Football (Soccer) World Cup (2 Viewers)

Brad,
I am now listening to Miles Davis ( what a coincidence, hey ) and he «inspired» me to do a second part reply on Ronaldo.
I don't know if the Dutch intentionally decided they should put Cristiano out of the game. What I think is that the Dutch player decided he would play kung-fu either on Ronaldo's leg or on the ball and he knew he had a very good chance of hurting Cristiano in the proccess. By using the stringent criteria he used afterwards, to me it is clear the ref should have immediately red-carded the Dutch player. Much clearer situation than Deco's second yellow card, for instance.
By the way, I used to be a Liverpool fan, you know? But the late seventies, eighties and early nineties Liverpool, not today's team, which is light years away from those older teams. Maybe Steven Gerrard could get a place in those earlier Liverpool teams.
Arsenal was a little unlucky against Barcelona, from what I remember from the Champion's League final. I liked their display and think Henry lost the game for them by missing a sitter, it would have been 2-0... I wanted Arsenal to win. Some common ground Brad?
 
Common ground for sure. What Miles are you listening to? Just picked up a recently remastered set of his Prestige years (1950s), with the great quintet of John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Great stuff and excellent sound.
 
Hi Brad,
I was listening to «Kind of Blue». I must say that I am not really a Jazz specialist, but I do listen to it, and Miles is really something special, even after all these years. You can say his music remains and you will always listen to it because his sheer talent withstands the test of time. An uncle of mine who passed away was a tremendous Jazz fan, he had thousands of records and CD's and went to Jazz festivals for many years. My aunt recently gave me on of his CD boxes, a Miles Davis Quintet 1965-68 collection, I am now getting to know it's contents better.

Warm regards,
Paulo
 
jazzeum said:
No offense but that's just not the way it's run or FIFA wants it to run. I'm not saying it's a bad idea but FIFA likes that people are discussing how bad the refs are and so on. You wouldn't think it's necessary since this is the World Cup, the most watched sports event there is, but that's the way they run it.
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I'm well aware of FIFA's negative stance on video evidence. A number of countries have pointed out that video evidence is clearly more reliable than FIFA's seemingly biased and or incompetent referees. FIFA claim they are waiting on a 100% reliable system, which is of course impossible. Therefore imo this is ample proof FIFA want to retain their outdated and inequitable policies.
 
Sorry mates, I was with you all the way. That dam' little Ronaldo. As if I didn't need any more reasons, another one to hate Man U.
 
I assume you mean Germany to win the Cup. I'm not sure I see that. I think this is Zidane's Cup. I just can't see them losing to Portugal and I just think they will win the Cup. This is a team that just refuses to quit when you think they should already be out. No one (including me) gave them much of a chance against Spain but they didn't count on Zizou going out on style. The next or the one after that will be his last match, both on a national and club level. I think he'll go out in style. I have a selfish motive for wanting France to win. I will be in France next Sunday and it would be just fantastic to be there when they play the match.
 
Germany will win if they can beat Italy: they have the home advantage, but most of all Klinsmann and Lehmann (Yes, I am Arsenal-fan). Klinsmann is the most hated trainer in this world cup, especially in Germany at the beginning of this tournament. But he has this unique style of coaching that beats all the other coaches, he loves to play agressive football, very Un-German football. Also, with a goalkeeper like that between the poles, not very much can go wrong.

And if you can play home the tournament favorite...

France surprised me, Brasil was lacking skill and passion from the beginning of this tournament. Ronaldo has worn off (I loved this particular remark: Ronaldo runs off to the dressing rooms, that's his first sprint of the day...), Ribery was dangerous, Henry was fabulous.

Can they beat Portugal? Yes, if that little prik Ronaldo doesn't beg for a card. (I don't like Rooney, but he couldn't have done that on purpose; I'm wondering if Ronaldo will ever play in Man U again).

Can they beat Germany? No. Why? Klose. That guy is full of surprises: he just pops out whenever he sees something brilliant.
 
It'll be interesting when those two get together at the Man U training grounds later this year.
 
The France v,s Brazil game didnt realy come alive until france scored,
I think Renaldo was not to fault in Brazils loss,their midfield didnt function until subs where made to late in the game ,one man can only do so much and their are other big names in that side that didnt fire a shot.
As for England ,Penalty shoot out ,say no more [that was painfull to watch].
I reckon France/ germany for the final and France i think are the better side but home ground advantage to germany might just get them home,
and their goalkeeper.
 
sorry to australia the penalty not there was, lucky for us............
 
zup66 said:
sorry to australia the penalty not there was, lucky for us............
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Thanks zup, I'm still angry at FIFA for not allowing the use of video evidence which would make up for the poor refereeing evident in many of the matches.
 
PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, PORTUGAL, P.....! My voice is absolutely gone, I just can not shout anymore....
During the last month passion has been flowing in my country. There are flags all over the windows all over the country and even people who normally wouldn't care about football, like old ladies and small children become involved. Yesterday during the game with England, the streets everywhere were absolutely deserted, people watching it on TV biting their nails. Yesterday, after the game, it was cars horning around everywhere ( including mine ), flags and other memorabilia flying around and people, all kinds of people, everywhere in the streets, joy and more joy. When Ronaldo scored that last penalty, I jumped in the air and embraced my wife and son and my mother. My mother couldn't bear to watch the game but kept asking me for the score...
Curious how W. Cup football unites people from all walks of life and all ages behind their national team, like nothing else: food for thought.
Now, once you get to the semis, absolutely anything can happen.
 
