Fabulous FIFA Fun!

We headed out for our last live FIFA Under 20 football/soccer game last night. Jen joined us and we skipped (well sauntered in the heat) up the street to the brand new wine/small plates bar in our neighbourhood. It was beautiful and they served lovely wine and some tasty local food including local octopus! It was delicious!

Then when the other two declined goat cheese cake, chocolate pate and creme brule at the wine bar I decided against a heavy dessert as well and luckily, since our garden was on the the way to the stadium, we stopped to check in on the raspberries. They were doing fabulously with all this heat and we gorged ourselves on our raspberries and some of the mostly ripe cherries (to Bruce's disgust - he's kind of like that with fruit like I am with steak since he had the privilege of going out into the orchard as a kid and spending time picking the most perfect piece of fruit on the tree - we never did that with cows though).

Jen's shot of the delicious cherries!

After the fruit extravaganza we headed around the corner to the game - almost 10,000 there to watch Czech Republic vs. Japan. This was the third time we'd seen Japan play and they were heads about Czech in their speed, agility and abilities.

Action on the opposite end of the field.

Sadly two calls in the second half meant the Czech's took advantage and scored on two penalty kicks and tied Japan up 2-2.

The Japanese goalie (in yellow) on the ground after a successful Czech penalty kick. Notice the 'red headed' Japanese player - he scored the first game goal - I liked him AND his hair!

After those goals the Czech's kicked it into high gear unlike anything else we had seen previously in the game and the Japanese just couldn't get a break to score again. Time ran down and the game went to 2 extra periods of 15 min each and ended in a shoot out with the Czech's scoring 4 over Japan's 3 in the shoot out. We were sad to see such a good team eliminated from the tournament but had a great time watching so much live soccer - amazing stuff!

Here's us during the second half - Jen took the nice shot up top first and then this one (why have a blog if you aren't going to post embarasing photos of yourself every now and then?) ... we were having a pretty good time by this point, admittedly we didn't want the Czech's to win but their penalty kicks sure made the game so much more exciting for the fans!

All photos courtesy of Jen H (thanks Jen!)