World Cup 2010 - discussions & random thoughts

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I get that, although I will point out that having a cross-conference rivalry is very unusual in sports. Most rivalries are within teams that are in the game conference, and often sometimes the same division, so it's usually impossible for two such teams to meet for the championship. For example, the Yankees cannot play the Red Sox in the World Series, and the Patriots cannot play the Colts in the Super Bowl.

The NBA is unique in that two franchises (Lakers and Celtics) have won over half of all the NBA championships in the league's history.

Any team can have a bad game or two. They have looked good in all of their elimination games, and with the way Germany was playing up to that point, the semi-finals match was excellent.

I think we can both agree that in order to make it to the finals, your team has to be playing pretty good. The Spanish national team has still only lost twice in the last couple of years, and most people who know a lot more about soccer than me are picking Spain. That's the only reason I considered them the "favorite".

I just hope the final doesn't come down to penalty kicks.

 

I have always loved these videos, and was saddened when YouTube was forced to take them down. This one cracked me up. I post with apologies to Germany fans and for the record I predicted Germany would win 2-1, which has pretty much killed me in my Yahoo pool.

 

Hey, Germany did a great match against Uruguay - 3:2! Good playing - and turning around the game after being back one goal - nice! And that with some reserve players .... And very nice and fair playing by Uruguay as well. And then the dramatic climax with that penalty at the end!

Cool, except for that, ugh, lamentable, definitely lamentable point that it is about third place ... grumbles

Worse, that blasted Octopus was right again!

 

Yay - Germany! Was it just me, or did anyone else notice a lot less girly diving and flopping than, say, when Italy was playing? That it made it a much much more enjoyable game to watch. I think Uruguay played really really well at this tournament and well deserved to be in the top 4.

 

Of course Paul was right.

It does leave me with mixed feelings for the finals. I want Netherlands to win, but then the octopus would have to be wrong...


Harbourboy: On average, it's rather normal to get less diving/drama play when Italy is not playing, imo.

 

@Snook

That video is hilarious

Has anyone actually happened to see the actual movie "Downfall"? Would you recommend it?

I will be a zombie at work tomorrow. Stupid time difference. The game starts at 230am Sunday for us. Spain, lets not make me stay up for nothing!

 

Viva España!

 

I'm delighted Holland lost. I made it back for the first half analysis and it consisted of a highlights reel of the Dutch kicking the Spanish. The ref was terrible, it was amazing it took 106 minutes for someone to be sent off.

 

Ugh... Stupid Spain.

 

Watched a bunch of it. Which team fooled the most looked to be the worst actor? Saw the Dutch guy kick the Spanish player. That was bad.

But I'm going to ask minus that highlighted event which team was worse and how many players were acting and thus hoping to get a flag called? Some of the people looked hurt but every so often there would be a guy who appeared to stop looking hurt almost on command like some people fake cry to get out of a tense situation.

 

pplr,
that acting is part of the training, sadly. A friend of mine is a teacher, who also teaches sports - in particular basketball. He has one kid, who plays in a junior team of a large club, and he is annoyed as hell that said kid has the trained habit to drop to the ground crying when someone touches him, in order to provoke penalties. He said his recipe is to disincentive such tactics by leaving them unsuccessful. Thus he mocks the kid for that (you presume you survive?) and keeps the game on.

It was a hard game, and the Dutch IMO were inferior to Spain, although not by much. What the Spanish had in superiority in skill the Dutch made even with tactics, and the match was a grind. It was predictable that the Dutch would eventually lose a player considering their rough playing style; as a matter of fact I would have expected it far earlier. After the Spanish goal the Dutch were done.

In a sense, Germany vs Uruguay was the far better match, and a far fairer one, too.

 

Whoo, The Netherlands won with 9-5! Have you ever seen such a score! Or am I missing the objective of the game here?

The game was terrible, not much fun to watch at all. And not just because Spain won, it was just boring with too many fouls etc and not enough footballing. The Dutch seemed too anxious or something to play well if they had the ball and too scared to handle it nicely if Spain had the ball. I think Spain was the better team last night, but they didn't play the best football either.

On the news this morning, I saw some reporter interviewing people in Amsterdam and some guy said he was really disappointed, because this could have been the best moment/day of his life. And that is where my understanding of sport enthusiasm stops. I can understand if a player of the Dutch team would consider winning the world cup as the most beautiful moment of his life. Or that people party all night long after winning. But for a fan to consider the athletic performance of somebody else as the most important moment of his life, well... I think he needs to get a more interesting life.

 

At least it didn't end with penalties.

Here's a stat I loved: In winning the WC, Spain played in seven games, and scored just eight goals in those games. (It's the lowest goal total of a WC winner ever.)

 

Terrible game, but it leaves us with an incredible statistic. After the Dutch loss, the only undefeated team in World Cup 2010 are... New Zealand.

 

I was there at the museumplein 50 meters in front of the main screen. Here is a 4096x6144 image of the field before the game started. Crowded huh? I was somewhere halfway between the lower left of the 4 pillars and the orange bus. It took me 20 minutes to get from the lower left entrance to my position. The atmosphere during the game was okay, until the last 15 minutes in which it turned quite sour and people started throwing beer bottles.

The weird stuff happened before the game, some law students from Leiden (notorious for their laziness, arrogance and their complete dependence upon their parents for their income) were really drunk and were ruining the atmosphere for everyone around by creating a small mosh pit and jumping on urine bottles (it took 20 minutes to get there and there was no way of going back so people just peed into spa bottles because they didn't want to miss the game). The bottles would explode and everyone around would have piss sprayed over their legs. Those same guys got thirsty, grabbed on of those piss bottles, thought it contained lemonade, took a good sip and then realized the contents that made my day

 

Yesterday, final match was so boring, so idle. I sacrifice my sleep just for the final match. I was so socked when teams like Brazile, Japan went out.

The prediction of Octopus is really worked. Anyway, cheer for Spain.

 

That final was crazy. At the start it was like the Dutch team thought "If we can't get the ball from them, just mow them down". I'm a fan of Van Bommel's aggressive-defense but he was really marauding all over the field. And I really have no idea how De Jong stayed in the game after freakin' drop-kicking Xabi Alonso in the chest. With all the cards being shown for a minute I thought it was going to escalate into that Portugal game in the last World Cup where both they and (was it England? I'm not sure) ended up with just 9 men each on the pitch at the end.

Very entertaining game though. Robben was awesome as usual but will likely be haunted by that failed on-on-one with Casillas. Van Persie had no impact apart from overly aggressive tackles. Both keepers were stellar.

Fernando Torres had an awful World Cup. Thank God he didn't start this time. His biggest contribution was passing the ball back to the Dutch defense who made a poor clearance. Good thing Iniesta was able to finish it.

Man, I wish I were back in Spain right now.

 

And our central defender made it into ESPN's top XI of the World Cup. Go New Zealand! And go me for winning $140 in the office World Cup competition for picking the most scores correctly. Happy days all around!