June 16: Arwen's the pick of bunch, sour grapes from Masterprick, Chile finally win, Spain finally lose, SA virtually out

So who'd have thought that the mighty Spain would fall at the first hurdle to little Switzerland? Arwen, Beatriz and miguelb, that's who. Oh, and Masterpick, in this mindbogglingly psychic (his words) comment. Masterpick, now known as Aaasaaaamasterpick, tried to muscle his way to the top of the leaderboard, but I'm declaring Arwen the winner for the end of the 1st round of the group phase!!! Because it's my pool. And she's my daughter. Here's your first winner:

This does not sit well with her sister, who, on her father's advice, doubled-down on Spain.

Though she just shouted that she wants to change her username to "Spain Spain Spain!". That kid has her mother's optimism.

We received these photos from the Swiss Miss in our life, Maya Huber, who was so down on Switzerland's chances she didn't even enter the pool. :(

That ended Spain's 12 game winning streak. More incredibly, Chile won at the World Cup for the first time in how many years, drigo? And they played some lovely stuff. They and South Korea look the most likely to cause a major upset in later rounds.

Now for the negatives. South Africa will be going home (I already made this lame joke, I know). They'd need a combination of things to happen and they definitely need to beat France. It won't happen.

When you have winners, you must have losers, and we have three in the Pool that need our sympathy. Just what were giuliana22, marcus and Jdidur thinking? They're mired on 4, 4 and 3 points respectively. I hold out little hope for marcus' axis of evil team. giuliana22 is clearly thinking too much about basketball for her teams to thrive. But Jdidur, I expect to bounce back. Or I'm screwed as well.

Things I don't like after 16 games:

1. france, italy, england, brazil, spain, holland and portugal have all looked mediocre.
2. No goals. That was the lowest total of goals in the first 16 games in THE HISTORY of the WC.
3. Noone is staking a claim for the golden boot.
4. I'm starting to believe the ball really does suck
5. All the complaining about the vuvuzellas. They're not great but not nearly as annoying as the people who hate them
6. Injuries. Why don't they hold the world cup at the end of summers, Just before the regular season, so that all the players can have a vacation and get healthy before showing up for wc training?
7. The format. The Champions League has shown how to create attacking, aggressive football through the away goal rule. I haven't thought through an adequate alternative, but there must be one. ideas?
8. The Stewards Strike. Just another reminder of how fucked this world is. the argument has been made that football is the new brand of colonialism by Europe in Africa, but surely FIFA could get these simple details right and make sure people are getting decent wages.