stuart test blog

The time difference between NZ and Germany means that I’ve got a few early starts ahead of me for the week ahead. The first games in the knockout round were played this morning so that meant that I was up at 3am to watch Germany beat Sweden 2 – 0, and then watched the cracker of a match that was Argentina versus Mexico. The scores were level after 90 minutes meaning that it was the first game to head into extra time in this World Cup. It only took 8 minutes of extra time for Maxi Rodriguez to score one of the best goals of the tournament – equal (in my opinion) with Joe Cole’s beauty for England. Argentina then managed to hold on for a 2 – 1 victory. That means Argentia will play the hosts, Germany in what will probably be the best out of the quart-finals.

Over the next few days, we’ve got some great games lined up: England v Ecuador, Netherlands v Portugal, Italy v Australia, Brazil v Ghana… That means I’ll be up at 3am for the next few mornings to watch the game. Quite handy though becuase I’ve got my MCSE upgrade exam on Wednesday so I get an extra four hours in the mornings to study!

My essential tools for following the World Cup are:

• The official FIFA World Cup site
• The BBC Sport World Cup site
• The Microsoft World Cup Tracker for Excel
• And this iCal for adding to your Gmail Calendar (or any other iCal compatible software) – this is really cool, the author updates the scores as the games are completed too!