South Africa marathon fussball mania II

I cannot believe what I'm seeing!

3-2!

Italy = Toast (not only eliminated but finishing last in its group)

My sincere condolences to all the Italian footie fans.  

Catchfire wrote:

Actually, this World Cup has been dreadful for European teams (although Slovakia counts, I suppose).

Slovakia "counts"?  Of course it does.  It's a member of the European Union and, by any definition, is a European country.

GO SLOVAKIA!!!

Sven wrote:

Slovakia "counts"?  Of course it does.  It's a member of the European Union and, by any definition, is a European country.

Pfft. I suppose you'll be saying Greece and Slovenia are European next.

Sven wrote:

Slovakia "counts"?  Of course it does.  It's a member of the European Union and, by any definition, is a European country.

GO SLOVAKIA!!!

My friend from Piešt'any should be pretty happy about this. By the way, he says Slovakia is in Central Europe.

Lots of teams from South America got through so far (3), 3 teams from Europe including a team from the Slavic countries, 2 from our own group (Mexico and the US), 1 from Africa, and one Asian team.

Bob Lenarduzzi, former coach of the Canadian team, suggested that Canadian fans should follow the success of teams from the CONCACAF Group being as it represents football in our part of the world. The US is rated 14th best, Mexico 17th best, Honduras at 38th, and Canada trails at 63rd best in the world. The US ranking surprises me somewhat.

Edited to add: Whoops. I missed Costa Rica at 40th. Here are the full CONCACAF rankings.

Looking at the CONMEBOL (South America) FIFA Grouping, 9 of the 10 countries are higher ranked than Canada. These tables are handy to give a rough idea of the strength of (men's) football in the different parts of the world.

Of course, they do not give general participation rates. And that would be useful info as well.

Greece won the European Cup not too long ago. The other 2 probably have similar such accomplishments. Edited to add: Egypt, being the highest ranked team in Africa (currently), may have got its ranking, in part, from repetitively beating up on other African teams.

Dave Zirin, who is probably the only leftist sports journalist in the US, in this column, responds to a European left academic who shuns and disses sports. Zirin outlines why sports provide an important arena for social change.

Quote:

We don't love sport because we are like babies suckling at the teat of constant distraction. We love it because it's exciting, interesting and at its best, rises to the level of art. Maybe Lionel Messi or Mia Hamm are actually brilliant artists who capture people's best instincts because they are inspired. . . . We can stir our soul with gospel music even while we understand that its existence owes itself to pain as much as hope. Similarly, amid the politics and pain that engulf and sometimes threaten to smother professional sport, there is also an art that can take your breath away.

We now know that as soon as human beings could clothe and feed themselves, they played. Sports is as human an act as music, dance, or organising resistance. While sports may in a vacuum have no "significance", the passion we invest transforms it. Sport morphs into something well beyond escape or a vessel for backward ideas and becomes a meaningful part in the fabric of our lives.

Sport is, at the end of the day, like a hammer. And you can use a hammer to bash someone over the head or you could use it to construct something beautiful. It's in the way that you use it. It can be brutal. It can be ugly. But it also has an unbelievable potential to bring us together, to provide health, fun, enjoyment, and of course pulse-racing excitement.

Australia and New Zealand have, probably, benefitted from the whole "play teams from your own group" thing. They've both exited quickly although, in fairness, NZ never lost a game and the Auzzies managed an historic win against Serbia.

Good results for the US and Mexico (they're through to the Round of 16) tell well for the CONCACAF group having teams that deserve to be at the World Cup.

What's also clear looking at the FIFA site is how awful Canada is in Men's soccer. yiykes! If we had more, and long lasting, pro soccer in Canada then we could more easily bring a group of players together. Either that or more govenment support for the sport. Thing is, the preliminaries take (3?) years and most politicians have a much shorter attention span.

Still, the Canadian women have an excellent chance of making it to the Women's World Cup next year.

That's a nice story, Wilf--but Uruguay are a very, very good squad. Diego Forlán is one of the best strikers in the world. And they have their own nice story: they won the first two World Cups they entered (including the inaugural tournament in 1930) , but haven't done well since the 70s. So, they have a real chance to restore some national pride and rouse their pre-war spirits. Still, I like the idea of Ghana in the semi-final!

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With supporting roles to the new Germany (remarkably, the most ethnically diverse squad in the tournament), and to the old Europe (France and Italy as they slink home in disgrace).

No qualms with your characterization of Germany or, sadly, Italy, but the France national team is a very different story. Their wonderful 1998 squad (and the even better 2000 Euro Cup winning squad) was a picture of the "New France": an ethnically diverse group of players, with their talisman Zinedine Zidane of Algerian descent. But this squad--many players born in the fraught banlieues, and two born in French colonies--has not had the unifying effect of the previous generation:

Quote:

But there is a more troubling aspect to the reaction to the defeat, which has focused on lack of patriotism, shared values and national honor on a team with many members who are black or brown and descended from immigrants.

The philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who has often criticized the failures of French assimilation, compared the players to youths rioting in the banlieues, France’s suburban ghettos. “We now have proof that the French team is not a team at all, but a gang of hooligans that knows only the morals of the mafia,” he said in a radio interview.

