Official Football Thread

I have to agree, I was expecting much more from Spain, but they'll manage to squeeze one in, as they did against Portugal. But I don't see them getting past the semifinals, and I doubt they'll be able to beat Uruguay for third place.

Edit: The penalty for Spain was a total gift, there was no foul, just normal defending. Luckily for Paraguay, their keeper saved it.
 
A very good and proper yellow against Spain; a very exaggerated dive by David Villa to get the yellow against Paraguay. Sad that Paraguay failed to score.

It's good! It's not! He has to do it again! Wow!
Villa scores. Finally. Now, he is also been incredible this tournament. Possibly as good as Forlan.
 
Considering how picky the ref was regarding other players in the penalty area when Spain took their penalty (and had them retake it), it is incredible that Paraguay did not get to take theirs again. When Cardozo hit the ball, two Spanish players were already more than two meters into the area. That's much more than the maximum 50 cm they were inside when Alonso took Spain's.

And of course the Spanish penalty should never have been given. A blatant dive from Villa. Still, when it was first given - and taken - Spain could easily have had another penalty, because in the chaos following Villar's save, Villar fouled Fabregas.

No, Spain got lucky. If they don't step up from this, ze Germans will make mincemeat out of them.
 
In any case if ze Germans take this cup, it would be possibly the first team ever to have crash so many historical teams in its way.
Think about it : England, Argentina, Spain...

Usually the World champions until now, they had one or two epic battles until the final.
 
And it looks like they will have to go through either the Dutch or the Uruguayans to succeed, both of which are good teams.
 
I'm Uruguay since kid, now. They won their 2 cups on the first year of a new decade. I wish lightning will strike more than twice.
 
Forostar said:
To all the pro South American and anti-European supporters, I'd say try to have a nice rest of the tournament.
It won't be easy. My hunch is that Europe rules this tournament after all. 3 medals.

Source
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Uh-oh, Karma alert.  Don't the Dutch have to face a South American team?  If I were rooting for Holland, I'd be veeeerrrrryy nervous about talking smack about the Uruguayans before the match...
By the way, I think the U.S. might actually have become a soccer nation, after all.  Take, for example, this video from a bar during Donovan's goal against Algeria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfS9kbyfiMM.  There are dozens of videos like this on YouTube. 
 
All the shenanigans aside: It is now very likely that we will have the first European country to win the World Cup outside Europe.

I'll give Uruguay 1/3 chance of beating Holland. Then, if they get to the final they will face even stiffer opposition - my bet is on Germany. Against Germany I'd give them 1/5 chance of winning. If we assume that Spain and Germany are equally likely and that Uruguay have 1/4 chance of beating Spain, it sums up to

1/3 * (1/2 * 1/5 + 1/2 * 1/4) = 3/40, or 7.5 % chance of Uruguay winning. This leaves 92,5 percent for the rest.

If we consider all teams equally good, the chance of Uruguay winning it is of course 25 %, meaning there is 75 % chance of a European team winning.

It has been a rule that a European team wins when the World Cup is played in a European country, and a South American team wins if it is played elsewhere. The only exception is when Brazil won in Sweden in 1958.
 
Knowing literally nothing about him other than he used to be a big player...he just gives me the willies.
 
A big player ?? Only a big player ?? My friend...

Maradona was something more than a big player. Much more. He won a World Cup by himself, he was stolen another one.
(And who knows what would have happened in 1994, if...) Is like if Forlan's Uruguay takes this World Cup.

Maradona was a god, like Hendrix was a god, so simple.
 
Eddies Wingman said:
The only exception is when Brazil won in Sweden in 1958.
Click to expand...

Wasn't that the year when a planecrash killed several players of the English squad? I don't say that England would have won the cup if the plane did not crash, but I am sure it must have had a lot of impact on that World Cup squad. Albie and Nush could perhaps enlighten us on this, if they like.
 
Forostar said:
Wasn't that the year when a planecrash killed several players of the English squad? I don't say that England would have won the cup if the plane did not crash, but I am sure it must have had a lot of impact on that World Cup squad. Albie and Nush could perhaps enlighten us on this, if they like.
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It was. 1958 was the year of the Munich air crash that killed a fair few Man U players. Most notably was a young Duncan Edwards who people, even today, say what might have been for him at Man U and for England. A couple of years ago, I was in a hotel watching highlights of an England qualifier and this guy could not stop talking about Duncan Edwards - claiming he was the best player he had ever seen even to this day. I can only go on what people say about Edwards, but he must of been good to have such praise.
 
According to the Wiki articles on the players who died, Roger Byrne would also have played a substantial role in 1958 for England. He had 33 caps between 1954 and 1957. Tommy Taylor had 19 caps during the same period.

In addition, Bobby Charlton was making his way into the England squad at the time, but he had not recovered fully in time for the World Cup and did not play.

That is, two established players who would certainly have played for England were killed, as well as their number one "up-and-coming" (Edwards). It must have had an impact on the team's performance.
 
I have a question for resident ManU fans;

1980 - to celebrate 69th birthday of my hometown club (Hajduk Split) + the opening of the new stadium, ManU was called to play a friendly match. ManU lost 6-0, what is said to be their worst defeat ever. These players were on ManU side that night :

Bailey, Nicholl, Houston (Jovanović), McIllroy, McQueen, Buchan, Coppel, Wilkins, Jordan, Maccari, Thomas (Grimes).
Click to expand...

So the question is, was this the real, A lineup, or some B squad, juniors, etc...?
 
Even though I wasn't even born at that time and started taking interest in United at age 11, I can tell you straight away the two following things:

- That was a lineup fairly close to the regular A team lineup. Those listed were all regular members of the first team squad. Have a look at the player statistics for that season.

- It was not the first time United lost by six - it had happened three times before. Last in 1930 against Huddersfield who won the league three consecutive times in the twenties. Still, it equaled their worst defeats ever.

(The worst defeat I have witnessed myself was of course the 0-5 defeat to Newcastle during the 1996/97 season, this defeat was followed by 3-6 to Southampton and 1-2 to Chelsea).
 
Thanks for clearing that out. When i first heard about that score, i thought that they played ManU right after Munich air crash. Afterwards i realized it was in 1980, and logical conclusion was that ManU came with B-team for that friendly match. I knew how strong my club was in 70's and early '80s, but this is off the scale.

Worst defeat i've attended was 5 years ago when we lost to Debrecen 0-5 in qualifiers. What's even worse, they've beaten us by 3-0 in Hungary. It was humiliating, because that was the apex of the downfall that started somewhere after 1994, the last time we've played Champions League (we got asskicked by Ajax in quaterfinals that year, Ajax won CL that season).

The best thing for us in Europe since then was when we almost kicked out Roma in first round of UEFA Cup, in 2003.
It's a shame for a club that won 9 Yugoslav Championships, with 11 times being runners-up, that reached far stages (quaters/semis) of European cups on several occasions...

The only thing we look forward to is Barcelona coming with A-squad on friendly match to celebrate 100 years of club, next year.
Croatian football league is one of worst in Europe, we have one of the best average attendances, and that's around 4000 ppl / match.

Rant off  :D
 
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