I've decided to save the best ten matches of the WC to my archive. Here is my list (ordered by match number): Match 07: Germany vs. Australia The first demonstration of strength by the German team Match 22: Slovenia vs. USA Nail-biter with two very different halfs and some dodgy refereeing Match 29: Brazil vs. Côte d'Ivoire Brazil shows what it can do Match 34: France vs. South Africa The first half was the epitome of the French self destruction, the second half showed that France can do better, but still not good enough. Also, South Africa goes out with a good performance Match 41: Slovakia vs. Italy Another nail-biter with lots of goals and nice plays Match 51: Germany vs. England The overhyped English team goes out with a boom and a reverse Wembley goal Match 52: Argentina vs. Mexico Great goals, terrible ref Match 57: Netherlands vs. Brazil Brazil dominating the first half, imploding in the second Match 59: Argentina vs. Germany The best game by Germany, totally dismantling Argentina's defense Match 63: Uruguay vs. Germany A weakened German side edges past Uruguay in a game with lots of goals What are anybody else's top 10?
Good list, agree with most of it. I would also include Ghana-Uruguay. Memorable and as tense a game as we've seen in a while in a WC. Nigeria-South Korea was also a pretty open back and forth match. Denmark-Cameroon was also one of my favorites, very entertaining attacking game.
For the first time ever i am struggling to come up with best games and witha lot of yours there were some great team performances and for a great game ie. Italy/Germany in 2006 it does need two teams to tango and Germany dominated Australia so i cannot call a great 'game'. To have one team disgrace themselves through actually trying as in France/SA I would struggle to put theat in as well.
My criteria (33% each): 1.) Intensity/Attacking from Both Sides 2.) High Drama/Pressure/Historical Impact 3.) Memorable Moments/Great Goals #1 Ghana 1-1 Uruguay* #2 Netherlands 3-2 Uruguay #3 Netherlands 2-1 Brazil #4 Germany 4-1 England #5 Mexico 1-1 SA #6 Slovenia 2-2 USA #7 Slovakia 3-2 Italy #8 USA 1-0 Algeria #9 Argentina 4-0 Germany #10 Spain 1-0 Paraguay
My metric was "entertainment". I'm entertained when I see a good game between two great sides, but a "big" team like France self destructing was entertaining in its own way.
In order of match number: Match 07: Germany vs Australia The woulda-shoulda-coulda champions make their presence felt in a big way. Match 16: Spain vs Switzerland Every major tournament needs a real defensive clinic like this one to keep the faith in managers who believe in defense-first/defense-primary strategies. Match 22: Slovenia vs United States Match 35: Nigeria vs South Korea Match 38: Algeria vs United States Just when you thought the hand of god was a sweet gift... down from the heavens comes the trailing boot of Landon Donovan to save the day for the United States after they were knocking on the door for nearly 60 minutes (after surviving a crossbar-rattling scare in the first half). Match 41: Italy vs Slovakia You like late drama? Watch this match. Match 43: Denmark vs Japan For 90x42 minutes we had heard everyone whine about how the Jabulani was uncontrollable... no one could hit the target... etc etc. Well, the Japanese put on a dead-ball clinic for all to see. The Danes played their part too and made it interesting late with a 2-1 goal on 81' before eventually falling 3-1. Match 54: Brazil vs Chile This was an old fashioned beatdown. Brazil had smoked Chile in qualifying, Bielsa refused to change anything up tactically, and got his butt handed to him again as Brazil made people believe there was no stopping them to another world title. Match 57: Brazil vs Netherlands Match 61: Uruguay vs Netherlands ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Special mentions to: Match 63 (3rd place game) - GER/URU, Match 59 - GER/ARG, Match 58 - URU/GHA, Match 51 - GER/ENG, and Match 12 - SVK/NZL. Worst 6 of the tournament: Match 2 - Uruguay vs France (France didn't even bother to try to score up a man. Talk about a lack of intensity and effort. Uruguay was fine with a draw and I'm fine with that. But man, France made this match look a hell of a lot worse.) Match 4 - South Korea vs Greece Match 36 - Argentina vs Greece Match 37 - Slovenia vs England Match 45 - Portugal vs Brazil Match 62 - Spain vs Germany
The Netherlands, oh never-World champions-lands, lost all my respect for their showing (i don`t want to call it performances), because of the WC final... Sry, but it wanted to support them, but it tended to be a bunch, not a team, full of chopping retarded bastards, that could be glad that the English referee was blind. I was so glad, that Spain won, because it was a win of the nice football against the "Rumpelfootballers" from the never-WC-champ-lands.
Wow, most off-topic comment ever. And now I have to go off-topic too!!! This topic is about the ten best matches of the World Cup 2010 and not of your "original" opinion of the final which was 3 weeks ago, you stupid twat. What about the German player who in the losers final almost broke a Uruguayan leg with his wild tackle? A lot worse foul then what we saw in the final where only 2 Dutch players (de Jong and Van Bommel) were reckless and dirty. The rest really wasn't that bad.
How is Uruguay - Ghana not on everybody's list? Totally wide-open game, with one of the most bizarre, controversial and emotional endings possible...the handball incident will be discussed for generations to come.
Well, I thought that the first 90 minutes were terrible. It was pretty thrilling afterwards, but I didn't want to archive two hours of football, when three quarters of it were a snore fest.