World Cup 2006

France vs Germany would be the best possible final. They both play fair.

This WC has been a freaking joke.

If the jokers in Italy and Portugal end upp in the final I'll stop watching football/soccer/whatever.
 
nAo said:
Well...he should have played football, not boxe

Did you watch the footage in real time or did you just look at the picture? You can hardly call that boxing. He touched the Argentinian, who said himself he wasn't punched and he felt nothing. Moreover, receiving the decision 24hrs before the match is not very fair to the Germans.
Anyway, the sentence is not that hard. Frings can play in the final :LOL:
 
nAo said:
Yeah, they wait the match ending and then the fighting begins, is it fair, isn't it?. LOL

LOL? Please, use a smiley. This is the one: :LOL:

What's wrong about fighting after the match then? I'd fight back too if an ape attacked me.
 
Mariner said:
Man of the match for me today was Owen Hargreaves - absolutely incredible fitness, dedication to his job and workrate which really showed up Lampard and Gerrard.
To be fair Gerrard played 44 matches in the 05/06 season for Liverpool, plus England Qualifiers. Hargreaves played 16 for Bayern and was peripheral in qualifying. So whilst I agree Hargreaves (and German footballers in general) was very fit he has also had a much easier season and was bound to be fresher. Lampard, however, deserves no excuses for his woeful performance.
 
hupfinsgack said:
Did you watch the footage in real time or did you just look at the picture? You can hardly call that boxing. He touched the Argentinian, who said himself he wasn't punched and he felt nothing.
it's not about touching or not touching, it's about intentions. he tried to punch another player, that's all. It's supposed to be football, not boxe.
An italian player (de rossi) was disqualified for the same reason for 4 matches, and I think there were too kind with him.
Moreover, receiving the decision 24hrs before the match is not very fair to the Germans.
that's right, it's not fair, but the proof was found only yesterday..
Anyway, the sentence is not that hard. Frings can play in the final :LOL:
I hope so if his team will deserve to win the tomorrow evening's match.

Marco
 
IbaneZ said:
What's wrong about fighting after the match then? I'd fight back too if an ape attacked me.
is this a joke or what? are you comparing argentinian players to apes?
 
I think you're both deliberately misinterpreting him. IbaneZ refers to people who hit you in the face without any reason and unprovoked as apes which in this case coincides with some Argentinians.
 
nAo said:
it's not about touching or not touching, it's about intentions. he tried to punch another player, that's all. It's supposed to be football, not boxe.
An italian player (de rossi) was disqualified for the same reason for 4 matches, and I think there were too kind with him.
that's right, it's not fair, but the proof was found only yesterday..
I hope so if his team will deserve to win the tomorrow evening's match.

I have less of a problem with the sentence, which I really think is kind of appropriate, but with the proceedings of FIFA:
They investigated for two days and didn't find any camera angle that has shown this. That is just amateurish. Then they announced that all Germany players and officials have been cleared of all charges on the third day in the morning. Just to sentence Frings on day 4, one day before the match at 17:00.
Don't get me wrong, but Fifa officials knew of the footage by Sunday noon. They should have agreed on a sentence by Sunday evening, the latest.
 
Any thoughts on who's gonna meet portugal on sunday? :devilish:

For everyone mentioning how bad portugal has been playing, well, I totally agree. We're tired of being the "brazil of europe" and losing everytime. It's not like we got out from under a rock to reach the semi-finals, we've been playing good football since at least '96 where we lost against the czechs.

1998 was a failure, 2000 we lost against france in the semi-finals, 2002 we were totally ripped off against korea [but we lost against the US] , 2004 we we're playing the best football together with the czechs but greece totally killed us off [twice! At home!].

Let's see how things go this time. We're happy enough for reaching this point, anyway.

PS to england: the behaviour of your press is nothing but disgraceful.
 
I don' think you will see again a winner by accident like greece was with the FIFA rule that force all competitions to stop one month before the world cup so at least some of the best players can recover from the long hard season.
 
russo121 said:
You really haven't seen the game.... the orangemen played for a fight and not for football.

