Originally Posted by Johnny Look I would love to see argentina go far in the tournament and shut up all those who say maradona knows more about sniffing coke than football.
Oh and let's make some predictions !
Holland 1-0 Denmark
Spain 2-0 Switzerland
Italy 0-0 Paraguay
Portugal 1-0 Ivory Coast
Brazil 4-0 North Corea
I can't stand Argentina - very dirty team (and I'm not just talking about Maradonna). Messi is ridicuolously overrated. I think short players often are, just because they tend to have a lot of finesse, so they're entertaining to watch (plus their legs move really quickly so it looks like they are running faster).
If I were a manager though, I'd much rather have players like Drogba, Adebayor, Koller and even Rooney, on my team - not so much Crouch, because he's such a weakling and even can't head the ball.
I like your picks - seem quite realistic.
Don't know if you're a gambler, but the spread on Brazil/North Korea is 2.5-2.7 which seems pretty generous. You win if Brazil beat NK by more than two goals, and I'd expect Brazil to beat South Korea by 2-3 goals, never mind North Korea. Obviously don't anyone take betting tips from me though
Originally Posted by -Adam- considering about 10 people have been swearing all over the place recently.
An admin's note will be posted regardless of who it is until swearing gets back in order.
I apologize for neglecting to enforce this rule in the past.
Like the other day when I pointed out I was called an offensive name and you completely ignored it?
I did not.
If you would have me continue to ignore the rule, then petition to have the rule removed or its interpretation put in concrete. Otherwise, I will try to do it from now on as best I can. Remember that for every removal request, there is another on the opposite side. If I listened to every one that I got, I'd be editing and warning left and right, and everyone would be up in arms again in the post editing debate.
For now, please everyone refrain from using nasty words. It's a simple request.
The topic was football is for retards right? A neighbour has been screaming and honking for 2 hours now because the Netherlands seem to have won something. Fetch me my crossbow.
Originally Posted by Sketchy Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into it - they were facing very weak opposition (a lot worse than they were in '06), who even had a player sent off for no apparent reason (they would have lost anyway, but the margin of victory flattered Germany in the end).
I seem to remember the Aussies got screwed by a bad refereeing decision last World Cup as well, in their game against Italy.
I think they've played better yesterday than in the last cup. They just put up an attacking stance and it bit them back. They'd probably have conceded only one goal if they played ultra defensive, like USA and Uruguay did, but glad they didn't, because it made for a more interesting match. The ref really hit them hard with the undeserved Cahill red card, though.. they wouldn't have won without it, but it's going to hurt in the next match.
It is a really fun tournament to watch with friends, though. Sorry if some of you guys don't enjoy it. I guess it's much worse in football crazed nations like England, Italy, Spain, Netherlands
Also, don't bet on football. You might as well be betting on roulette, lol. It's unpredictable, and it'll trick you into thinking you have good odds. It's been notoriously the least profitable sports in gambling history, because nobody knows the right odds. If you have to bet, betting on the weaker team would almost always earn you money
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Sketchy:I agree with Messi being overrated, I think ronaldo is a much better player in most aspects, though I have to admit that sometimes messi does solve games by himself, but that usually happens when his team isn't playing well, which means the press will be all over him afterwards and start the usual comparisons with maradona. And you do have a point on the players height affecting people's opinion on them. If you see tall players like Crouch playing for example, they looks somewhat clumsy, specially when you compare them to short players such as messi, simao, arshavin and so on.
As for my picks, Holland won 2-0 and Italy is down at 1-0 right now so yeah, I'm glad I don't bet.
I think it's possible that North Corea might end up losing by only one or two goals or even grab a draw with a bit of luck. Of course nobody expects them to reach the elimination rounds, specially with this group (brazil, portugal and ivory coast) but being the underdog of the group is usually very motivating, and honestly from the results I've seen so far (including the pre-tournament matches) nothing surprises me anymore.
