MATCH REPORT
Spain 0 - 1 Norway
Iversen 66
Well well, what a surprise! Somehow you just knew that Spain would fail to produce yet again, and the tournament of surprise results continues...An instantly forgettable first half was only notable for a Solksjaer header which came back off the bar, otherwise Spain huffed and puffed but never came remotely near to blowing the house down.....the game continued along much the same lines until a long punt down the middle caught Spain's still-wet-behind-the-ears goalie in nomansland, and Tottenham's Steffen Iversen beat him to the ball, looping a header over him and into the onion bag halfway through an only marginally better second half.....Thereafter Spain couldn't find a way through a packed Norwegian defence, and were left without a single decent chance worthy of the name to reflect on....
MATCH REPORT
Yugoslavia 3 - 3 Slovenia
Milosevic 67, 73 Zahovic 23, 57
Drulovic 70 Pavlin 52
And the hits just keep on coming! This game had everything you could wish for in a group encounter, with the largely unfancied Slovenians taking the lead through Zlatko Zahovic midway through a first-half during which I was playing cards and so therefore missed his header into the bottom left-hand corner....Slovenia held the lead 'til half time, and still there was no hint of what an extraordinary affair it would prove to be....Slovenia scored again after 52, Pavlin heading in a Zahovic free-kick, and when Mihajlovic committed the most atrocious error of the tournament to date, rolling the ball to Zahovic's feet and allowing him to score from just outside the area past a somewhat incredulous 'keeper just five minutes later, and then compounding his faux pas by getting himself sent off for a second bookable offence just three minutes after that, only a fool or a brave man would have bet on Yugoslavia's 10 men getting something out of the game.....They did, though, pulling one back on 67 when a scuffed shot was hooked back over the goalie's head and off the bar for Milosevic to score from half a yard (and yes, Moldovan would have scored that one too!) and then just three minutes later they scored again, Drulovic planting a squared ball beyond the despairing 'keeper's reach....and incredibly enough, just another three minutes had elapsed when a move down the Yugoslav right saw the Slovenian left-back being sold a schoolboy dummy, and Milosevic gratefully accepted the centre, scoring his second goal of the tournament from point-blank range, and moving level with Zahovic as the tournament's top scorer after the first round of games....After the almost surreal events of the previous 75 minutes, the last 15 were a relative disappointment, with the 10 men unable to complete what would have been the most incredible of victories, and the Slovenians powerless to make their extra man tell....In the end though, the battle of the Balkans produced a fair result....and both teams have got more points than Spain!! It's a funny old game....!