South Africa marathon fussball mania II

Kiwis hold World Champions Italy to a draw. Minnowphobia continues for the big European powers.

Les bleus are not looking le best. Chelsea star Nicolas Anelka (or Abdul-Salam Bilal, his Muslim name) has been sent home by lunatic coach Raymond Domenech, who, when he told Anelka he was playing out of position at halftime during the France-Mexico game, got the blue-tinged response "Va te faire enculer, sale fils de pute!" Heh. Anyway, the entire French team is now en grève: to a man they sat out of training today in support of Anelka, despite desperately needing a win to survive to the next round. The team director Jean-Louis Valentin, in response to that, has resigned in disgust.

Caissa wrote:

Portugal

oh fork, little portugal is too close to where i live.  I'm sleep deprived.

Switzerland down to ten men  at the half hour mark.

Can Chile win?

Wow. 7-0. I guess that means Côte d'Ivoire is out, unless they can make up a nine-goal difference on Portugal. Too bad. They have fantastic kits and Africa's best team (imo).

The ref who red-carded Behrami is the same nitpicky (i.e. awful) ref who officialed the France-Mexico game. The elbow wouldn't normally merit a staright red in this kind of match but to this guy, who makes sure you deliver free kicks from the very blade of grass on which the foul took place, there was always the danger. It's a shame. He's one of those refs who needs to make sure his name is mentioned as many times as the players'.

ETA. Now 8 yellow cards and one red by this referee. The interesting thing is that Switzerland is play-acting to try and draw more cards for Chile--they've already ensured that two Chilean players will miss the next match. But if Chile wins this game, Switzerland will actually want Chile to beat Spain if they want to qualify: so by racking up cards against the Chileans while down to ten men, it strikes me that Switzerland isn't doing itself any favours!

Spain-Honduras has kicked off.

RSA 1- France 0 in the 20th minute. It looks like those cheating French are going home. Au revoir. 

ETA: and France is now a man down.

ETAA: 2-0 after 37

Well, this sucks. The France-RSA game isn't on CBC or something. I've been channel surfing all morning and can't find it!

edit: never mind, it was way down in the French language channels.

Yes, I have been for a while. Both teams are amazing. I am super happy it looks like they are both going to advance. Uruguay is up one nil' over Mexico. Uru has had some amazing, amazing attacking. Probably the best match I've seen so far, and #9s wicked header into the net was faaaaaaaaabulous.

Papal Bull wrote:

Well, this sucks. The France-RSA game isn't on CBC or something. I've been channel surfing all morning and can't find it!

 

edit: never mind, it was way down in the French language channels.

And on Bold, where I'm watching it.

Who forgets Henry's handball? It's all I've heard every time someone mentions France and the World Cup at all!

Sadly, Nigeria become the third African team to be eliminated from the World Cup. It's Uruguay - South Korea and Argentina - Mexico in the next round.

England? GO yew bastaarrrdszzuh!

It says Milner and Gerard would miss the next match if booked. What if they are booked the very next game? Would they miss the next match after that?

Waw? Rooney with the goal post. Give ova.

Who needs TV any more.

CBC is doing a superb job of carrying the matches online, even offering a choice of which match to watch, if 2 are being played at the same time.

Donovan showed class after the game. He was asked about the disallowed goal and he said. We can moan about it or go on and score another one. 

Caissa wrote:

RSA 1- France 0 in the 20th minute. It looks like those cheating French are going home. Au revoir. 

Zût flûte, quel débacle. 

I don't know which bleus is most appropriate now; this one, this one, or this.

Anyway, as far as cheating goes; to this hockey guy it seems that a lot of the succcess of a football team is predicated on its ability to cheat successfully.  To cite but one example, a guy gets taken off the field on a stretcher, the "culprit" is thrown out of the game, then the hitherto mortally-injured player comes back without missing a step.  As Don Cherry would say, there's no honour in that.

Catchfire wrote:

Yes, but he also said we embodied the American spirit tonight, which quickly evaporated any goodwill I had developed due to their plucky resilience and misfortune.

Right.  Wouldn't want any tinge of American nationalism...in an event positively sopping with nationalism. 

Seriously Catchfire, I don't expect Donovan to say "In spite of our victory, we carry forth with a heavy heart due to our homeland's history of neocolonialism against countries like Algeria".

The USA is a fun team to watch, I cheer for them for a few reasons. As I grew up in Canada, the USA is the country I have the most in common with among those that make the world cup. Also, I kind of relate to them. In HS I played soccer even though the cool sport was basketball. Many of those players were probably told they should be playing real sports like baseball or (American) football. I watched the USA-Algeria game today. Donovan and Altidore were excellent players. At the end, Altidore was running toward the net after deeking out a few Algerian players, he would have scored but they tripped him.

Incidentally, my second favourite team of the tourney is Ghana, because I like the idea of an African team doing well.

Catchfire wrote:

Hahaha. Why not?

Ok ok. So I don't expect much from footballer interviews. It was still an eye rolling moment, mostly because the US is so bad at soccer (I don't rate Donovan at all and Altidore missed a sitter--the only USian players worth their salt are Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard). I probably would have rolled my eyes too if Frank Lampard said that his team played like Englishmen today--no, I would at least have rolled my eyes, and probably vomited.

Among other things, nothing good can come of that comment. The most likely outcome would be a lot of offended people in Algeria (it would be condescending to the Algerian team), and mockery from the late-night talk shows in the USA.

There's not much of a history of celebrities taking useful political stands in the USA. These are people in their 20s who either skipped university or majored in communication studies. I knew a national-level athlete a while back, he wasn't an idiot, pretty smart actually, but he did have much less time to read books and pay attention. Following that, even if they say something intelligent, the media will make it sound idiotic because ridiculing is so much fun.

If Donovan or whoever want to use their level-2 celebrity status to take on a social mission they can already do a lot by encouraging the popularity of the sport in the United States. I'm completely serious about that... it would be a net-positive for the USA and for the world. In the USA, it's a sport that lower-income people can play, and currently basketball is the only option. It's also a sport that shorter people can play, it's always better to have more options for these things. Lastly, if the USA became serious about the game, they would indirectly acquire cognitive awareness that the rest of the world exists.

Caissa wrote:

Now we need Algeria to hold the US to at least a draw to keep them from advancing.

Don't worry. Ghana is able for them.

For further thoughts on the first African World Cup, see this rabble feature and my comment.

Slovakia 1 Italy 0 in 25th minute.

It appears that Italy (trailing 2-0 with about 15 minutes left) is...toast.