Discussion: World Cup Soccer

So which coach was it that said Australia was only at the world cup to make up numbers?
a) Brazil
b) USA
c) Aussie Guus
d) United States of America????

What is the difference between choices b) and d)?

b *and* d are both in there to increase your odds of picking the soon to be ex-coach for the US team.

I watched parts of the first two US games. Americans controlled midfield and time of possession. However they tried to be too cute with scoring - they tried to set up perfect combination, perfect break-away, perfect empty netter. Except for their captain - Reyna - Americans rarely challenged opposing goalies from midrange. I was most impressed by Cote d'Ivoire - even they did not advance. Ivories did not look intimidated playing against neither Argentina nor Netherlands. They were playing like they belonged there. I did not like the style Argentina was playing. Seemed like Argentinean players would fall and have an excruciating pain just from the wind-draft caused by opposing players. To be fair - Argentineans were not the only ones faking "painful" contacts however they seemed to do it little more then others. Team I feel sorry about is France. They have all the ingredients to be good team but it does not seem they can win a game.

Anybody trying to goad Americans over World Cup performance just doesn't understand this country at all. If we don't own it, we don't care about it. I'm not saying it should be that way, just that it is.

Now, if Germany beat us in our version of "football", that would get some attention.

35 days 'til the Bills training camp opens!

Prong what were you thinking?!
America isn't a part of the world, the world is america. That's why only american teams can win the world series, or the NBA 'world championship'.

The theory over this side of the Pacific Ditch is that the US is given a dream run in qualifications to ensure that FIFA gets its hands on the dollars that come from the Bud marketing machine that promotes that reputedly ersatz beer. Of course, being neither a beer drinker nor soccer fan, I can't vouch for the veracity of either claim.

I've played soccer recreationally for years, but never formally. It sure seems like the refs are having a huge impact on the game with very weak cards. Is it me?

Regarding yellow cards - I think most of the time they were justified. Tackling from behind without remote chance to get the ball should get you yellow any time. Regarding red cards - some of them could have been yellow cards.

How big a field? How many players? How much physical contact? How much ball movement?

How many referees?
What do you expect?

Then there is offsides. The rules of the sport provide a defensive tactic of *not* guarding your opponent, which is ridiculous in itself, and seriously retards the offense and scoring. The ref is expected to monitor this critical situation along with everything else.

It should hardly be surprising that there are frequently more result-determining controversial calls (and non calls) in a game, than there are actual goals.

Yet I rarely hear any of this questioned. The big change this year seems to be the new "rounder" ball. Just in time!

Obviously the sport, and this event, attract plenty of attention, and don't need more American viewers, so changes to sacred traditions will probably not be made. OT penalty kicking is apparently preferable to opening up the game.

Even with the above comments, I enjoy watching, but I believe this is one situation where Americans don't owe the world an apology for inattention.

I've been particularly impressed with the amazing recovery from what appear to be career ending knee, upper shin, lower shin, and ankle injuries during the World Cup. Being strapped into a stretcher only to return 2 minutes later is even more impressive.

Hockey (field hockey for those of you in the US) used to have an offside rule, but they got rid of it ten or so years ago. It didn't make much difference to the scoring rate.

Hammer - good observation... I shall start to include hard-code soccer in as cross training option.

getting rid of offside in field hockey does make a huge difference to the score lines!

Hammer, I heard that the idea is to get injured people off the field immediately to keep the flow of the game. Even if they could limp or walk off the injury, the stretcher is there to get them off and out of the way.

We had a training camp last weekend and some people spent more time watching the soccer than acctually running. As far as injuries go, soccer players are the most fragile things ever. The number of red cards that trees and branches would have received for dangerous tackels on me would be huge.

And the Oscar for the best performance goes to - Ricardo - Portugal's goalie. His right - kicking leg was attended for quite some time. However there was no ill effects - he was still very efficient from goal kicks for rest of the game. I'll tell you - some of those guys need to get some public spanking for faking their injuries

As the commentators explained, often the players are advised to fall in order to give their teammates the change to rehydrate. So, today, we understand another reason for the theatric, overblown, feigned injuries in a way that we did not consider them 8, 12 years ago.

Did you see Beckham crumpling in the heat?

Slight correction to Disco's comment: Canadian teams can win Baseball's World Series (and have, twice). As for basketball, the teams are based in the US, but often include athletes from other countries. Is anybody suggesting that there are better teams elsewhere that, if included, could win said "world" championships?

Does anyone have a link to Crouch's robot dance?

