Results of the last day of the Group Stages, tomorrow's matches and unlucky losers

Today Portugal (Super Bock) was pitted against Brazil (Palma Louca).  Brazil scored two first;  why is it that Brazilian beers taste so insipid?  Brahma (also a Brazilian beer but representing Paraguay in this competition) also scored two.  Ali and I speculate that Brazilians must like their beers in this style, rather like Italians seem to like their white wine to taste of as little as possible.  At first we thought it was going to be a 2 all draw but at the last minute Portugal went up to 3 and gained itself a place in the next round where it meets Honduras (sub Cristal from Cuba);  Honduras are the favourites, but in this competition you can never be completely sure of the result....

The other results were:

Cote d'Ivoire (Flag) drew Korea DPR (sub Tsing Tao from China - a choice made on politics as well as geography) 3-3 and goes through to meet Spain (Alhambra) in the next round
Spain beat Chile 4-3 (see above)
Honduras beat Switzerland 4-2 and goes through to meet Portugal in the next round

Tomorrow's Matches

Saturday sees France playing Greece - should be an easy win for France on past performance

and USA up against Australia - USA on great form but the Aussies are real battlers

Losers - some surprises

The biggest surprise and disappointment of the competition so far is the exit of Slovenia (Zlatarog) which showed such promise in its first match against Algeria (Casablanca).  Particularly disappointing given the efforts made to enable it to compete and the generosity of the sponsors Trevor and Linda Lester.  We think that all it needs is bottle and hopes are high for the future.

Good to see a strong African field still in the competition but sad that Ghana (Star in a bottle)could not make it through Group D, but it was always going to be tough with USA and Germany in the same group.

Algeria (Casablanca) in Group C was also a worthy performer which might have made its way through in a weaker group but just could not stand up tothe might of USA and England.

Ali will do a round up of the results by group shortly.