It was a point each for Cameroon and Australia in the first game of Day Six at the Confederations Cup which thankfully dents both teams’ chances of making it through to the semi-finals. The game itself had a high tempo without much goalmouth action, there wasn’t much quality with both teams being careless with the ball and it was a struggle to watch either team string three passes together.
Cameroon took the lead on the stroke of half-time through Marseille’s Andre Zambo after he latched onto a long ball forward to poke past Matt Ryan in the Australian goal. The first half was pretty dull but the kits from both teams did brighten things up with Australia in their green and gold and Cameroon in their green, red and yellow. VAR made another appearance at the tournament after Alex Gersbach was brought down in the box. VAR said penalty and Mark Milligan slotted home from 12 yards out to equalise for the Socceroos.
Newcastle fans would not have been too impressed with their reported target, Vincent Aboubakar. The Cameroon striker missed so many opportunities that he would fill the role of erratic, inconsistent striker at Newcastle very well. Oh, wait sorry, that place is already held by Aleksandar Mitrovic. Huddersfield and Burton were also represented by Aaron Mooy and Jackson Irvine respectively.
The spoils were shared between Germany and Chile in Kazan, which was a bit dull really. Chile started off on fire as they created chances galore and took an early lead through Alexis Sanchez who poked in off the post even though he was falling over. Arsenal’s Shkodran Mustafi should’ve been severely punished in the build up to his teammate’s goal after completely wiping out Arturo Vidal. The German went through the back of the Bayern Munich man but went unpunished by the referee even though Chilean players, who could’ve been celebrating a goal, were strongly protesting against him.
Eduardo Vargas, formerly of QPR, hit a rasping shot off the bar as Marc-Andre ter Stegen could only watch in hope as it crashed back off the woodwork. Germany, playing with a back three, managed to sneak an equaliser through Lars Stindl after he put a low cross into a gaping goal. The second half was much more even but neither side could find that decisive goal and VAR controversy sadly didn’t reel its ugly head.
Thankfully there are no footballing commitments in Russia to be tied down to on Friday as everyone takes a well-earned break. The group stages come to a close at the weekend and the bigger nations will look the progress through to the semis of this not-so-prestigious trophy.