World Cup, Take Two!

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As much as I enjoyed the world cup, that ending is why soccer may never be popular in the United States. Once again, we watched people run around for 120 minutes with basically nothing happen. We had a French guy pretend to get fouled to get a penalty kick, and an Italian who pushed a French guy out of the way to head the ball in. Then the "World championship" was basically decided by a coin toss as neither goalie came close to stopping any of the penalty kicks, it was just the French guy who missed one.

I forced my dad to watch quite a few of the matches with me and after it was over he said "What a waste of time".

 

I do not think so. I completely agree with Pac man and it it is disclosed what Materazzi, typical Lecce foulmouth, said, it will end up looking either like justified retorsion or at least very reduced culpability because of partly justified retorsion.

That said, I think it is very sad that it had to end like this. Even Zidane already played a lot against Italians and should be used to their insults.

 

And it is exactly for situations like this for why I feel that you shouldn't have shootouts in the elimination round, and especially not the final. Yes, I understand that the players have been running around for the last 2+ hours and they are fatigued. But both sides are the same way, so it's still fair. Play until someone wins.

While Zidane's penalty was really, really stupid - I don't know what could have been said to him to provoke that kind of reaction - I really don't think it would have changed anything regarding the outcome. Italy still played pretty defensively after Zidane was ejected, and unless Zidane would have kicked for the guy that hit the crossbar of the goal, there would have been no change in the outcome at all.

Final question here - why don't penalty kicks count as goals? Why is the scored displayed Italy wins 1-1 (PK) on sports tickers? Why doesn't it say Italy 6 France 4? Or at least the more informative Italy wins 1-1 (PK: I-5 F-3)? My wife asked the perfectly logical question of why did Italy win if it was 1-1? (My wife really doesn't follow any sports, so it's not like she didn't know about penalty kicks just because she's an American.)

 

Final result is counted as after 90 minutes when it comes to gambling.

 

Fabius, I disagree with that. What happens in Football, should stay in football, except when it's career-ending injuries.

Also, people, I know Materazzi plays rough, but some people are like that. He's a player that when he enters a game, he'll either **** it up completely, or save his team. Look agains Czech; he scored the 1-0. Against Australia, he got sent off. Against Germany, he stopped attack after attack after attack. And now, against France, he scored, stopped everything in his way, AND got an opposite player sent off.

That's his playing style, a gambling kind of style.

More about Materazzi and why people hate him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmW83FjB1Yc&

 

cool link rutkowski. the song is very accurate

would anyone happen to know the title and artist of the song/songs being played during the clip?

 

I enjoyed the Finals, but then again I could hardly be described as a fan. My one observation as a totally uneducated viewer is that the penalty kick is incredibly slanted toward the advantage of the kicker. Seems to me if simple kicks were to decide the game, it should be a more equitable contest between kicker and goalie. Move the ball back a few yards and give the goaltender a chance to use his skills to make a stop, rather than see him guess wrong which direction the ball's going to go.

 

Maybe for the Germans, but try telling that to the English :/

I don't think it would matter unless they moved the ball back a lot. The power of the shots will probably be such that the goalie would still have to just choose a direction and jump for it even if the ball were moved a bit further out.

 

It isn't because the kicker has all the psychological pressure upon him, since he is going to be the black sheep, if he misses, while nobody is going to blame the goalkeeper if he doesn't stop the ball.

 

Enagonios, it's 2Pac, don't know which songs though. Could be called "Fight Music", from what I managed to gather from the sidebar.

 

As discussed previously, I don't buy an excuse anyone comes up with for the penalty kick not being so massively in favour of the kicker that a top player should never miss. Other than the final (where only one was missed), the other penalty shootouts were an embarrassment to the kickers concerned.

 

Zidane wins vote for adidas Golden Ball

actually, what are the criterion for Golden Ball? Ghana's Kingson was pretty impressive. Klose was pretty impressive throughout the torunament too. Why Zidane?

 

Probably because of his performance against Brazil, he almost singlehandedly knocked them out of the tournament.

 

I wonder if Theo Walcott will get the FIFA Childrens Golden ball?

 

http://tonaz.altervista.org/zidane.html

 

another zidane link

 

Classic. It's a terrible thing to have happened, but at least it has given us something else to talk about and, now it seems, joke about.

 

Dailymail.co.uk

The Zidane mystery: what set him off?

i don't know about the racial composition of Italian population, but come to think of it, i can't name a single black italian player (beside argentine born camoranesi)

[ July 11, 2006, 04:40: Message edited by: teekc ]

 

Yeah yeah, I keep hearing he said this, he said that, he said everything and nothing, but how about some of those tabliods provide some proof?

 

You probably wouldn't take Zidane's word for it if he decided to come clean, you're seeing through blue glasses, and it retards your vision. The thing is, Materazzi DID call him names, even a blind man could see him say something to Zidane when he walked away. Zidane heard what he said, turned around, and butted him in the chest, which is a really stupid thing to do if you ask me, personally i would have butted him right on the nose to make sure he'll remember me for weeks to come. If you're going to go for a red card, at least make it worth your while.

I don't know if Materazzi is a racist or not, but i wouldn't be surprised, since it's becoming a bit of a hype to walk with the fascists again lately in Italy. I can't think of any other European nation where fascism is growing so fast, they even gave Mussolini's granddaughter a voice in parliament. Now here's a group of people who definitely haven't learned a thing from their past.