Day 5 of the World Cup began with a subdued affair between New Zealand and Slovakia in Rustenburg. Slovakia were easily the favorites for this match with a lot of the players from New Zealand – one of the lowest ranked teams in the competition – playing part-time Amateur club football.
New Zealand were decent in a first half which ended goalless and Slovakia waited until the fiftieth minute before getting ahead thanks to a neatly headed goal from Vittek. Slovakia, looking more confident, then pushed on for a second but at 1-0 they were very exposed and let New Zealand looked for an equalizer.
The game seemed over and the win looked assured for Slovakia but in the final seconds of stoppage time Reid headed in a shock equalizer for New Zealand who stole their first ever World Cup point.
These two teams will now have to face Paraguay and Italy and it looks like both Slovakia and New Zealand will struggle to advance.
Portugal and Brazil are both due to kickoff their campaigns today so if you haven’t already, check out the Newsblaze predictions which were cruising for the first few days but suffered another miss-hit here.
