World Cup Blog | Bill Saporito What's Missing From This Picture? subscribe to TIME Printable Version email this story Bill Saporito: Read all his blog entries

Posted Monday, June 19, 2006: 22.28BST
If Holland, Serbia, Cote d'Ivoire and Argentina make up the Group of Death, what does that make Croatia, Japan, Australia and Brazil? How about the Group of Dearth?

Something is missing here. Perhaps it's the lack of competent competition. In yesterday's game against Australia, both Roberto Carlos and Ronaldinho stepped on the ball and fell down while trying to make one of those dazzling Brazilian wiggles. And you thought you had a lock on that move while playing in your pub league. "Make the ball happy," goes the tagline in one Nike ad. The ball is not very happy in this group. It told Time it was seriously ticked off at having to be kicked around fruitlessly by Japan and Croatia, two sides that couldn't find the ocean from the beach, never mind the goal.

And it has certainly expected more from the defending champions. Brazil struggled for most of its 2-0 win against an Australian team that, while it provided big thrills for Oz in the last 10 minutes of its opener against Japan, is still a very ordinary one. Only when Robinho was added to the mix did things even get interesting, his shot off the post providing an easy tap in for Fred. For my money, the best player on Brazil so far is the A.C. Milan midfielder Kaka. The guy is liquid.

The Socceroos squandered a couple of great chances for goals. And on Brazil's first, Australia had five defenders back, only to have one lax moment:they left Adriano alone to collect a pass from blubber-boy Ronaldo, and paid for it when Adriano's shot went through the legs of Scott Chipperfield and in.

The Socceroos weren't the only ones to pay for a moment's lapse. In Leipzig, French defender Willy Sagnol lost the ball and his mark on Cho Jae-Jin's long cross to the back post for just an instant, and France paid a huge price in pulling a 1-1 draw out of game they had all but won. Cho Jae-Jin found the ball before Sagnol and nodded it to the onrushing Park Ji-Sun, who fumbled it past Fabien Barthez. That leaves France needing a win against Togo to have a chance to advance, given that Switzerland easily dispatched the African team. And French midfielder commander Zinedine Zidane is suspended because of yet one more idiotic referee's decision. Pas très bien, mes amis.

It's a good thing that when England and Sweden meet tomorrow in the third game of the round, the game will be played in the evening. Seeing these two northern teams play in the first round has been a little like observing dentistry: You've got to admire the professionalism and skill, but it's a little painful to watch. In its first game England was gifted a goal by Paraguay in the fourth minute and then gasped to victory, blaming the oppressive heat for the flat effort. There was no such heat to blame for their torpor in the second game against Trinidad and Tobago, just a determined bunch of islanders-some of them live and play in England —that had already held Sweden to a draw on the heroics of West Ham keeper Shaka Hislop.

That seemed to be the likely outcome against England until forward Peter Crouch, the human mobile phone tower, climbed the back of his defender to head a David Beckham cross past Hislop and put his team into the second round. It was a classic English goal, one whose DNA is a boggy pitch on a winter day in the Midlands, but it was good enough. Steven Gerrard, who took most of the afternoon off, added a second in the 91st, in typically Gerrardian fashion, driving a left footed 20-yard shot past Hislop.

Sweden, which had slanted through the T&T defense like sunshine through a palm tree in the late afternoon heat — with no reward for it — looked to be coming up equally goalless against Paraguay until Freddie Ljungberg nodded them to safety in the 88th minute, thus ending nearly two games worth of frustration. One of these two gets to play Germany in the second round-in the afternoon.

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