poptimists | THE POP WORLD CUP: Ivory Coast vs Portugal

The third round of 16 match sees an intriguing clash of approaches - an armoury of tricks from the Ivory Coast up against some raw attacking verve from a controversial Portugese selection. The winner of this game will face England in the quarter-finals: who gets through? It's up to you.

All Pop World Cup tracks can be found here - email me if you have any problem downloading or playing them.

Ivory Coast

Aboutou Roots - "Ninie": Manager

poptasticuk says: "I've found that some of these Ivory Coast songs are a bit repetitive (one I downloaded turned out to be the same drum beat with no other instruments for nearly 8 minutes) but I picked this one because it has lots of different silly bits. It's about as close as African music gets to electro-pop, I reckon, and the members are 4 blokes who wear matching dungarees, which is probably the Ivory Coast equivalent of a boyband!"

Portugal

Fonzie - "Elitist Girl": Gaffer

thebopkids filled us in: "Well, it’s a long time from the group stages to the knockouts, and we’ve been having a torrid time. My Portuguese kids never had the strongest squad on paper, and things haven’t been going smoothly behind the scenes. There has been a series of injuries and many players have declared themselves unavailable. Rumours of intra-squad hatred are true, and some of our players have expressed their dislike for my managerial regime, which I proudly admit is disciplinarian.

Let me make it perfectly clear: I would rather have players who will give 100% for the love of the team and the game, who will play honestly and passionately for the shirt, than I would have overpaid and uncommitted prima donnas. Harking back to the halcyon days of the fado, or the talent and style which backwashed our way as a result of our close relationship with Brazil, is no good to anyone. Time, my friends, has moved on.

So maybe this entry doesn’t have the silky skills of some of the other teams’. Maybe the players aren’t quite up with the thinking of the leading pop tacticians, maybe their use of the English style seems a bit strained on the world stage. But what you have here is a high-tempo pressing game, a blast of fresh air. Get it up long to the Big Lad, who’ll be jumping around like a madman."

So how is the match decided?

The knockout rounds work very much like the group stages, except now you get TEN points to divide between the two teams, and you don't have to give a team a point if you don't want to.

(PLEASE vote according to the relative strengths of the entries, though, not just pick the one you want to win and give it 10 automatically!)

The voting will be done by text poll - this is to keep the results secret. Please enter your scores as follows

"Ivory Coast - 5. Portugal - 5"

Except with the "5"s replaced by your scores. If you want to vote but can't use the LJ poll, please email your scores to freakytrigger@gmail.com.

[Poll #705838]

Again, you have until TUESDAY to vote. Voting was well down last time, so please do promote the PWC elsewhere online or in yr own LJ if you've been entertained by it!