World Cup

[Mani]

Rooney made one mistake

Yeah his mistake was trying to keep playing and stepping near some guys crotch. He should have just taken a dive and faked an injury like a good Portugese player would have. Good acting by Carvalho though.

And will the Dutch get off their high horses? Portugal-Holland minute three, the dutch try to take Ronaldo from the game, minute seven, a new and barbaric attempt knocks him out., yadda yadda

Ronaldo is a rat, nothing more nothing less. What bothers me the most is that he is actually a gifted player, but he squanders his talent to be the embodiment of everything that's wrong about football, the endless dives, always begging the ref to card the opponents, faking injuries.

What's worse is he was succesful until the semi finals when there was finally a competent ref in the field who laughed at his dives and begging.

The way he screamed at Heitinga to stop him from giving back the ball to the portuguese as he should, in the most crude display of lack of fair play in the entire tournament showed the litle man he is, and how pathetic the Dutch were.

It was referee ball, the Dutch won it and so the game should just continue. For lack of fairplay please look at your diving, injury faking, player screwing, card begging countrymen.

Still it was very fun to see portugal lose the semi finals. Ronaldo's tears are like honey to me. So very sweet, I wish I could lick them off his face.

You should check again then Kharn, as France is indeed a latin country.

No it's not. Just because French is a romance language does not make France a latin country.

 

[Briosafreak]

Latin countries in Europe


I'll respond to the rest later on.

 

[Stag]

Forza! I just got a shirt that says "DEL PIERO" in big letters and some red white and green face paint!

France is going down!

 

[victor]

The fact remains that Italy, even if they win, are a bunch of crying little faggot pansies. I have absolutely no respect for their style of play, along with the Portuguese.

 

[Stag]

Psh. France is queer. Their guys are all too old to play, a ton of them are decade old veterans. They're going down.

Italy plays the way that is best to win. And in football, it has become the only way to win by cheating. The style of play is Darwinian, matey.

 

[victor]

As I've said before, go dig yourself a big hole outside this forum please. Your retarded post shows that you don't know anything about football.

I have absolutely no respect for teams that cheat, and even less for those that encourage it. Ruins the games really.

 

[Lukus]

I'm pinning France as winner, dangerous as their adversary is. I have no particular reason to root for France though, I just feel obligated to pick a winner and a team to 'cheer' on for the heck of it. Hence, I'll be equally glad if Italy wins so long as the soccer is good.

Also, right after the game, Groundhog Day is on TV! That movie is kickass.

 

[welsh]

I'm for France as well... mostly because I like Zidane.

Italy taking that dive during the Australia game was just low.

Sorry, Darwinian or not, football should be sport and cheating is just bad for the game.

And Briosa- how many yellow cards did Portugual get this world cup, 24? 26? I think against Germany they played a cleaner game because the ref was ignoring them- and so the Portuguese goe only 4 yellows instead of average of 5.

 

[Briosafreak]

Thank you for asking Welsh, because that allows me to reply to our younger members too ina a way that is less emotional and more based in facts.


Your assumption from the number of cards the Portuguese national team got was that they are a rowdy and violent bunch. Now let's be fair and analyse things with more data before we make such assumptions.

In the qualification matches to the world cup Portugal had zero red cards and in about 90% of the games the oponents had more yellow cards than us, wich is what happens when a team with great technical players and speed plays against weaker teams.

In the first three matches there were again zero red cards, the standings were like this:

Match Stats
ANGOLA PORTUGAL
11 Shots 16
2 Corners 5
29 Fouls 20
3 Cautions 2
0 Expulsions 0

So we weren't the worst team here, how about the next game:

Match Stats
POR IRN
18 Shots 5
13 Corners 1
19 Fouls 18
3 Cautions 4
0 Expulsions 0

Not much happened here too, they must have started in the next game:

POR MEX
11 Shots 14
4 Corners 5
29 Fouls 18
4 Cautions 5
0 Expulsions 1

Yep, many more fouls this time, but nothing leading to a red card or the other team to complain, they had one player sent off though.


So we now have 15 straight games without a defeat and without red cards or indiscipline or lack of fair play on the pitch. So what happened for you to have a diferent perception of our national team, based on the numbers you showed just now?

I'll explain in the next post, since i have to leave for a moment now.

