Day 3 - Red Cards Day...

3 more games. 3 more tales and after the horrors of England and Rob Green, came another goalkeeping howler, this time in the Algeria vs Slovenia match. Complaints from Algerians rang in about the pitch being half grass, half synthetic and when Koren took a speculative pop from about 20 yards out, the claims were that the ball "bounced funny" in front of keeper Faouzi Chaouchi.

The truth of the matter was that the game will probably be somewhere in the top 5 for worse and most boring matches of the tournament by the end of it. Apart from a few semi-dangerous set pieces, the only "highlight" of the game was yet another red card for a substitute. Abdelkader Ghezzal's first contribution was to foul someone and 10 minutes later he purposely and stupidly handled a ball, got his second yellow and was off.

BBC's Ian Crocker kindly described it as "a stinker of a game" and I'd have to go a long way to find a better way to describe it myself.

Game 2 saw another crazy handball but this time in a far more exciting match between Ghana and Serbia. The game had all the ingredients for a fabulously set-up match and it didn't fail to deliver either. In the end, Serbian coach Raddy Antic will be bitterly disappointed for the way Zdravko Kuzmanovic stuck out an arm and handled a dangerous cross in the box to give away a penalty 5 minutes from time.

Asamoah Gyan stepped up and smacked it in convincingly for all three points and to give Ghana and an African nation, their first win of the tournament.

There had been fears that the Ghanaian midfield might not be strong enough, following Essien's injury and when Ghana manager Milovan Rajevac (who coincidently is also a Serb) chose to leave Sulley Muntari on the bench, question were asked. But The Black Stars responded brilliantly and their task was made even easier when on 74 minutes, Aleksandar Lukovic was sent off for his second bookable offence for holding on to Gyan as he tried to break away.

And finally, Australia - Germany. This was one of those games that, on paper, could have been a bit of a banana skin for Germany but which, in the end turned out to be more of a sitting-on-a-beach-sippin-on-a-coconut-cocktail game for them. The Ozzies wanted it and came out fighting and even had the first chance through Cahill to take an early, shock lead.

It wasn't to be their day though as Lukas Podolski, Miroslav Klose, Thomas Mueller and Cacau then went on to put 4 past them. The Germans looked solid and assured and once they went ahead, didn't take the foot off the pedal until the job was done.

The unfortunate Tim Cahill was the one who probably suffered the most though. The Everton forward apparently shed some tears as he saw a straight red for his tackle on Bastian Schweinsteiger after 55 minutes. It's hard to tell exactly whether it was intentional or not but the ref certainly seems to have seen it that way and if FIFA agree, that could spell the end of the tournament for Cahill.

Personally, it looked like he was going for the ball but then Schweinsteiger stepped in and it does seem like Cahill tries to take his feet away from it a little - meaning there was no real malice in the tackle. However, if you look at his face just before he dives in... well, it doesn't do him many favours, that's for sure. His one hope is that the ban will only be for one match.

We shall wait and see.