I don't know all the soccer rules but... is there are rule that soccer players are not allowed to intake any liquid unless there is injury time-out?

The keeper is allowed to keep a plastic bottle in the goal. I think the field players could come to the side to drink but they would be putting the team effectively a man down if they did it while play continued.

Canadian teams can also win the NBA championship, at least in theory.

I wonder how many Canadians were on the Jays roster in '92 or '93.

One need look back no farther than the 2004 Olympics to see that a random assortment of very talented US players can lose almost half of their games against other countries. Maybe there is no I in team, but most of those players think, as someone once said, there is an M and an E, and that spells ME.

Yes, but the teams of those other countries had a healthy dose of NBA players who could conceivably be playing in the NBA finals. Thus my point that the term "world championship" is still fairly legit. Also, I'm pretty sure that if you took the best NBA team (not an all-star cast, but the best regular team) and pitted their American players against *any* other team composed of players from a single non-US country, the results would be comical on the order of the first olympic "dream team".

There's not much Orienteering going on after Jukola, eh? JWOC starts in 1 week!

Here was three rules that I heard suggested on some Canadian sports talk radio show to get more scoring in soccer:

(1) If a team gains possession in their own half, they have a certain time limit (similar to a shot clock) for how long they have to get the ball across half in to their opponents side of the field. This is to eliminate all the useless passing the ball back and forth between the defense and goaltender.

(2) Once a team has moved the ball into the opponents half, they cannot pass it back into their own half (same as the rule in basketball). This eliminates the useless pass back to the goaltender once a midfield/forward player gets a little bit of pressure.

(3) Eliminate offside, but only once a team has moved the ball into the opponent's half of the field. A pass from the defensive side of centre still has the same offside rule. This eliminates the temptation to just boot long balls back and forth between the defenses.

Of course football isnt the only tournament going on... There was also the NCAA baseball tournament. Despite the flashly name (College World Series), I've been completely unable to watch it here in Finland, but that was probably good for my health. My Oregon State Beavers just came back from a loss to win their first national title!!! Now, where are all the other OSU baseball fans in Tampere???
Sorry to digress. I'm in american sports withdrawal.

Look at all the results in the World Cup decided by questionable referees decisions. Australia is unimpressed by the lucky penalty to Italy that won them the match with 8 seconds left on the clock. But the sad thing is we can just stand in line behind the US, Korea and Tunisia who each have equal claim to indignation. Perhaps FIFA needs to learn about replays for umpiring decisions. It might improve the tournament. As it stands, it seems the nations with greater experience in the World Cup seem to know how to 'attract' the referees attention (Ghana excepted).

Finnish "baseball" isn't good enough for you, Benn? Don't like having the pitcher stand next to home plate? :-)

Why not try this instead?

Some of the other Beaver fans are in Bratislava now and were very pleased to hear about the Beavs! Oh yes, and I was pleased to see Ghana flopping and not getting the calls.

Oh, we Americans can take absurd one better than that. Ever try chain racing? For the uninitiated, the driver of the lead car has no brake, the driver of the follow car has no gas. It's fun to watch for about 5 minutes.

How about Swamp Buggy Racing. I caught this on the Speed Channel once and was amazed! The front wheels are huge disks that become rudders once up to speed.

BTW, the Tour de France is coming up. Check out Jan Ullrich's blog. ;-)

I wonder if Jan knows about that. He seems like the kind of guy who would find that funny.

It might be nice to play Finnish baseball. I played catch with Finnish baseball gloves three days ago, but we've been rained out for the last two days.
The rainy Oregon winter that wouldn't go away has finally managed to cross the Atlantic and find me here.

So England are out. Pity! Only goal they could score in 120 minutes plus penalty shots against Portugal comes from the Canadian - Hargreaves.

Fitting he scored on Canada Day eh!

I watched Brazil-France. That was a good football game!!! Watching Brazil and France playing and seeing US team playing I have to say that US are still at least half step behind on individual skill level. But football is football. It's a team sport and with low scoring games sometimes you get lucky.

And did you see that total dive by Rinaldo with a couple of minutes left? That was hilarious -- the replay showed there was absolutely no contact whatsoever. The French defender literally did not even touch him. No wonder he was so incensed he got a yellow card!

Yes I did see that. I think the game was somewhat "clean" from theatricals overall. In that particular instance Rinaldo just tripped. When you are going full speed - it does not take much to trip you. Rinaldo got favourable call. Happens. Years ago I was reffing basketball game and I called 2 fouls where probably there was clean block. But at that particular moment it looked like foul to me.