Hey folks, World Football Cup started

Kim Coxon said:
Let's keep this friendly and not get personal. :) It would be a shame to lose such a good and long thread in the last few days. ;)

Kim

Sorry Kim, I saw your post after I posted my latest replies, feel free to delete them if you think I am going off the tangent.
 
fgianni said:
A dive on the other hand IMHO is what the portoguese had been doing all the time, simply falling down on their own for no reason whatsoever.

Gianni, I agree with you on both points :eek: , that's reality of this game, but diving by Portuguese was laughably poor performance. On the other hand I must admit Mr. Henry has great talent for such a kind of theatre :rolleyes: .But don't get me wrong, Thierry Henry is, IMO, still one of the best players/attackers of WCF in Germany.

Hopefully Mr. Zidane will get his strength back for the final game, otherwise I am afraid France stands little chance against Italy.
 
bruenhilde said:
Hopefully Mr. Zidane will get his strength back for the final game, otherwise I am afraid France stands little chance against Italy.

Let's just say that your hopefully is not my hopefully :D
 
fgianni said:
Let's just say that your hopefully is not my hopefully :D

I just want to watch beautiful/great footbal, without Zidane at 80% of his capabilities, there will
be to much domination by Italy. And even Zidane at 100% will have big problem to solve :bang: - I mean
Canavaro is the best defence player of them all, and just let's not talk about goalkeeper Buffon :eek:

I don't have favourite for this game, let the better team win. :angel:

With Zidane at 99% I would say winning-chances are still 60% for Italy and 40% for France.
With exhausted Zidane: 80% Italy 20% France
 
Mac: I only saw the last 20 minutes or so of the match, and though I am a foot newbie, I laregely agree with your assessment of France's play. I did see some of a rebroadcast of the entire match, so was able to see the first 1/3 or so of the match, including the goal.

Don't expect France to play without more intensity and energy in the final. I think they are committed to win the cup, and yesterday's match showed fatigue from the Brazil match. With more days of rest and the chance to mentally re-group, I expect a different team.

It reminded me of a hockey game where the eventual winner of the Stanley Cup plays a so-so game in game 6, very defensive minded, tentative and thus scarey. I was certain Portugal was going to score, but the point is they didn't.

Beware the underdog.
 
fgianni said:
I'll have that, thanks.

Seriusly I am not sure Zidane alone can make such a difference.
I say it's a 50-50

:) He, he Gianni, Your manners are gentlemanly. ;)

IMO Zidane is the brain of the France team, without his attacking&ball-passing, Mr. Henry and others
won't get very far against formidable defence of Italy. :rolleyes:
 
After it has turned out that our boys have been not experienced enuff too keep their boat floating until the very end my vote is now for my neighbours. To see Zidane doing it again would be a real comfort. He is old and tired, but still a ingenious leader, a unique personality.

ALLEZ LE BLEUS !

Les bleus vont gagner parce que leur jeu a plus d' sentiment et plus d'âme !

Fitzi
 
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With all that Allez le Blues going on I feel compelled to shout my

Forza Azzurri !

I can't even shout "Forza Italia" without appearing like one of Berlusconi's cronies, how I hate that man.
 
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Marc-A. said:
2. Spain, Germany, Italy, the only good teams? Ok for Italy, I always like very much this team, even when people say they're just defending. But Germany? Are you kidding? Tell me just one match they really played well. They reached the semi-finals, in their country, which was the best they reasonnably could expect. And Spain? Ah Spain, what a desillusion! but what you call a good team was defeated by 3 goals!!! They aren't good teams 'till they play good on the pitch. That's sport, that's football.
.

O.K., Marc A., we all know now that you have absolutely no clue at all of what football really is. You just count the goals and who has more is better! :eek:
I won't cancel my support for the French anyway , they need all they can get, and it would not be nice to let the whole French nation expiate for your gruesome incompetence !:D :D :D

Allez les Bleus !!!

Fitzi
 
fgianni said:
But most likely is not a colonial accent :p


Had that coming - but I did mean it in the best way possible. Just something about an accent (other than my own)...
 
bcs89 said:
Had that coming - but I did mean it in the best way possible. Just something about an accent (other than my own)...

I know, it's just that I could not resist.:D
 
fitzihardwurshd said:
O.K., Marc A., we all know now that you have absolutely no clue at all of what football really is. You just count the goals and who has more is better! :eek:
I won't cancel my support for the French anyway , they need all they can get, and it would not be nice to let the whole French nation expiate for your gruesome incompetence !:D :D :D

Allez les Bleus !!!

Fitzi

Thanx Fitzi! Very nice ...
 
fitzihardwurshd said:
O.K., Marc A., we all know now that you have absolutely no clue at all of what football really is. You just count the goals and who has more is better! :eek:

Allez les Bleus !!!