Muz: I have a friend who has a bit of an addiction for gambling and I can tell you it has a lot more to do with knowledge than luck in comparison with the roulette for example. The dude tries to find as much info on the team's starting squads as he can, examines each player's recent run of form, takes a look at past results between the teams, and so on. In addition he's a walking football encyclopedia, it's almost impossible to discuss with him when it comes to football, he has always something to say and he's usually the last to shut up.
Tell you what, i was really not surprised we (England) played so crap against the US - i almost kne it as going to happen! Let's just hope that was our 'bad' game of the tournament and from now on we're on fire *fingers crossed*
That's how England always are - they never really dominate games, so it's always torture watching them play.
I know what you mean though. Our keepers have a habit of making really huge mistakes, and I'd much rather it happened against USA, than in a crucial match later on.
eg. Euro 2008 when we failed to qualify as a result of a bad mistake by Carson, or World Cup 2002 when Seaman's blunder against Brazil got us knocked out.
That Brazil game was particularly horrible - we really put up a great fight apart from that lob And oh God Carson..... again, horrible, horrible, horrible!
I used to be a goalkeeper too but I disagree with you. He was well positioned (even though the replays seem to show otherwise because of the angle of the camera), but he left his eyes off the ball for a split second and when he was about to grab it it was too late. I'm guessing he wanted to get the ball rolling as fast as possible and was looking for the next player to pass it to and miscalculated the speed of the ball.
Also, the ball did make an awkward trajectory and given all the complaints from most goalkeepers in the tournament about it being unpredictable I think it might have had something to do with it.
Muz: I have a friend who has a bit of an addiction for gambling and I can tell you it has a lot more to do with knowledge than luck in comparison with the roulette for example. The dude tries to find as much info on the team's starting squads as he can, examines each player's recent run of form, takes a look at past results between the teams, and so on. In addition he's a walking football encyclopedia, it's almost impossible to discuss with him when it comes to football, he has always something to say and he's usually the last to shut up.
Eh, I did a scan for every player's run of form and previous results too. Got 70% of my predictions wrong so far. On the other hand, there's these silly people who thought that newcomers USA could actually draw against title contenders England. They were right. France was held back by Uruguay. Tim Cahill was red carded. Buffon not only conceded against a fairly weak team, he got substituted early. Heck, the Asian teams are winning, not getting draws. There's a lot of very unexpected things going on in this cup Ok, maybe it's not roulette. It's more like blackjack, but that's still not good.
Football has a lot of luck in it anyway. Unlike basketball or well, American football.. you only get a few shots every match. Sometimes really good shots get blocked by someone's ankle. Sometime really good blocks accidentally hit the net. And sometimes you have an impossible to block shot hitting the post.. whether it goes in or bounces off is luck.
Heh, anyway, England's always had a good enough team, just that they've notoriously had horrible goalkeepers in the past few years. I would put money on their defense, midfield or attack, but the keepers make poor mistakes. I recall one English goalkeeper conceding a goal from the opponent keeper's goal kick a few years ago
Yeah, he was right on position, which was why it was so unforgivable! It wasn't one of those killer short ranged German shots. The ball was shot literally right into his hands. Any 2nd div keeper would've been to clutch on to it. He grabbed the ball, it fell from his hands and rolled around him into the goal. It'd be a tough one for me or you to grab on to, but shouldn't be a problem at all for a world class goalkeeper.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
The results you mentioned in particular, were quite widely predicted - USA had recently beaten Spain, so everyone knew they had potential to upset England (esp. without Rio), and similarly everyone knew the French were having all sorts of problems and could easily lose to just about anyone.
Overall though, I'm sure most people know that any form of gambling is probably going to lose you money in the long run (if not he short- and intermediate- run).
Personally, I don't gamble at all - I just find it an entertaining little game to try and beat the odds, without actually placing a bet.
RE: Keepers - I'm wondering who's going to start the next game. I always figured James was generally the better keeper, but he was prone to making the occassional stupid blunder - now Green's shown that he can do that too, why would you keep him in goal? Only thing I can think of is the "lightning never strikes twice" argument...
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Edited by Johnny Look
And oh God Carson..... again, horrible, horrible, horrible!
