Last night’s Angola-Portugal match was far more competitive than anyone anticipated, especially after Pauleta gave the Portuguese a 1-0 lead four minutes into the match. But the unheralded Angolans displayed a wonderful attacking style, created several great scoring chances and got some great saves from Joao Ricardo. I don’t think the Angolan fans could be too disappointed in the 1-0 loss, and the massive, boisterous Portuguese contingent got the three points they wanted.
The famed German organizational skills have yet to present themselves here. Last night in Cologne, the media shuttle from the main train station to the stadium was an eight-person van – entirely too small. After the match, there were so many media types waiting for these vans (which come only once every half-hour) that the organizers had to commandeer a bus that was bringing other journalists to the media parking lots.
Unfortunately, they didn’t tell the people who were already on the bus for the parking lots. Once the bus started toward the train station, the parking-lot people rightfully complained – and the driver told them to get off the bus. Multilingual cursing ensued. What a mess.
After taking advantage of Germany’s absence of an open-container law on the train platform (Bitburger, 0.5 liters, only 2.20 Euro – not bad), I rode from Cologne to Bochum, where we stayed in a hotel. Today, it’s the US-Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen.
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