Spain vs Paraguay

The fourth quarter finals in the 2010 FIFA world cup was perhaps the best match I have ever watched. Not that it was played between the two best teams in the world cup. In fact, Spain had created a history today by winning the quarterfinals for the first time! The reason is that the game had la ot of dramatic sequences in the entire 90 minutes.

The drama started with a referee's wrong off-side call which ended up in Paraguay not being given the goal that they deserved, which would have made the score to read 1-0 for Paraguay. The replay showed that one of the Paraguay player was slightly offside, but unfortunately he did not receive the pass. The player who received it was way behind the Spain's defender while he took the ball in charge and hit it on to the nets. Perhaps it happened too quickly that the referee did not see this clearly and so awarded off-side wrongly. The score was still 0-0 till the off-time.

In the second half, both the teams played their heart out trying to get that one goal which would make the difference to them. Just one goal was all that was needed for both the teams, and they were not ready to give it to the opponent so easily. Each team made their competitor to sweat hard to even bring the ball to some 30 meters from the net. Occasionally, desperate attempts were made by both the teams to shoot out the ball from such a long distance as they were unable to go past the defenders. In such a highly dramatic situation, it was likely to expect some kind of mistakes to happen, and it started with a Spaniard. One of the player committed a foul inside the penalty area which resulted in awarding a shoot out to Paraguay. Guess what? Paraguay failed to convert the shoot out to a goal and lead the game! Worse. Spain take charge immediately and the counter-strike ended in a near goal to Spain which was stopped by another foul, only that this time it was committed by a Paraguay player inside the penalty area.

Alonso from Spain did what Cardoso from Paraguay could not! He puts the goal!!! The moment was electrifying and Spain players were celebrating, but the referee was not pleased with the result! He noticed something which no other player noticed; Spain players committed a fault by moving into the penalty area even before Alonso shoots out the ball. The referee calls for shoot out again and this time Alonso could not beat the goalie! Two penalty shoot outs, one for each team, and neither converted it to a goal! The scores were still reading 0-0 and the desperation in both the teams to get that one goal was clearly surfacing now.

The penalty shoot out drama started and ended in just under two minutes. The last time such a drama happened wherein both the teams got a shoot out and failed to convert it to a goal was in 1930! Villa finally made the difference by putting a goal when only 8 minutes were left for the final whistle and created history for Spain.