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Today I said goodbye to Belo Horizonte and headed to Natal, the site of Greece’s next game against Japan in World Cup 2014.
Getting to Natal
After an hour taxi ride from the Natal airport, I arrived at my hotel to find a package waiting for me – my Greek flag that my brother FedExed to me. I didn’t bring it with me to South America when I left Chicago in January. So happy to have it back! I’ll never leave home without it again.
My flight was full of a rowdy group of Americans blasting Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at the airport. USA plays Ghana in Natal tomorrow night. I’m hoping to find tickets to the game. It will be interesting to see what happens without Landon Donovan. (Update: Mike did some wheeling and dealing on his flight to Natal and managed to score two tickets to the game!)
I met 5 Greeks from Athens who were also on my flight. They had a similar opinion of the Colombia game as I did, criticizing Fernando Santos for his personnel decisions and being frustrated by the play of Samaras, Katsouranis, and Gekas. They also believed we deserved better than a 3-0 loss and remain confident about the upcoming games.
Other Games
I missed the Ecuador-Switzerland game, but managed to see France-Honduras and Bosnia-Argentina. I hate to say it, but there’s no team I want to see lose more than France. Bosnia played a great game in their World Cup debut. I think they’ll surprise a lot of people in the next couple weeks.
