Best Player Zinedine Zidane. After a lackluster start for the French, he was able to pull the team together and lead them to, if not a fairytale ending, at least a solid second-place finish.

Worst Player Ronaldinho. He didn’t do anything to deserve “worst player,” because he didn’t do anything. He completely failed to live up to the hype as a two-time world player of the year. Contrast his performance with those of two other former world players of the year who are not in the primes of their careers: Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane.

Biggest Gripe All the cards. I understand that FIFA wants to make the game more technical and less physical, but it got out of hand. The stricter punishments favored teams that dive and flop. Referees at this level need to start yellow carding for dives.

Biggest Joy Ghana’s performance. Ghana’s group was the toughest in the tournament and it was no fluke that they moved on, sending home two teams that entered the tournament with excellent rankings.

Best Match So many to choose from. there was wonderful football on display many times in the tournament, notably in the Spain v France match and the Italy v Germany match, but the most entertaining game of the tournament had to be Croatia 2 - 2 Australia. The late game heroics… both teams giving it their all… the triple yellow card… there was a lot to like in this game.

Worst Match Portugal 1 - 0 Netherlands. Sure, it was very entertaining, but was it really football? The cards were rampant and it often looked like the players were more interested in injuring the other team than in playing the ball. It was painful to watch the Dutch get eliminated by an inferior Portuguese side.

Biggest Surprise Spain burst out of the gate with an exciting and dynamic squad. They’ll be a team to watch in Euro 2008 for sure.

Best Quote Whatever it was Marco Materazzi said to Zinedine Zidane to provoke such a violent response.

Team of the Tournament (4-4-2) Ricardo; Marquez, Lahm, Thuram, Cannavaro; Robben, Essien, Zidane, Deco; Klose, Torres. Subs: Ribery, van Persie, Appiah, Kewell, Van der Sar, Tevez.

This post was inspired by the Guardian’s reviews of the World Cup.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 9:58 am and is filed under World Cup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.