On the England-Portugal game
Rooney is a great player, and he played well, but he just lost his head in that particular situation. He did back heel intentionally and violently, but probably didn't think he would hit Ricardo on that particular spot. The red card was the only possible decision. This is not the first time I see Rooney losing it, and he has to get rid of it. It did harm his team a lot and I even think England was playing better at the start of the second half.
There are quite a few English players who have both skill and lots of character for whom I feel sorry for, right now I think of Lampard, Terry and mostly Neville, a tremendous player, a great professional, who has a lot to teach to incomplete players like Rooney. Neville has, unfortunately for England, seen it all before.
Will England ever win a penalty shoot-out? There is something abnormal going on here. Is it the lack of skill of the players for this situations? Probably. Here's a list of England penalty shoot-out losses:
-against Germany in the W. Cup semis 1990;
-against Germany in the Euro 1996 semis;
-against Argentina in the W.Cup last 16, in 1998;
-against Portugal in the Euro 2004 quarter-finals;
-yesterday, against Portugal.
 
Because I have calmed down slightly i can respond in a calm way.

I don't think Rooney intended to stand on that guys nads. He was just desperate for the ball because he had hardly seen any of it due to the crazy formation.

Ronaldo had been provoking Rooney right from the start. His decision to go to the ref and start yabbering on was designed to get the reaction from Rooney that it stupidly got.

As Alan Shearer said afterwards it'd be good if Rooney sticks one on Ronaldo when they meet up for pre season training.

Either way Ronaldo is going to get some very rough treatment from players and fans if he is still at Man U for next season.

Poor penalties though. Lampard and Gerrard really need to look at themselves and ask would they sweat blood for that England shirt because i don't think they would.

Ferdinand, Terry, Ashley Cole, Gary Neville. Those were the guys who slogged their guts out.

Owen Hargreaves. Well lets hope he never gets booed again. That man gave the performance of a lifetime and fully deserves to have those 3 lions on his shirt.
 
Before you get too excited about Portugal, let's look at the game analytically. Before the red card, what was Portugal doing? Nothing offensively. They had no offensive conception in the match. After that, the same. The team that you would think would play for penalties, England, was trying hard like heck to put the ball in the net. It seemed that after England were down to 10 men, that the match got interesting. It was only some bad luck that prevented England from winning before they went to the PK phase. Credit for Portugal's winning must go to their keeper because he was fantastic. Other than him, there was nobody on Portugal who did anything.

However, special note must be of the little fool Ronaldo for his behavior. I have read that he's moving to Real Madrid. Of all the bad decisions that Real has made lately, this must be one of the worst. Imagine this: Zidane retiring, to be replaced by the little faker. Sad.
 
jazzeum said:
Before you get too excited about Portugal, let's look at the game analytically. Before the red card, what was Portugal doing? Nothing offensively. They had no offensive conception in the match. After that, the same. The team that you would think would play for penalties, England, was trying hard like heck to put the ball in the net. It seemed that after England were down to 10 men, that the match got interesting. It was only some bad luck that prevented England from winning before they went to the PK phase. Credit for Portugal's winning must go to their keeper because he was fantastic. Other than him, there was nobody on Portugal who did anything.

However, special note must be of the little fool Ronaldo for his behavior. I have read that he's moving to Real Madrid. Of all the bad decisions that Real has made lately, this must be one of the worst. Imagine this: Zidane retiring, to be replaced by the little faker. Sad.
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in the matches seen by me no good soccer played, the italian team wake up only at last match vs ukraina,the direct elimination is a little touch of lucky of the moment,so only one match on five we have played good....lucky lucky and lucky... i hope vs german the italy play like the last round

ciao
 
Max,

I agree that the quality of the football played has not been very good. The one team that I would probably say has played well, except for the last game, is Germany. They have played pretty well. And, of course, France has raised the level of their game.
 
Ronaldo did what every player, including the English, today does: make a claim before the ref. At this level, with what's at stake, if you don't call the ref's attention to an aggression on a team mate you are either:
a) pretty stupid;
b) too naive;
in any case you can be something else but you can never be a professional football player. Rooney might lose it too frequently but I can assure you he does know about this better than any of us amateurs.
It was Rooney and not Ronaldo who was at fault and got fairly sent off, for getting his boot you know where.
Also Portugal created at least as many goal chances as England, so the draw had to be broken. I did expect a little more speed from Portugal after starting to play against 10 to kill the game, but after more than 90 minutes playing under a closed roof stadium, with soaring temperatures, at the very end of the season, maybe we might be expecting too much from both parts.
Want a good example of fair play and knowing how to lose? Read what Gary Neville has to say about the game at www.thefa.com.
 
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OzDigger said:
Thanks zup, I'm still angry at FIFA for not allowing the use of video evidence which would make up for the poor refereeing evident in many of the matches.
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Oz, In rugby it's a physical game and you need to respect the ref and his decisions. The culture of soccer, however, is very different: there's always a swarm of players yapping around a ref with every decision he makes. If video evidence was introduced for certain matters in soccer the pressure would inevitably extend it to other categories of offence. Eventually the game just wouldn't be played, as every blast of the referee's whilst would produce a stampede of players surrounding the ref to demand that he use video evidence to ascertain as to whether a tackle should have warranted a card. It may look ridiculously unprofessional to refrain from using the technology now available but a prerequisite would be a massive shift in players' attitudes and that's just not going to happen.
 
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