Linesmans Affecting the Knockouts!!

The first round of the knockouts was a fairly depressing round simply because England were so very poor and the disallowed Lampard goal just compounded the misery upon the England fans.

Best Goalkeeper: Eduardo - Made quite a few great saves from Spanish striker David Villa and generally looked like a safe pair of hands. Definitely did not deserve to let in a goal today but eventually Spain will garner enough opportunities that one will go in. If Kawashima looked more confident when the ball was in the air he would probably have received this award.

Best Defender: Gabriel Heinze - Performed like he did when he had just joined Manchester United. Was stunning when going forward and made every tackle when he needed to. He maybe even outshone Carlos Tevez who scored 2 goals.

Best Midfielder: Mesut Özil - His dribbling was a joy to behold, tearing England apart at every chance. Set up Thomas Müller at the end of the match to cap off a magnificent performance. He will definitely be the most wanted player in the world after this tournament.

Best Striker: Luiz Suarez - This boy is the real deal. His goalscoring record is often called into to question as he has scored his goals in the Eredivise, but his dribbling is a joy to behold. He has ability that cannot be taught and he would be a fantastic addition to any team in the world.

Best Match: Germany 4 - 1 England - Despite the fact that we went out, I really feel like this was a great game to watch for the neutrals. It had the huge turning point of the disallowed goal and then some amazing football from Germany.

Worst Match: Spain 1 - 0 Portugal - I find that Spain make a match too one sided to be entertaining. It was very tedious to watch the ball passed around the middle of the pitch with little to no penetration but it is very effective as a style of play as it stops the opposition from playing and eventually mentally fatigues them.

Surprise Player: Thomas Müller - He is a fantastic propsect as he as shown all season at Bayern Munich but his performance against England was astonishing. Two goals and an assist capped off a marvalous performance where he outshone the likes of Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose.

Best Manager: Milovan Rajevac - He set Ghana up with five at the back and played on the counter. As USA did not play to their best, Ghana were also allowed to play quite a lot of free-flowing, attacking football whilst maintaining a great deal of security at the back with three central defenders, resulting in them not conceding a goal in open play.

Team of the Round:

---------------------- Eduardo --------------------

M. Pereira----Tankaka--------- Juan --------- Heinze

Müller-----Ramires-------Schweinsteiger---------Özil

---------------Villa---------------Suarez----------------

Predictions

Golden Boot: David Villa (Unchanged) - Villa still looks like the strongest striker but the Germans seem to be scoring more goals than Spain right now so Klose could still score more.

Player of the Tournament: Özil (Unchanged) - Özil has been phenomenal so far in the tournament, there are very few players that can even challenge him for this title so far. In my opinion only Iniesta, Schweinsteiger and Forlan can even consider themselves to be playing anywhere near as well as Özil.

Winners: Spain (Unchanged) - I still think that the winners will be either Spain, Germany or Brazil and I still think that Spain have the most talented footballers in their starting XI as well as on their bench.

Surprise Team: Ghana (previously Japan) - I gave their manager the award for best manager of the round but I do think that they will get knocked out by Uruguay. Uruguay are a better team and have more players capable of producing magic. Even though the whole of Africa will be behind them, I would be surprised if they were able to get past Uruguay.

Overperformers: Slovakia (Unchanged) - Slovakia stopped the Dutch from playing to their full potential and even managed to grab a goal. I'm glad they weren't embarrassed by the Dutch and they have massively overachieved in this tournament.

Underperformers: England (previously France) - England were awful but they were so unfortunate to have a fantastic equaliser wiped off the board because of poor officiating. 

Final Thoughts - There were some very poor decisions made in this round costing England and Mexico greatly. I hope video evidence is brought in because these players may never have another chance of playing in the World Cup.