 

[Briosafreak]

POR NED
10 Shots 20
3 Corners 5
10 Fouls 15
9 Cautions 7
2 Expulsions 2

This changed the figures. Remember that from the three barbaric tackles on Ronaldo only one had a yellow card shown. And yet we did only 10 fouls and the dutch 15. 11 cards for 9 fouls, not bad. The dutch started a war, using the same tactics the Brazilian used against them in the 1974 World Cup, tried to kick a player out of the game (or carreer, Van Basten at least thought of that i'm sure), Petit gets pushed and steped on the ground and no red card, Van der Sar steps Sabrosa and nothing happens, Figo puts his forehead on Van Bommels, he looks at Figo for a few seconds than dives in the ground, Shakespeare style, Van Basten screams at Eitinga to not give a ball back to the portuguese wich was the lowest display of fair play possible, and yet the british press starts a campaign against the evil portuguese. And then we had more three games than Holland, so we would always have more cards than them, and without that game there wasn't anything special, it screws the averages completely.

The reason was that they were scared. In club matches the english clubs had two Champions finals wining one, while Portugal had one with one win, and two UEFA Cup finals where they lost one and won one, against two from Portugal with one win, wich is balanced but in nacional team matches they only have quarter finals, and Portugal now has two semi finals ans a final.

Roy Hodson from the FIFA technical board had started the pressure on referees against Portugal prior to the championship, and continued throught the tournament doing it. You see we have two powers that see themselves as established trying to fight a raising one.

And when the hard power from Holland failed, the soft power became a necessity. Although all the latin teams and many players in the premiership do the dives, suddently only the portuguese were doing it. Not the italians, that won the match against the australians like that, but the rising poers that was threatening the cool britania.

Terry Badoo on CNN and the indian guy from BBC join hands with the tabloids in putting pressure on the referee and the portuguese players, and things get ridiculous.

When the anglo saxon cultural hegemony uses it's tools at full extent in the globalized world things get nasty. Forget about the fact that Rooney steped Ricardo Carvalho like this, and that it wasn't the first moment he lost it during the tournament.

Forget about the fact they lost because they suck at penalties and Ricardo is a specialist, and because Rooney lost it again, or because England had never played a single good match until then, and had still not played against a good team, and when they did they saw they weren't that good...

The anglo saxon cultural aparatus for the globalization went to the point of not reporting what Sven Ericksson said when asked about what mean things the portuguese were going to make.

He said "I know Portugal, I worked there for five years and they have a great love for footbal, with great and passionate players, they aren't diferent from any other team". And my favorite sentence "of course Portugal is a team with fair play".

You know how many televised newscasts talked about those sentences in England and Holland Welsh? One. How many newspapers? Zero.

So they intoxicated an audience ready to hold on to something, instead of dealing with the frustrations they had. An escape goat, and what better in England than a foreigner? Hey they had done everything to attack Sven, and he is swedish, so why not a latin? This was the WC of latin countries, with three on the semis and a SA latin country and an EU latin country playing some of the best football of the cup (Argentina and Spain). So yeah, the old xenophobia from the english and the interests ties from the americans helped in the media fallout. they just needed to say what the frustrated fans wanted to hear, that's the same everywhere, only they have the power to make opinions gobal in a more efective way.

Raising powers, established powers, the media and the lack of critical aproaches and care with facts, doesn't this remind you of something Welsh?

Like the world in the 21st century...


Others are having the oposite reaction to this campaign, and like in the real world things will get ugly with that reaction. But that's another story, for another time.

At the end no matter what our younger friends say, i'm with my scotish, argentinian and irish friends, saying

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i135/TheQueensXI/mastercard-ad.jpg



Ps.: In the end of the match with Portugal Domenech was saying loudly, in french "Ahah i fucked you good this time". You know at least he is honest, unlike van Basten. Oh well, that's life, we'll get him good too sometime

 

[Lukus]

Interesting first half of the finals! It was good to see Henry get back in the game after that head drama - but considering the time that took, I think 3 minutes additional time would have been in order. The French penalty shot in the beginning looked sort of of unjust - at least doubtful - and it would be really sad if no more goals would come after that one, so I was actually pleased with the Italian goal that led to 1-1. Still hope for France in the second though, but I naturally want them to win with a good goal. The pentalty was quite cool though. As for the Italian goal, it was really clean and beautiful, really swell.

 

[mandala]

You should check again then Kharn, as France is indeed a latin country.

Oh, yeah, I'll just get my "101 Latin countries" booklet.

I am happy that you learned a new thing about Latin Europe Kharn, it's good to learn from your errors
As for the final game, I am getting really dissapointed with France. Now with portugal out, they are the new kings of diving, they even managed to dive more than the Italian !Thank god the italians got even.

 

[Sander]

This changed the figures. Remember that from the three barbaric tackles on Ronaldo only one had a yellow card shown. And yet we did only 10 fouls and the dutch 15. 11 cards for 9 fouls, not bad. The dutch started a war, using the same tactics the Brazilian used against them in the 1974 World Cup, tried to kick a player out of the game (or carreer, Van Basten at least thought of that i'm sure),

Oh, give me a break, Briosafreak. Van Basten cannot mind-control the players on the field. You can't blame him for an unlucky tackle by Boulahrouz, that's just silly (also, I doubt it was in any way deliberate, it looked clumsy).

