While it's true that I let graduate school keep me from blogging as much as I'd like, its takes more than research papers and comprehensive reading courses to keep me from following the beautiful a whole lot more than I can honestly justify. And being that today begins a five-day stretch of official FIFA international dates, and that means World Cup qualifiers all over the globe. The USA has a home match against Costa Rica tonight, but the match that matters as far as this blog is Bosnia's home leg versus Greece.
This is a big match--Bosnia and Greece are tied at the top of Group Seven with 10 points apiece, with Bosnia holding the tie-breaker right now on goal differential (+13 for Bosnia to +4 for Greece; a very comfortable cushion at this point). The first leg, in Greece, was played on October 12 last fall, and ended in a 0-0 draw. That's a crucial road point; if Bosnia can now win their home leg in the series that could potentially decide first place in the group, qualifying Bosnia for the World Cup outright and sparing them the second-place playoff which has led to so much heartbreak in recent World Cup and Euro Cup qualifying campaigns.
If Bosnia wins today, the battle is hardly over--Bosnia is no footballing giant, and can't afford to take any opponent for granted. Greece has already won their away leg versus Slovakia, the country nipping at the co-leaders' heels with 7 points and one Bosnia has yet to face in this campaign. And over half of that impressive goal differential was due to an 8-1 thrashing of poor Liechtenstein, whom Greece have yet to face. Still, if they manage 3 points tonight the prospect of seeing Bosnia in an international tournament for the first time will be much brighter.
3 comments:
Here's to the spirit of Divic.
:)
Victory! 3-1 over Greece. That's a GREAT result!
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