Peru wins to end Australian WCup hopes as Danes, French advance
ALREADY-ELIMINATED Peru ended Australia’s hopes of advancing to the knockout round at the World Cup with a 2-0 victory yesterday.
The Australians had to beat Peru and hope Denmark lost to France in the other Group C match, but neither result happened. France and Denmark drew 0-0 in Moscow.
Andre Carrillo’s first-half goal — a half-volley from inside the area — was Peru’s first at a World Cup since 1982, the last time the South Americans played in the tournament. Peru hadn’t won a World Cup match since defeating Iran in 1978.
Peru captain Paolo Guerrero, who almost missed the tournament because of a doping suspension, scored the second goal early in the second half to give his team an honorable finish after two opening losses.
Tim Cahill, a 38-year-old striker who entered the match in the second half, couldn’t give Australia a boost as it tried to reach the round of 16 for the first time since 2006.
Guerrero set up Carrillo’s 18thminute wonder goal from the edge of the box with a delightful cross, then scored from a deflection five minutes after the interval to send Peru’s red-andwhite army of fans into ecstasy at Sochi’s Fisht Stadium.
Denied a place at the global showpiece for 36 years, the result left Peru third in Group C with three points, while the Socceroos head home with just one, but more than a few regrets.
France topped the group with seven points, with Denmark runner-up on five.
Bert van Marwijk’s Socceroos would have felt it was deja vu, as they surged forward in numbers but lacked the polish to conjure a score.
Captain Mile Jedinak blazed over the bar in the fifth minute while winger Mathew Leckie was denied in the goalmouth by a scrambling defense in the 36th.
Not even an early second-half injection of talisman Cahill could spark the Socceroos, the veteran striker denied a goal in his World Cup swansong when he fired a volley straight into a Peru defender.
In Moscow, the goals finally dried up at this thrilling World Cup when a flat France and dull Denmark played a mutually beneficial 0-0 draw at the Luzhniki Stadium.
Thirty-six games in Russia had failed to result in a goalless stalemate, but neither France nor Denmark ever looked like scoring in a tedious affair.
France wanted to go through in top spot to avoid a likely last16 clash with in-form Croatia.
Denmark could have only been denied qualification had it lost to France and had Australia beaten Peru in the match being played simultaneously in Sochi.
But with the Peruvians leading 2-0 before the hour in that game, the Moscow clash settled down to little more than a canter.
While not in the same category as the infamous 1982 “Nichtangriffspakt von Gijon” — the non-aggression pact of Gijon — when West Germany and Austria both settled for a 1-0 German win which put them both through, neither side at the Luzhniki looked to be going all out for victory.
“It was our objective to ensure we were first out of the group... The objective was achieved,” France coach Didier Deschamps said. “It was very difficult. Teams are very well prepared, and it’s not easy against such a packed defense.”
Their next opponents will be determined later when Nigeria plays Argentina in Saint Petersburg, and Iceland faces Croatia in Rostov-on-Don.