Costa Rica Fells Italy, Tournament Continues to Be Drunk

"The Group of Death" is a pretty dumb name unless you either (A) like the group Death (which I do—both of them, even!) or (B) enjoy doodling skulls on things (ditto), and while whether a given group is in fact "of Death" is basically contingent on whether you've got a rooting interest in one of the in-group squads, Group D of the 2014 World Cup has brought at least some death to the proceedings. First up on the death list, England, who are currently sitting with the Australians and, shockingly, the Spanish, presumably drunk as lemurs and not all that much better at soccer. (Switzerland is evidently channeling its inner drunk/not-that-good-at-soccer guy, receiving a galling 5-2 drubbing from the French.) Costa Rica was widely, maybe universally, held to be the dead team walking in this group: about the most positive prediction out there was "could be quite an interesting clash," and mostly predictions ranged from "simply don't have the quality to compete with the rest of the teams in the group" to "absolutely no chance your team makes it out of the group stage".

However, Costa Rica has come out with a savage defensive approach that squeezes the life from their opponents, giving up a single goal thus far, off of a penalty kick by Edinson Cavani. Their offense is a joyous celebration of the gift of life—or anyway, Joel Campbell's goal celebration is a joyous celebration of the gift of life, as was the Junior Diaz cross that led to the only goal Costa Rica needed today.

Most of the rest of their offense is, to be fair, kind of pedestrian. But with results like these, it's hard to argue that they should shake things up. Particularly not if their plan was going to be to adopt the Swiss approach, which combines Spain's offensive vigor with the dependable clutch performances of the English.

As the Italian coach noted after the defeat: "They did well to block every pass." They also did well to win their first two matches, and with already-eliminated England next on the docket, they will try to stay aggressively, pugnaciously alive in a group seemingly marked by Italy's apparent decline, Uruguay's brink-teetering and England's perhaps predictable death. They will probably not have to prepare for Switzerland.