Once Europe went to bed on Wednesday, having put the finishing touches on the Euro 2016 qualifying group stages, South America came out to play. They are already on the second matchday of the 2018 World Cup qualifying cycle. It's a bit like stores starting to sell Christmas decorations in October.
Chelsea's two representatives in the Brazilian national team came under quite a bit of fire after the 2-0 loss to Chile on Thursday. Fortunately, manager Dunga doesn't base his team selection on media opinions, and both Oscar and Willian were back in the starting lineup against Venezuela. It was the first competitive fixture Brazil have contested on native soil since the World Cup debacle and they were suitably fired up. This took only 40 seconds.
Willian made it two just before the half from a Filipe Luis pass (via an Oscar dummy). Gotta love the sound effects, too.
I'm not sure who this Willian is, but he has 6 goals in his last 6 matches for club and country combined. He quite literally cannot stop scoring. How are all y'all feeling, lions?
Willian played the full 90 while Oscar, as is quite normal for him, was withdrawn after 65 minutes after Venezuela pulled one back. Ricardo Oliveira (who?) eventually put the tie to bed with Brazil's third after a bit hilarious defending.
Earlier, Colombia were summarily dismissed 3-0 by Uruguay, who couldn't stop scoring gorgeous goals like this one or this one or this one (see, all three!). Juan Cuadrado played most of the match before a bit of a silly swing of the elbow landed him in straight red card heaven in the 90th minute. As with the Matic red the other day, the action is not all that tremendously violent, but because these games aren't adjudicated by the English FA, their 3-match bans should stay. Falcao played the final 20 or so minutes, producing expected results.
And with that, the October international break is done. Back to proper football and proper worries.