Actually, that seems a little unfair. The foul on Ronaldo should have been a red for the Dutch, and that was a mistake by the referee as it could have cooled down the match. But after that, the Portugese put a lot of acting and foul play into their game. Both Figo's headbut and his theatrical falling were a testament to this. If the incident had been investigated in retrospect, it could have cost him the next match, I think.

Both teams lost track of fair play since then, but the Dutch did have possession for 60% of the match for a long while.

They made a strategic mistake though when they were 11-10 ... at this point you could have afforded to use van Nistelrooij - although he's not adding enough to the team presence in a 11-11 game, in a 11-10 game he would have had the space to score that much needed goal.

I am not enough of a soccer fan to be very disappointed though - the color orange is not that dear to me and neither are drunken, partying people making noise all night. ;)

Italy, by the way, does play a fair bit of soccer at times - they are a very good team, as in, the players instinctively find each other. I loved Brazil for their powerful offenders that could outrun and score so well. I hated France during the whole tournament, and only against Brazil did they start to play decently.

Again though, imho.
 
I don't believe it was an "accident" at all.
Their team had a tight defense and they fed off of other teams' mistakes to be able to score. In the case of portugal, our mistake was to take it for granted as long as we attacked. Wrong! We should've played their game to be able to beat them.
 
Arwin said:
But after that, the Portugese put a lot of acting and foul play into their game.
Watch a rerun of the game from the start [hint: ronaldo was injured in the 6th minute]

Both Figo's headbut
Stupid move, I agree. Very much like the one from van der saar on simão sabrosa but you won't recall that one because it would show that the ducth team was being provocative.

[...]and his theatrical falling were a testament to this.
I could link to a video, but I won't. I'll just say that even if figo standed still after having an elbow struck in his face while sprinting it was still a foul for a yellow card, so no harm done.

If the incident had been investigated in retrospect, it could have cost him the next match, I think.
Well yeah, but only due to the "theatrical falling" of the dutch player.

Sorry for the burst, but we're not taking the blame. We made 10 fouls during the game and got 9 yellow cards and 2 red ones.
Behold the world cup most violent team. :rolleyes:
 
t0y said:
Behold the world cup most violent team. :rolleyes:

You may not be the world's most violent team, but you're undoubtedly the biggest divers. I mean, really, don't you find it embarassing? It's embarassing when the likes of Joe Cole hurl themselves to the floor, so I can't imagine what a whole team with the same motivation would be like.
 
t0y said:
Sorry for the burst, but we're not taking the blame. We made 10 fouls during the game and got 9 yellow cards and 2 red ones.
Behold the world cup most violent team. :rolleyes:

Ehm. Aren't those two lines contradictory? ;)

Very obviously, both teams were to blame. There were a fair number of ridiculous acts on both side. One of the lows on the Dutch side imho was not giving back the ball after the referee's toss. Although it's not really necessary after a toss, in the context of the injury it would have been the nice thing to do and it was a good indication of how sore the whole thing had become.

I also found these comments interesting, from Ivanov:

"You would expect some dirty tricks from the Portuguese. They are known for time-wasting or hitting from behind," he said. "But I was unpleasantly surprised by seeing such things from the Dutch. More so, they were the instigators."

(This was, however, before he had seen the camera replay of the match ...)

For the record, a lot of people in the Netherlands thought that, whether it was just a late tackle or not, the first tackle on Ronaldo could easily have received a red card. And should have.

If I would like to change just one thing about soccer, it would be that every foul should be punished. Let a team of referees watch the game on TV and report to the main referee on every incident that happens, have a computer continuously record and recreate the whole field in 3d, and so on. Use anything you've got.

Right now, players are starting to resemble Sam Fisher's and Snake's with all their stealth kills and fake moves. This is soccer, and when a foul happens, it should first of all be the result of an honest mistake, and second, even then, properly punished. Always.

(I can't believe how many times this world cup penalties have not been awarded when they should have. It is very clear that the referee just can't properly tell a fake from a real tackle on his own, and often whistles on reputation of the involved player because he simply has nothing else to go on)
 
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