Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Ghana Goner...

The ride to Dortmund seemed to take forever as our three car caravan was parked in traffic that made me feel like I was home on the Long Island Expressway in New York. Today's game was a bonus for me. I didn't expect to get to see Brazil tonight. I was supposed to have been on a plane this afternoon to St. Petersburg, Russia for a stadium inspection visit for the FIFA Women's U20 Championship. I managed to adjust the schedule giving me one more night prior to taking leave of lovely Cologne on Wednesday morning at 0600 hours connecting through Frankfurt to be in Moscow an hour in advance of the inspection team who will arrive from their task in St. Petersburg and meet me on the ground running.

The TomTom that I pressure sealed on the window periodically confirmed that we had taken the right route, but clearly weren't alone in our midday trip to the house of Borussia Dortmund, now configured for the World Cup to seat 65,000. Upon arrival, my grandson Dylan, accompanied by his parents Marci and Stuart, helped by Alex and Dwayne, made their way through security, while Sunil Gulati and his son Emilio queued in behind while Mary Lynn stopped the screening process as they tried to figure out what to do with the big gift wrapped box containing the Wedding present she had brought for Franz Beckenbauer from New York after hearing of his Friday wedding to Heidi Burmester.

Having turned over the goodies to Franz, we next ran into Anna Teixeira, who admitted to being nervous as her familiar yellow jersied band of single named stars took the field against Africa's remaining challenger. Sepp Blatter too, having recovered from the drab night of watching Switzerland with the Ukraine, was ready for a real challenge here in Dortmund. Within five minutes, Ronaldo alerted the world that Brazil could do what they wanted and scoring was the least of their problems. The Ghanaians kept attacking but finished with either spraying their shots wide or with precision accuracy to the hands of Dida, the Brazilian Goalkeeper. With the game ending at 3-0, the attention of the survivors were to see who would win the nightcap between France and Spain, providing Brazil with their next obstacle to repeating their feat of 2002. As time would tell, it was an inspired French team who would tame the Spaniards 3-1.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jealousy is not a good trait but I miss being in lovely Cologne and are extremely envious of your continued adventures in that Football mad country.
Cheers from (a pretty dull place in comparison) New York!!
Roberto