ‘I’d rather have a player like him in the team anyway’. Even at three per cent fit he can still win you a game.”

Gerrard

England’s captain Steve Gerrard ponders whether England could still qualify for the knock-out stages:-

Italy are a fantastic team and capable of winning both games but we’re clutching at straws. The position we’re in is the position we didn’t want to be in coming into the tournament, relying on other people’s results. It’s very difficult at the moment.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens in tomorrow’s fixture. The manager will have to wait and see what happens before deciding what he is going to do.  If there’s nothing to play for then I don’t know if he’ll play a completely different team. But it’s a very tough moment, at this moment.

It is frustrating. We never managed the game well enough when we got the equaliser. We can’t give chances to Luis Suarez because he buries them from that position. It’s a really tough moment for everyone in the dressing room but we need to be professional, keep fighting and pray for that scoreline to go for us.

[We are] sort of frustrated because looking at the two games and how we have performed we sort of deserve something out of either one of them if not both of them.

I don’t think I am standing here saying we were poor in both games and our gameplan was wrong. I just thought when we got the equaliser today we just needed to be a bit more clever, a bit more cute and a bit more difficult to beat.

Maybe accept that going for a point might have been the best option. But they were weak at the back and they were there for the taking. Once we got the equaliser we tried to use the initiative to get the second.