South Korea V Belgium World Cup 2014

South Korea V Belgium Fifa World Cup 2014

After match synopsis in red!!

Beers: Group H of Beer World Cup: http://thisdrinkinglife.com/world-cup-beer-group-h/

Who is set to win the battle of the beers? Hite Lager V Stella Artois. Who will quench the thirst, set the mood, get me in the right spirit? Click on picture for a preview of the beers.

Get the beer result after, much after!

Hite Lager V Stella Artois: 1-1 score draw. Hite lager with its golden clear colour and nice appearance, is a very pleasant drink, smooth and has an aroma that is quite interesting, a strong tinge of a shot, possibly the rice. It is an extremely easy tasting drink: sweet, clear and crisp. Its smoothness making it go down very well. It tasted of a little rice and pale malt, some grains and a light hop flavour. Very refreshing and clean throughout, I enjoyed this beer. Definitely a top class session beer, perfect for a night spent watching the football. Stella Artois is also a quality beer, a clean and easy to drink beer with a very strong appearance, good head, good lacing, nice colour. It certainly looks the part. It is a very sweet grainy beer yet smooth enough to enjoy. A great session beer that you can also enjoy watching the tv on the box. So I couldn’t separate the two, as both went down very well, so I settled for a score draw. Click on links below for full beer information and reviews.

PreGame:

South Korea: Coach Hong-Myung-Bo is going to go with a very young squad in this game tonight. His regular team didn’t do a whole lot in the first two games so he is set to blood a few of the youth with one eye on the future. They can still reach the last 16 but must beat Belgium and hope Russia also defeat Algeria, but by a smaller winning margin.

In the Algerian game they were set upon fairly quickly by the Desert Foxes who came out with a really high tempo game, playing some lovely football, attacking with pace, and it looked liked the Koreans were shell shocked. Three goals in the first half shows how great the Algerians did, or how bad the Koreans were.

The Korean goalkeeper, Jung Sung-ryong, was all over the shop in the first half, and he didn’t get much help from his defence either. The two centre haves were particularly awful and were caught ball watching for a few of the Algerian goals.

Still there was some positives. They got a nice goal from Son Heung-min, who was quick to pounce on Bougherra’s mistake in the box.

That goal gave a huge confidence boost to the Koreans and they had Algeria rattled early in the second half. The Algerian goalkeeper M’Bolhi was particularly busy, and made a few brilliant saves to stem the tide. But Algeria got the fourth to relieve the pressure on their team in the end. But if Korea can just try and play like that for a sustained period of time they could sneak a goal against the Belgians, who are likely to be resting a lot of their players today and might not have the same intensity with them.

Belgium: The Belgians are already through to the last 16 so coach Marc Wilmots is likely to rest players tonight especially those on yellow cards. Divock Origi might get a starting place, since he has showed some good promise so far, replacing the ineffective Romelu Lukaku, and scoring the winner against Russia.

The game against the Russians was boring. Dull, with a very dour first half, Belgium and Russia produced one of the worst games of the World Cup so far. Belgium not always willing to put in the hard work for a victory. In their two games now they have only really played about 20 minutes of real football, leaving it very late in both games to win.

Romelu Lukaku was once again hopeless in attack, and was wandering aimlessly up front. Wilmots rightly took him off early second half. Lukaku wasn’t too impressed with this decision and looked to be mouthing off when he went to the dugout. Thing is though, why didn’t he show that passion and aggression on the pitch, wimp. To further rub salt into his wounds Divock Origi, who replaced him, impressed when he came off the bench and scored the winning goal two minutes from time. Take that Romelu, another brilliant inspired substitution from Wilmots. Now if the manger could only start with a good team, and not leave it until the second half…..

Hazard finally started to show his talents, he played well in the second half and created a few chances and was unlucky not to score himself. Better from the star player.

Kompany had it fairly comfortable at the back, mopped up everything fairly handy and was never in danger much throughout the game, albeit it apart from the one free header that Russia missed.The Goalkeeper also gets to continue his amazing record of playing for Belgium without ever losing. He has now 20 caps and counting.

Belgium are in the second round with a game to spare and this game might be a good chance for Wilmots to try and see if he can pick a perfect 11 that he can settle on for the second round.

A more detailed review on Belgium here and on South Korea here

Watched only highlights of this match as opted to watch the other Group H game, Russia V Algeria, live.

Another late late show from Belgium who scored with about a quarter of the game left. Vertonghen striking the rebound in the 77th minute after Kim Seung-gyu couldn’t hold onto Origi’s shot. Another win, another average performance. Belgium trundle on, without dropping any points. They say if you are winning ugly, you are still winning, so I guess once they do hit a purple patch in a game they might actually start showing us why they are the dark horses of this tournament. But I haven’t seen anything as of yet to suggest that will prosper in this competition.

South Korea had chances in the game. Defour made a brilliant clearance off the line, Son Heung-Min hit the Belgian crossbar and they had a few headers that caused some problems in the centre of the Belgian defence. But overall the Koreans struggled to get into this game. They simply didn’t have the players that would make the difference, even when they had the man advantage, after Defour was correctly sent off, it made no real big impact on the pitch.

Belgium now have a second round tie against the USA, in a game where both teams look evenly matched, and to be honest it could go either way. The two teams have a very laboured approach going forward, and don’t seem to have that striker that can pick a goal at will. Can see this match going all the way to extra time and penalty kicks.

South Korea go home, disheartened, as they gave everything they had but it appeared not to make much difference in a very weak group. They will have four years to come up with a better plan on how to take on the big boys in a World Cup. Toughen up perhaps?

Music to get you in the mood

The Black Skirts V Technotronic