2008 Olympics: Final Drama - Page 2

In the other semifinal, several controversial calls led the Brazilian men's team to an ugly loss and lots of question marks for their remaining time in Beijing. As was to be expected from a game featuring players the caliber of Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho, the first half was very fast paced, and each team had a few opportunities, but the half inevitably ended scoreless.

Common wisdom would believe it was merely a matter of time before Brazil pulled away, given that Argentina's defense had been much more lucky than good so far, and Brazil truly had the talent to capitalize on any errors.

Early in the second half, the game shifted. A ball into the box appeared to go off the chest of forward Sergio Aguerro, and replay actually revealed that it had gone off his arm and perhaps should have been called a non-goal on a handball. However, the refs have no such benefit and no call was made.

That goal forced Brazil to very gradually start taking chances, and a mere six minutes later, Aguerro notched a second, legitimate goal to take the score to 2-0. Later in the half, Brazilian forward Pato scored to make the game 2-1, but the goal was waived off on a very touchy offside call - it was very close and the referee could very well have let it go. This left the game at 2-0, and kept the pressure on Brazil, which only led to a sudden avalanche of mistakes.

First, a yellow card on defenseman Rafinha gave Argentina a penalty kick and a 3-0 lead in the 76th minute. Then, within three minutes of game time, Brazil notched two red cards for foolish hard fouls. The first was against Lucas, who had been the team's best defender to this point in the tournament, and the second was against forward Thiago Nieves, perhaps the best offensive player not named Ronaldinho in this Olympic tournament.

Brazil will now be forced to play without both players for the bronze medal game against Belgium. That may not completely erase the Brazilian advantage, but a medal is suddenly not the lock it should be for such a talented team.

That match will be Friday night, and will be followed by a Nigeria-Argentina gold medal match that is a rematch of the 1996 gold medal game from Atlanta, with Argentina looking to become the fourth ever repeat gold-medalist.

Article Author: Geeves

Geeves is mainly a critic of the sports and entertainment arena, recently shifting his time and resources away from his own middling blogs and into the Blogcritics realm at something resembling full time.

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