Economists 1, Fengshui Masters 0 ...

Yawn... Just woke up after watching the World Cup Finals earlier this morning... Sleepy-eyed as I types this so please pardon any mistakes and/or any incoherency that I may make later on... Thank you.

Firstly, allow me to say that I am not much of a soccer fan (in fact, I have always been more of an armchair althete) but I suppose the World Cup makes fans out of us all (hey, even my elder sister watched the final match together with my dad & I).

In case you all are not aware yet (most unlikely), France lost to Italy. Both teams, at the end of extra-time, were still tied at 1:1 but, in the end, Italy won on penalties (5:3).

Personally, I must say that the match and its end results were quite a letdown. Yes, I was hoping for France to win. Initially, I was hoping for Germany to win but since they were kicked out by Italy in the semi-finals, I shifted my support to France. Don't ask me why. I also really don't know why I was hoping for France to win (but perhaps it is due to me preferring the country, not the team, of France over the country of Italy).

The match gotten on a somewhat interesting & exciting start with Henry possibly not being able to play due to a possible head/neck injury in the first minute of the match and with Zidane converting a penalty kick into a goal in the sixth (or was it seventh?) minute. Then, the pace of the game started to get somewhat draggy, with both sides, especially the French team, having quite a number of goal opportunities but, sadly, they failed to transform them into actual goals.

And from where I was viewing the match (i.e. from the sofa in my home's living room), Italy basically won on luck, no offence to the team or their supporters (I prefer to stay out of any argument over soccer, thank you very much). I mean, Italy's goalkeeper (the same with the French goalkepper) didn't block out any shots during the penalty shoot-out. They were lucky in that the second penalty shot by the French team missed (and perhaps also in the fact that Zidane was send off from the match earlier on; I would have liked seeing him performing during the penalty shoot-out, pity).

In addition, I would like to point out that it cannot be without a good reason why Zidane behaved the way he did towards the end of the match (in other words, why he head-butted that guy from Italy). I mean, he has a reputation for being a "gentlemanly" player and this was his last international match before he goes into retirement. Why would he spoil his reputation and not let himself finish his final international match to the end for no good reason? In my humble opinion, there must be some sort of provocation for him to behave in such an extreme manner. Even Beckenbauer agrees with me on this (cross-reference: CNA news report). Anyway, it was a huge pity that he got send off the way he was.

Oh yeah, in case you all were wondering about the title of this post, if I'm not wrong, a few weeks back, the Straits Times published a report that economists predicted that Italy will win the World Cup while the New Paper published an article just yesterday that fengshui masters predicted that France will win. I guess the fengshui masters weren't that accurate with their prediction in the end.

Okay, I need to go and eat my breakfast (or rather, lunch) already... Hopefully, in 4 years' time, the team that I hope to win then will really win. Till then, adieu mon amis...