Then again, let's talk about the POrtuguese. A kick right in the chest against Robben, nothing whatsoever happened.

Petit gets pushed and steped on the ground and no red card, Van der Sar steps Sabrosa and nothing happens, Figo puts his forehead on Van Bommels, he looks at Figo for a few seconds than dives in the ground, Shakespeare style,

It *was* a head-butt, which is quite simply a red-card-worthy foul.
But hey, if we're talking about dives, let's talk about Figo's dive against Boulahrouz, or Cristiano Ronaldo's tons of dives around the field (even more obvious against the Germans in the first half).

Van Basten screams at Eitinga to not give a ball back to the portuguese wich was the lowest display of fair play possible, and yet the british press starts a campaign against the evil portuguese.

No he didn't. I haven't seen Van Basten do any such thing.
In fact, Heitinga later explained that he ran with the ball *of his own volition* (not because of Van Basten) because he got so goddamn tired of all of the dives, exaggerating injuries, slowing play down, stalling and what not by the Portuguese. Besides that, it was a ref ball, not a ball given up voluntarily by the Portuguese, so fair play doesn't even state that he should've given the ball back.
Of course, this doesn't mean that it's any better, and it's been criticised here as well. I haven't heard you criticise any Portuguese player, though, so feh.
And drawing Van Basten into this is silly, especially if there's no reason to assume it was his fault.

Now, let's look at what the Portuguese did: they scored a good goal, everything they did from then on was trying to stall, fake injuries, dive and do basically anything but play football. The only people interested in actually playing and attacking were Deco and Figo, with Figo participating happily in the diving.
Yes, it was a rough match. No, the Dutch weren't blameless, but the Portuguese aren't the great attacking, footballing nation you're trying to portray them as.

Ps.: In the end of the match with Portugal Domenech was saying loudly, in french "Ahah i fucked you good this time". You know at least he is honest, unlike van Basten. Oh well, that's life, we'll get him good too sometime

What's your problem with Van Basten? Really? While he hasn't put in a good side, his idea was never to try to win through violence because that's something that really doesn't work for the Dutch. It's not something he's ever done throughout his tenure as a manager either. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that he did try to do that now. The only time it happened was against the Portuguese, it was clearly a case of a match out-of-control with a really crappy referee.

Look, Briosafreak, there's a reason why no-one outside Portugal likes to see the Portuguese team play: they're completely unsympathetic, they don't play good or exciting football (exceptions being Figo and Deco), they have a tendency to dive, stall and do anything to win the match that makes it ungodly to watch. Really.
And then there's also Cristiano Ronaldo, who's making himself even more unpopular every minute. Screwing over Rooney, constantly diving (even in a match against Germany that wasn't even about anything significant) and his actions resulting in generally absolutely nothing.

There's also a reason why no-one liked the Dutch this tournament: we were playing boring football, mainly caused by a failure of the midfield joining up with the attack. When midfield did join up, you did see some great attacks. But generally, midfield was way back, playing defensively. Very sucky.

EDIT: Congratulations, Italy. Deserved win, with a ridiculous foul by ZIdane. A sad ending to a great player's career.

 

[Mani]

*edit*

 

[mandala]

Look, Briosafreak, there's a reason why no-one outside Portugal likes to see the Portuguese team play

Speak for yourself, almost every person I know likes to see the portuguese play, spanish, brazilians, mexicans etc.

Congrats to Italy btw, you deserved it. Pizza for everyone!

 

[Lukus]

Edit: In response to Mani:



That's quick, and awesome. Wtf was up with that, I wanna know what the duder said to deserve it, ehehe. Did you take it, and if so, what country is it from - some slavic one I suppose? And is that an Elfen Lied av?

Oh well, awesome drama with the penalties, but I never knew Italy would make them all. I mean, I was hoping for penalties after full time - never really liked additional halfs or golden goal.

 

[mandala]

Golden goal had to be banned, it was causing to many heart attacks

 

[Mani]

Yeah that was weird, seemed like nothing, then when Zidana was walking away Materazzi said something and Zidane turned around and went a little locooo.

Maybe a racial slur? Zidane is Algerian...

Pics aren't mine, I stole them from a US site. Av is from Elfen Lied aye.

Great match anyway, hoped France would get it but Italy had a good team too.

 

[Briosafreak]

When Domenech looked all sad because the referee didn't cared about the sixth dive from Malouda i have to say i had a large grin in my face. Beautifull.

Avanti Ragazzi!!!!!

 

[mortiz]

Yeah, Zidane mounted that Italian alright, but deservedly got sent off for it,