While most politicians have talked carefully of values and patriotism, rather than immigration and race, some legislators blasted the players as “scum,” “little troublemakers” and “guys with chickpeas in their heads instead of a brain,” according to news reports.

When the players went on strike because Anelka (a converted Muslim) was sent home by the loony Raymond Domenech, I remember reading in L'équipe that the Captain, Man Utd's Patrice Evra, was said to have forgotten he was running a football team rather than a gang. This is not "old Europe" at all. It's a very new and very scary Europe that can't deal with its past or its present.

DaveW wrote:

Just because it is hosted in Africa does not predict the performance of the African teams (mediocre to date), and it may well end up being a huge tourney for Latin America, with 2 South American finalists.

Indeed, a final between Brasil and Argentina was always quite likely, not for the first time.

But the dream of an African World Cup really deserves an African team in the semi-final. Cross your fingers.  

Well, La Roja are certainly representing "old" Europe well enough. 2-0 Spain. Those Chileans remind me of some of the players I played against in Winnipeg, back in the day. Brutal tackles have netted one red card, a truckload of yellows, (and zero cards for Spain). Hmm. A little one-sided by the referee I think.

Some very interesting games forthcoming. England-Germany, Spain-Portugal, Argentina-Mexico, and Chile-Brazil. They're all over here.

Yes, that's the point I've been making. They're slipping.

Mind you, I still like the style of La Roja, the Azzuri, and so on.

Russia got knocked out, despite being - what? - top 10 or so.

As much as it pains me, and it DOES pain me, we should cheer the US and Mexico. And the Canadian women ... next year. lol.

bekayne wrote:

N.Beltov wrote:

(6) Europe = Germany, England, Netherlands, Slovakia, Portugal, Spain.

Since the 16 team 2nd round was introduced in 1986, Europe has had either 9 or 10 of the 16 teams. Until this year.

They should remove a spot from either Europe or Africa, and give that spot to South America.

1) Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile all dominated in the first round, losing only 1 game out of the 15 they played. That one loss was a very close Chile-Spain game marred by lopsided refereeing.

2) Argentina almost didn't qualify for the world cup. But they dominated their group, getting a perfect record of 3 wins. That shows South Korea, Greece and Nigeria are a notch below the level of play in South America.

Concacaf did reasonably well, with Mexico and the United States advancing and deservedly so, while Honduras had honourable losses to two strong teams (Spain and Chile) and a tie against Switzerland.

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If France had taken Drogba, bourgeois liberal fans everywhere would be discussing the lack of African goal scorers, while celebrating the triumph of multiculturalism in France and their great national team.

This is a brilliant point.

Goal line technology!

England is robbed, by the assistant official, of a goal against the German team. Strange that such an enormous sporting event can get something so basic so wrong. When is a goal a goal? Good grief.

Anyway, there is actually some history. Back in '66 when England won the World Cup, the Germans scored a goal that wasn't counted. Karma sucks, eh?

What a miserable tournament by England's so-called "golden generation." They played well for 54 seconds out of 90 minutes and Germany are deserved winners despite the wrongly disallowed goal. Germany has looked like they could win this tournament all along while England has never looked like they even wanted to be there.

Why do fifa not bring in technology review? 

Simple,  it is a lot easier to bribe  the 3 or 4 officials than it is to bribe the players.

And as clearly shown by the Ireland France match, the brazil  Ivory Coast match (when the brazilian handled twice to score goal 2 and end the match), Argentina Mexico with a 2 meter offside player when the ball was passed for the first goal, (that unhinged the whole mexican team and made the second goal easy) and the england goal where the ball landed at least 2 ft over the line and did not count.  2 to 1 or 2 all is a huge difference in soccer and had a huge bearing on how the match went. I am not one to defend england but having a perfectly good goal disallowed knocks the crap out of you.

And now after a very long season of running like racehorses in the mud of england (the other countries do not do the galloping thing)  the poor guys have to go back to their mob culture for further humiliation!

You cannot miss stuff like that. It is not possible. There are 4 officials nowadays and NONE of them spotted the above incidents!   It is just not possible. Argentina and Germany seemed better  in their games but it should have been decided on real goals. A Brazilian should not have the right to handle the ball like a hot potato just because he is from Brazil.

Another sick thing that fifa do is they change the ball at each world cup.  So some years you have the best shooters in the world sending the ball 30 ft over the bar or the best goalies misreading the flight of the ball and letting in stupid goals.

The real business in soccer is the betting on the games.   That is why fifa leaves control over who wins and who loses in the hands of lowly paid officials.

Betting is the reason for the "mistakes" too.    These are some of the reasons that I stopped watching soccer. But it was great to see Veron again, what a great player.   They had a witchhunt for him in England about 5 or 6  years ago. I never understood it.

  But I almost regret watching when the beautiful game gets so spoiled by "mistakes".

Japan and Ghana are perhaps a lot better than people think they are and Uruguay are weaker.  If the Japaneese player had scored on his unusual  run across and away from the goal in the end of the denmark match, I think it would have been goal of the tournament.

(George best or Ricky Villa type run) special because it is so different from the usual stuff.