World Cup 2014
- Thread starter crackerjack
- Start date
trza
Well-known member
My bracket had Brazil meeting Argentina in the final, but that was after they beat Spain in the knockout stages. I think Netherlands walks to the semifinal but I can't pick between France and Germany for the other semifinal spot.
USA World Cup fair weather fans are annoying. Are people all over the world slightly embarrassed by the ridiculous flag wavers? I pulled into a bar to eat lunch and noticed all the spots were taken today, then I realized they would be watching the game in a group chanting USA! USA! and decided to go someplace else.
USA World Cup fair weather fans are annoying. Are people all over the world slightly embarrassed by the ridiculous flag wavers? I pulled into a bar to eat lunch and noticed all the spots were taken today, then I realized they would be watching the game in a group chanting USA! USA! and decided to go someplace else.
crackerjack
Well-known member
Yeah, she's lazy and just generally terrible. A smarter, braver, just better writer, would have acknowledged the irony that, while football is the most tooth-and-claw capitalism you'll find, US team sport still has this freakishly socialist idealism when it comes to divvying up college players.
Anyway, on a slightly different note, the good news is we get to blame the capitalists for being England being shit.
trza
Well-known member
College sports have massive problems that are playing out in the courts right now. Their shoe horned combination of the idealism of higher education and amateurism beside the pursuit of television revenue is coming to an end one of these days.
crackerjack
Well-known member
I stuck a tenner on Colombia after their first match. Don't suppose they'll win, but 33/1 looked good. Still no outstanding team. Germany couldn't beat Ghana, Holland scraped past Oz, likewise Argentina with Iran and Brazil with Croatia. Which leaves France as the only remaining 'big' team with an unblemished performance record (I'm excluding their half-arsed draw in a match they had no need to win). So given all that, Brazil's 12th man (Referinho, to steal the name from a mate) may swing it for them.
Meantime, I'll predict the q/fs will line up as:
Brazil-Colombia
France-Germany
Mexico-Costa
Argentina-Belgium
That means Holland out. Not as far fetched as it sounds given Mexico are yet to concede* and their win against Croatia was among the most impressive of the tournament.
*I meant a goal that matters - forgot about the late Croatian one
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love that
crackerjack
Well-known member
Yes, since 86 at least. If the ko games continue in the same vein it'll even eclipse that.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
from about 75 minutes, Greece-Costa Rica was the most flat-out surreally entertaining game I have seen in years. Ridiculous and magnificent. Joel Campbell trying to run or even walk was a whole subplot to himself. And the fairytale ending 
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
It didn't seem to get much press that, had Algeria won last night, they would have faced France in what would have had the potential to be the most explosive fixture in world cup history. The UK media seemed obsessed with 1982 to the point of ignoring this, at least from what I saw.
crackerjack
Well-known member
I was listening to the Guardian podcast's resident Frenchman. He seemed massively relieved they wouldn't be playing each other. He was fearing lots of ugly domestic French politics of a kind that puts traditional football rivalries in the shade.
crackerjack
Well-known member
5 out of 6 so far – and so nearly all 6.
I'd like to think Belgium will demonstrate to the Americans that football is about more than just good team spirit and a hard-to-break defence.
Leo
Well-known member
and a few valiant last-minute comeback attempts by the losers, hitting the goalpost and missing seemingly "easy" shots right at the end.
crackerjack
Well-known member
I saw the last hour-and-a-bit of the Belgium-USA game, slightly drunk and in a state of mounting disbelief. It was perhaps the most ludicrously entertainign game I've ever seen. 2 gangs of professional athletes playing like 10-year-olds, hurtling towards the opposition goal every chance they got. Some terrible finishing, non-existent defending and utterly incredible goalkeeping.
Which reminds me: Tim Howard's gone even higher in my estimation after seeing this.
Which reminds me: Tim Howard's gone even higher in my estimation after seeing this.
hucks
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This is the amazing USA sub right back Yedlin
interviewed after an MLS game for his team Seattle Sounders, wearing, I think, the away strip.
http://www.101greatgoals.com/wp-con...ze-glasses-tuxedo-in-post-match-interview.jpg