This is the rare post that won’t dwell on Landmark Education, the Landmark Forum, or any other thoughts about personal development. Like many others, I’ve been highly entertained by the action in South Africa, even though the Socceroos didn’t quite make the knockout stage after Ghana won out on the goal differential tiebreaker. Despite this disappointment – I had hopes of avenging the travesty of the last-second penalty in the Italy game four years ago – I thought the Socceroos were valiant after the early four-nil disaster versus Germany. They tied what has proven to be a very resilient and difficult-to-score-upon bunch from Ghana and defeated a solid Serbian squad, but it was not to be.
My Kiwi friends seemed quite delighted with the result – despite not advancing – since a team regarded as lucky to even be in the tournament managed to tie all their games. The same goes for the Americans, whom I also rooted for, who were inspired by their teams play (though the loss against Ghana was a bitter pill to swallow). The English seem quite disappointed, on the other hand; the draw with Algeria, the goaltending gaffe, and the complete defensive breakdown against Germany (glad it wasn’t just us) seem to have them particularly morose.
This despite making the knockout stage – it points to the fact that, indded, context is decisive, and high expectations generally lead to disappointment (some Landmark notions seem to have slipped in here). There’s always 2014…
