For someone whose love for soccer is inversely proportional to their hatred of pizzazz and over-elaborately, choreographed nonsense (Im one of those people that comes out in a sweat and cringes with horror at the idea of taking in a show) I was not particularly looking forward to the 2007 FIFA Womens World Cup opening ceremony.
Ha haaaaa! I was so wrong! It was fantastic. One of my colleagues (who shall remain nameless though she may or may not have recently co-written a book about the England teams qualification for this event ; ) ) said repeatedly, This is worth the air fare alone! She was in fact referring to the second section of the performance a cartoon interpretation of football - that involved lots of little girls dressed as either cute comedy footballs or funny little footie boots. It sounds ridiculous and it was but therein lay the genius. The music was gigglesome too. This was followed by Chinas huge pop star Wei Wei singing a specially written song for the show. I was loving that too. Interspersed with some fireworks that lit the warm, night sky, we were having a great time and the organisers deserve all the plaudits. Admittedly we could have done without the women prancing about pretending to play rock violin and synth stuff but it was forgotten when Chinese favourite (and Shanghais own) Sun Wen was elevated on a rising platform to place the silver ball atop the large replica womens world cup trophy!
How could the football top that?!
Sadly, it couldnt. Ok. That sounds harsh. Germany smashed 11 goals past a hapless and more than likely jet-lagged Argentina (they had less than a week to acclimatise and get their body-clocks right and it clearly wasnt enough) to make a new finals record. It surpassed the 8-0 wins of Sweden over Japan in 91 and Norway over Nigeria in 95. Birgit Prinz (who hit a hat trick) is now joint top all time scorer with Michelle Akers on 12 goals and will more than likely overtake the American legend in the next week or so.
You can read the match reports and I can't tell you much different other than Argentina can't play much worse and although Germany followed their game plan as well as they could against erratic and naïve opposition, they can also play better. Prinz rightly received praise but Melanie Behringer on the left really caught the eye. She scored a cracking individual goal and put umpteen more chances on a nice and inviting, shiny plate for Prinz, Smisek and co.
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