ITALY OH ITALY…….. (A BLOODY RED GAME)

Sadly, this is going to be my last blog post about the world cup before I’m traveling tomorrow.
Sadly, last night Italy failed to get three points because the score was tied 1-1. Both goals were netted by two Italian players. First, Gilardino scored from the free kick taken by Pirlo, but then the USA attacked consistently that the Italian defenders seemed to be nervous about that and eventually Zaccardo made a fatal blunder, kicked the ball to their own goal.
If the Italians thought that things could not get worse, they were definitely wrong, because soon after that, the hot-tempered De Rossi let his elbow fly too high and made McBride’s nose bleed hard, and of course he got a red card for that.
Weird enough, rather than taking advantage playing against 10 people, the Americans followed De Rossi’s example. They played rough and eventually had to play with 9 people after two of them were also sent off.
However, I must admit that USA played much better than when they faced the Czechs. Their strategy in guarding every Italian striker worked really well. Lippi’s decision to replace Totti with Gattuso was quite right, but still Italy could not score any more goal, thanks to Keller.
This result made the competition in group E more interesting, because I heard Ghana won against Czech Republic. Italy is still in the top position with 4 points, but they have to win next week to go to the next round.
It was funny because I read Ryan’s email in the afternoon, calling Italy lousy because they’re too busy taking care of their hairstyle, and it made me pay close attention to their hair. I don’t think it’s true, though. No one seemed to have a fancy hairdo, compared to several players in some other teams. They seemed to be natural to me, no too much hair gel (even Cannavaro and Del Piero don’t have too much hair now!). They’re just handsome as they are, and it’s not their fault.
Btw, I loved the way Gilardino celebrated his goal, maybe he likes to play violin. I noticed there have been so many goals resulted from the free kicks. I saw Deco made one for Portugal yesterday. Actually I missed the first 30 minutes of the first round of Iran vs Portugal. Gina and I went out to have dinner together in a place not far from our neighborhood. After that she came up with an idea to have a gelato in a mall around the corner, so off we went there in our pajamas and flip flop, mixing with other nice-dressed people roaming in that fancy mall spending the Saturday night. But as Gina quoted from the book she’d read, we women have to be confident, and so we decided to put it into practice.
We went inside a gelateria, decided to share a small cup of buonissimo gelato and sat in the big table for six people right facing the TV with other visitors behind us, also watching soccer, and Gina lost her confidence. Just imagine, we didn’t buy much, but we were hogging the biggest table in the front row licking our ice cream and staring at the screen surrounded by many well-dressed people only in our pajamas and flip-flops!
So we decided to go home, after dropping by the music store (in which I was unable to resist the temptation to buy a CD of The Corrs’ Irish traditional songs-I loved it anyway), and watched the rest of the game together.