Messi Stikes Twice

Messi puts a free kick over the wall and into the net for his
second goal of the day.

Ecuador, Honduras and Iran were all dumped from the World Cup today as Switzerland, Argentina and Bosnia & Herzegovina won their matches and France coasted through to a 0 - 0 draw against Ecuador.  Ecuador needed a win and became the only South American team to not make it out of the group stage of the competition.  Nigeria became the first African team to advance to the next round, even though they lost to Argentina .  Bosnia looked impressive as they ended Iran's unlikely dream and would have advanced themselves except for a bad offsides call that cost them a goal and a point in their previous game.  Switzerland recovered from their humiliating loss to France last week by blasting Honduras 3-0.

The most exciting game of the day was Argentina vs. Nigeria which finished 3-2 with two goals for Messi which were matched by a brace from Nigeria's Ahmed Musa.  Two goals had already been scored after 4 minutes and the game kept up the end to end pace for most of the 90 minutes.  The results set up two more round of 16 matchups where Nigeria will take on France and Argentina will battle Switzerland.

The results catapulted Rachel into 3rd place with all four of her teams still in the competition.  Doug rose from 25th all the way to 5th with a BISERGS record 12.75 point day.  He had all three of today's winning teams (Bosnia, Argentina and Switzerland) and still has Belgium to play this round.  Rachel, Rick, Annika, Krista and Dawn all have four teams remaining with only four matches left in the group stage.