2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil

[Skywalker]

I'm kind of both excited and nervous about tomorrow. On paper the US should be able to beat Ghana, but they've been thorns in our side in both of the last two tournaments, so they're certainly not pushovers. But I think if the US is going to have any hope of making it past the group stage, they're probably going to need to win tomorrow.

 

[{ Emilia }]

I'm kind of both excited and nervous about tomorrow. On paper the US should be able to beat Ghana,

Really?
I'm not trying upset you but I don't see any US player who's as good as Asamoah, Boateng, Essien or even Muntari.

For some reason you never know with African teams but on paper at least Ghana seems way better than the US. Ghana looks weakest in defense, that's for sure, so there's hope.

 

[Skywalker]

I'm kind of both excited and nervous about tomorrow. On paper the US should be able to beat Ghana,

Really?
I'm not trying upset you but I don't see any US player who's as good as Asamoah, Boateng, Essien or even Muntari.

For some reason you never know with African teams but on paper at least Ghana seems way better than the US. Ghana looks weakest in defense, that's for sure, so there's hope.

To be fair I'm just going off of current FIFA rankings, where the US is ranked higher than Ghana. But in retrospect I don't know exactly how they come up with those rankings, so I probably shouldn't have said that.

Regardless, Ghana is going to be a really tough team to beat, too. I hope the US doesn't forget about that because they're too busy thinking about Germany and Portugal.

 

[{ Emilia }]

The FIFA ranking is notorious for being bullshit so it's pretty useless.

Ghana's defense (and goalkeeper) aren't all that. But especially the 4 players I've mentioned have been household names in European top teams for years. Boateng alone has won games for a struggling AC Milan before he moved to England. Asamoah has been a starter for Juventus for 2 years (winning two championships). Essien is well-known anyway and Muntari doesn't suck at least.

 

[Skywalker]

Yeah, I know Boateng (though most of my exposure to him came from the 2010 tournament), and Essien of course from when he was playing at Chelsea for years. But I'm not very familiar with anyone else on the team.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I have no idea what the USA's chances are against Ghana, but it's definitely must-win, because the other two games are going to be even more difficult.

 

[Shaytan]

Some are known in the French Ligue 1, notably Jordan and André Ayew who play for Marseille.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Aww, poor Ecuador.

 

[Shaytan]

Yeps And selfishly, a draw would have been so much better

 

[{ Emilia }]

So... they just forgot the national anthems?

 

[Shaytan]

Apparently there was a technical problem. At least the Front National won't complain that players didn't sing it.

 

[Starkers]

Italy won. I'm kinda surprised. Well, we still have time to fuck it up.

We're both not old enough to have witnessed England beating Italy in the past. So I'm not sure why you're surprised.

Even though we lost (forgone conclusion, really!), I'm glad that we showed even a little bit of fire at times - unlike last time out when we were atrociously awful.

Best we've played in a while, and nice to see Hodgson confound his critics by setting the team to play an attacking game. On another day, who knows. I do feel we need to find some better defenders going forward after the WC, or at least we need more options. Also Rooney continues to confound, poor game yet he still made the goal. Cost Rica beating Uruguay has changed the group dynamic too.

I've never seen a physio get injured before!

 

[Count Zero]

Despite the goal-line technology we can still have outrage over a goal being given. Who would have thunk?

 

[Shaytan]

Something like that could only happen to us

 

[Alidar Jarok]

The FIFA ranking is notorious for being bullshit so it's pretty useless.

However, if you were to use the Soccer Power Index, things would look a bit better. Even with other models, the US is generally ranked more favorably than Ghana. The one exception on that list is the Transfer Market rating, which ranks players instead of teams. It's generally true that the US has played better than the sum of its parts because, yeah, those parts are not overwhelmingly impressive.

 

[Jax]

Despite the goal-line technology we can still have outrage over a goal being given. Who would have thunk?

The BBC commentators keep calling it controversial it was over the line, end of story!

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Yeah, it looked over the line to me too. I'd feel bad for the goalie, but it's 3-1 now, so it's really irrelevant.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Italy won. I'm kinda surprised. Well, we still have time to fuck it up.

We're both not old enough to have witnessed England beating Italy in the past. So I'm not sure why you're surprised.

You're right, but for some reason I always think of England as a much more tough adversary. It must the echoes of Fantozzi's epic England-Italy.

The memory of celebrating the world cup win on Piazza Maggiore in Bologna with thousands of others is still fresh for me even though it was 8 years ago.

Aww, now I regret not being there. I was on the Adriatic Riviera at the time, and we watched the match on the beach. I don't remember much after that, just waking up in the morning wrapped in a flag and covered in seaweeds.

Really? I thought the win against England was pretty much a sure thing.

I watch all Italy's matches with a healthy dose of pessimism and desperation. It makes the results much more satisfying, in any case.

 

[Shaytan]

And for the 1st time since 1998, France won their 1st match in a world cup.

 

[Count Zero]

Despite the goal-line technology we can still have outrage over a goal being given. Who would have thunk?

The BBC commentators keep calling it controversial it was over the line, end of story!

Here the commentator went on about how the ref called it a goal even before seeing the replay, oblivious to the fact that the refs immediately get a message on their watches saying whether it was a goal or not. But then again, most of our commentators are kind of crappy.
In any case, it'll probably be a while before people get used to the fact that the era of endless discussions about goals being recognised or not are over, at least as far as World Cups are concerned.

You know what else seems to be over? The era of overly defensive football. Hooray! I was growing really tired of it durong the last World Cup and Euro. This is the first World Cup since 1958 that there have been 34 goals in the first 10 matches.

In other news, the prediction camel (so far 100% correct) predicted a win for Portugal tomorrow.