From: Hildegaard Beauregard [ljlife@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 7:24 AM
To: Lee Jerome Life
Subject: Germany too tall for Korea

Reporting from World Cup Watch Central.

The final hurdle to the World Cup final match was
finally too tall for the Korea Republic. The
astonishing Asian nation that had never won a World
Cup match before this tournament locked horns with
their fourth straight European football power, this
one three-time World Cup champion and five-time
finalist Germany, producing another scrappy goal-less
match until the 75th minute. Then Michael Ballack
finally broke the stalemate with a lucky rebound off
his own strike at Korean goalkeeper Lee Woon-Jae.
Germany continued to cut down the Korean attack from
there and won 1-0.

Oliver Neuville broke down the right side and sent the
ball across the box, and in a bit of confusion in the
Korean defense, two Germans found themselves alone on
the other side. Ballack slammed the ball with his
right foot at Lee who was right on it but knocked it
back towards Ballack. Ballack had only to lift up his
left foot to send it straight back past the falling
Lee to the goal.

It was Germany's game. While there were sequences of
end-to-end play, some great runs by both sides, Korea
never got into the pace they had against Portugal,
Italy and Spain. The Koreans were more tentative
against the Germans, who beat them to the ball on the
jump and were fleet enough to mark the Koreans well
and pick the ball away from them. Against Poland, also
a much taller team, Korea was more agile and had
better timing. But the Germans had size and prowess,
too. On jump balls, the Koreans even had a hard time
beating the referee, who persistently interpreted them
as the aggressors and the taller Germans in place,
even on occasions when the Germans fell all over the
Koreans.

While the U.S. dictated the attack against Germany in
the early part of their match, putting them on guard
with penetrating runs as well as passes, Germany was
much less chary here, and traded charges with the
Koreans throughout. In the second half in particular,
the Germans got the better chances, as it was Korea
who seemed to have grown more wary of them.

So the other co-host, and one of the many upstarts of
the tournament, goes down, and the story in the first
World Cup in Asia will have, at least on one side, one
of World Cup history's most familiar characters:
Germany in the final.

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