Fitzi

BTW, I supported Argentina, and I think they played better football, but sadly lost ... That's not a matter of goals, sorry. You support France only because Italy defeated Germany, that's sad.
One more idea before I leave this place: you (and others) have a romantic conception of football: the "beau jeu"! that's exactly why France lost so many times against Germany and Italy: every time after a defeat, French supporters were finding consolation in the fact they played well (vs Germany 1982 for instance) ... no, what counts is the winner, and winning means scoring. That's why Italy is so strong, they play to win, and when they can play well, they do. Germany was used to do the same, that's a shame they now talk about "le beau jeu".
Thanx for the conversation!
 
Jenni

Everyone opinion can be called into question, only hard facts are unquestionable.

An opinion expresses the point of view of the speaker, and can be wrong without implying that whoever holds it is less clever or competent that anyone else (I wish I had a tenner for every time I was wrong).

So I am still of the idea that anyone who thinks that his opinions cannot be called to question, needs to de-flate his/her ego a little bit.

Statistics are unquestionable since they provide hard facts, you can call into question the use you make of them, but they provide a more stable starting point for a discussion.

Two countries have offered a job to Eriksson, either the guys responsible for the football national team are completely incompetent in both countries, or England elimination was not only Eriksson's fault, and since the stats seem to support the fact that Eriksoon has not been that bad, I tend to consider the second option more likely.

He did not take enough strikers? Probably he was convinced that the other strikers available to him were not world-cup stuff.
Was he wrong? Possibly, even the best coaches make mistakes, no one is always right, that does not automatically mean he is an incompetent.

Of course you can do better than him, it is the same in Italy, 52,000,000 people thinking they can manage the Italian team better than Lippi; do we really have to believe it's true?

And about the chance to cheat, again the defender does a bad timed tackle to try to stop you, and forces you to choos between two options:

1) Avoid him and most likely lose the opportunity you had.
2) Continue in your action, and try to gain something out of it.

Is the player that chooses the 2nd option cheating?

Everything is relative:

Only 1-2% or so of the players choose to collapse on the ground for no reason whatsoever to get a free kick, so that to me is definitely cheating
Only 1-2% of the players will choose to fake injury to get an opponent sent off, so that to me is definitely cheating.
99.99% of the players would choose to not lose their opportunity, run into the player that sprawled himself in front of them, and let the referee decide, is that cheating?
If it is, it is not on the same league of the other two, and since almost everyone would do the same, I tend to think that at the moment it is part of the game. The alternative is saying that every football player is a cheater, so we'd be better off watching something else.

When a controversial episode happens I think the best way to decide if it was cheating is to ask ourselves what would have happened had the roles been reversed.

Essentially I don't consider Grosso' penalty cheating because I am sure that, reversing the roles, Neill would have done the same, but I consider Heny cheating because again, reversing roles, the guy that fouled him probably would not have feigned injury to his face, and that, to me, is what makes the difference.

All the best.
 
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Marc-A. said:
. You support France only because Italy defeated Germany, that's sad.

you (and others) have a romantic conception of football: the "beau jeu"!

That's why Italy is so strong, they play to win,

AARRGH; what I say ? You watch the result and who has won is the better team ? It isn't the better team per se just because it has won. There are a thousand reasons why a better team can lose. Trivial. You said it yourself, Argentinia lost as the better team. Somehow you seem to contradict yourself.

That I support France only because Italy has defeated the German team is your assumption and it is as wrong as unfriendly. I am not as childish as you think. You seem to be a man of quite limited humor :rolleyes: This won't damnage though my sympathy for the French, which exists longer than you live on this earth.

And with the "romantic conception" et "le beau jeu" you hit the nail on the head: Yes, that's a part of the fun I have with watching football !

And that is why I do not like the too often outcome oriented play of the Italian team . That is clever, but not nice to watch, no good show, just business.

Therefore, again, :

ALLEZ LES BLEUS !

Fitzi
 
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What are the criteria to say which is the better team? Tell me.
I'm certainly "childish", but I believe in pure procedural justice when it comes to sport (childish conception of Rawls' justice as fairness): the fair outcome of a game is only a matter of rules; you respect the rule, you win, you're the better. You respect the rule, you loose, you just lost!
I was very angry at my fellow citizens when they complained about the defense of Greece in the Euro Cup. Greek team played very well, they defeated France and Portugal and won after very tough games. This is football; football is not made for (TV) spectators who want to see dribbles and acrobatics (though I'm very pleased to watch Zidane's tricks). Football is also about defense and midfield battle. If you can't appreciate that, you can't appreciate football.
Now, you can say whatever you want about the best team: well, Holland was the best team (in your sense) when they lost angainst Germany (1974); for me, Germany was the best team; German players were strong, they remained cool in their mind, they scored ... they won!
Italia was the best in 1982, Argentina in 1986, Germany again in 1990 and so on.
End of the story!
Now you can talk about the best player, who is not the one who scores the most, nor belongs to the winning team.
 
fitzihardwurshd said:
You seem to be a man of quite limited humor :rolleyes: This won't damnage though my sympathy for the French, which exists longer than you live on this earth. Fitzi

Oh, and BTW thanx for your kind words.
 
Maybe I'm just too American to understand the seriousness of this soccer thing appropriately, but isn't it in the end just a game?
 
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