World Cup Semi Finals - Zidane Books French Place in Finals (Portugal 0 - France 1)

Knockout games are always so tedious to watch (especially so at 3am in the morning). Boths teams playing in such games are usually too afraid to make that mistake, thus tend to play negatively. Thankfully this wasn't one of them.

A penalty scored by Zidane in the first half changed the face of the game. Goals always force the trailing team to come forward and Portugal spent much of the second half camped in the French half as they pushed hard for an equalising goal.

However, try as they might, Portugal simply lacked match winners. They lacked the players who would make things happen. Ronaldo was probably the only player in a Portugese shirt that looked threatening and likely to score a goal, but he was just one guy against the entire French defense, marshalled brilliantly by Lilian Thuram.

Perhaps Scolari didn't feel the Portugese strikers were good enough, but putting only one striker up front when a goal down, and time running out, seems like a bad idea to me. Pauleta for practically the entire game was left alone in the penalty area without much service. I don't understand why Scolari didn't substitute another striker to ease his burden. And when Scolari did make a change, he made a direct swap, taking Pauleta out and replacing him with Simao (???). He essentially kept the same formation which never looked like causing the French any problems.

Anyway, the French set up a date on Sunday with Italy. I can't see the Italians losing this one unless Zidane and Henry decide to go crazy. The French, themselves, would be hoping the entire team goes crazy, except Barthez, whose shown in the past that he's already nuts.