It’s week two of the World Cup. These are the local Sri Lankan/Indian start times for the matches, who’s playing, and where to watch.
The Matches
Group Play ends next Thursday (the 26th). After that it’s the Group Of 16, AKA Elimination Round. This week is the last time you can see everyone play.
Chile and the Netherlands are already in to the next round. Surprisingly, Spain is already out, as are Australia and Cameroon. You can still watch them play though.
This week some interesting matches will be England vs. Uruguay (at 12:30 AM on Thursday the 19th). Also Switzerland Vs. France at the same time the next day, Friday. Again at the same time on Saturday, Germany Vs. Ghana should be two completely different styles of play.
On Sunday at 3:30 AM the Portugal Vs. USA match should be interesting. Portugal is almost out and Cristiano Ronaldo gets very agitated (and plays well) when he’s losing.
Coming back to reasonable house, on Monday the 23rd the Holland Vs. Chile match should be interesting. 9:30 PM. No real pressure because they’re both already in, but they’ve proven to be good teams this year.
The same time the next day (the 24th), Uruguay Vs. Italy should also be good.
Then on the 25th, Janith recommends Nigeria Vs. Argentina. He would also like to point out that the USA Germany match the next day will be a grudge match in space. There are German and American astronauts up there.
That said, we watched some random matches over the last week and they proved surprisingly good. Who would have thought that perhaps the best goal of the tournament came from Australia.
How To Watch
At Home
- Regular TV: At home you can get an antenna booster and watch on Channel Eye (still a bit grainy for us, but free)
- Satellite TV: On Dialog TV they’ve you can activate the Sony Six channel for Rs. 99 (unless you’re on the Gold Package). From a Dialog phone you can activate by typing – ON (space) Dialog TV Account Number (space) 59 and SMSing that to 679
- Internet TV: You can also watch online (itv.com), but you need to pretend you’re in England. We’ve posted instructions here.
Out
The only places showing all of the matches are the Kingsbury and Hilton, as far as we know. The Kingsbury has drink discounts (35%) and before the match you can play FIFA14 on XBox (we think that’s the console).
The Hilton has converted the parking lot next to Il Ponte to a World Cup HQ.
