WELL, I have to start with the greatest upset in the tournament so far. Mexico beat France 2-0 in what was a fantastic display of football by the Mexicans. France has a lot of world-class players on their team, but their attitude was terrible.

They probably have one of the best squads in the World Cup, with Anelka and Malouda and a host of others playing for top European clubs, and — unless they can pull off a miracle in their next match against South Africa and Uruguay beats Mexico — they are certain to be going home early.

These will need to be high-scoring games for France to survive and based on their two performances to date, they have failed to score and posed little threat to their opponents.

This scenario looks highly unlikely when one considers that a draw will be good enough for both Uruguay and Mexico when they play each other next Tuesday. They will be playing to determine top spot in the group.

Mexico played fantastically well — it was an all-round performance. Blanco — at 37 years of age — scored a magnificent penalty, which brought the score to 2-0. The opener came from Javier Hernandez, who displayed great composure to slot the ball home after breaking the French offside trap.

In the earlier game yesterday, Nigeria lost 2-1 to Greece. Nigeria’s discipline let them down, plain and simple, which is a shame. They were doing really well, but Greece came back into the game to make it 2-1. The game was completely transformed after Nigeria’s Sani Kaita received his marching orders for a straight red card. Their goalkeeper had been making some magnificent saves and it looked like they might hold on for a point. However, he then put one right on the plate for Greece’s striker Torosidis, who slotted home a relatively simple chance when the ‘keeper spilled the long-range effort right into his path. Once again, the ball issue surfaces, which we have referred to in previous articles.

Nigeria could still go through though because Argentina beat the Korea Republic 4-1 in a thrilling game. Higuaín scored a hat-trick — two of which were set up by Messi.

Argentina has been the best attacking team so far in this competition. Higuaín, Messi and Tevez have been sensational, but the Korea Republic did well and are still one to watch. At times, they troubled Argentina — in particular when the score was at 2-1, they had a few chances that could have made it very interesting.

So, going into the final round of the matches in Group B, all the teams still have a chance of qualification with Nigeria being the complete outsiders. The very impressive Argentina can start planning for the next round.

We are starting to see the excitement really build now over Wednesday and yesterday. Once you get into the knock-out stages of the group round, this is when the games get more exciting. No one wants to lose the first game, so the teams generally defend hard in the first and often into their second game, before opening up in attack when their survival depends on the ability to score goals.