Costa Ricans’ dream continues
COSTA RICA’s players knelt in prayer. Fernando Santos, Greece’s coach, endured his own private hell in his dressing room, sent from the field before penalties could begin. Some 40,000 inside the Arena Pernambuco relished the drama. Not bad, given that two hours earlier they had been jeering both teams.
It was Costa Rica who made it through, their players flooding Michael Uman˜ a after he scored the winning penalty, congratulating Keylor Navas, the goalkeeper, who saved from Theofanis Gekas. They are in the quarterfinals, remarkably, wonderfully. They took the long way round, though.
It is always tempting to characterise the Greeks as wilfully dour, a sort of antithesis to all the adventure that this tournament has produced, but such a judgment would be unfair. Fernando Santos’s team are rather more ambitious than that of his predecessor, Otto Rehhagel. The problem is that they are just not very good.
They lack spark and guile, they are chronically one-paced, they are ponderous in possession and they are unable to break at speed. They try to attack – they really do – it is just that it does not really suit them.
That said, it was the Greeks who had the best chance of the first half: Jose´ Holebas, the halfUruguayan left back, whipping a ball round the back of the Costa Rica defence from deep on the left flank. Quite how Navas, the goal- keeper, kept out Dimitris Salpingidis’s shot remains unclear.
Before that, it was Jorge Luis Pinto’s team who had been the more assertive. They did not seem fazed by the occasion, by finding themselves removed from the role of pressure-free underdogs. Only three sides from north and central America have ever reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup away from home turf; Costa Rica, handed a golden opportunity to become the fourth, played with as much vim as they had shown against Uruguay and Italy.
The problem was that the surprise factor had long since evaporated. Greece came into this game having had ample chance to see where Costa Rica’s victims had gone wrong, while the Olympiacos contingent in their side would be perfectly familiar with the work of Joel Campbell, their team-mate for the past two years.
Seven minutes after halftime, Campbell slipped the ball to Christian Bolan˜ os on the left. The Copenhagen winger cut inside and laid the ball back to Bryan Ruiz on the edge of the box. He connected well enough to steer it out of Orestis Karnezis’s reach and inside the right-hand post.
Just as Costa Rica were growing comfortable, though, Oscar Duarte – booked early in the first half – picked up a second yellow for a foul on Holebas.
Suddenly, Costa Rica would have to hang on. The pressure told at the last, in injury time. Gekas stung Navas’s palms, Papasthopoulos hammered home the rebound. Greece dominated extra time, but could find no way through. It would go on to penalties. By that stage, nobody minded.