World Cup 2014

[iAmCaffeine]

Nope. That topic is dedicated to generalities, man. This is a specific topic.

The World Cup deserves a separate topic.

I watched Real Madrid's relentless offense in the second half as a lethargic Atletico surrendered the equalizing goal in the 93+ minute.

I watched the second half as well. Real was just unreal, and deserved the result they got.

I pee on this thread. We have a football thread.

[AndyDufresne]

I am appointing the following committee with the following two tasks:

Committee Members:

• betiko
• Serbia
• nietzsche

Task #1: Determine the validity of this current topic's existence outside of the Football topic.
Task #2: Determine whether iAmCaffeine's urine dispensing constitutes a hate crime, and whether or not his posting in this topic should be strictly verboten.

Findings Due: June 11th, 2014


--Andy

[JBlombier]

Apart from all previous comments, I'd like to join kuthoer's (does anyone know what his username means in Dutch, btw?) opinion.

The Netherlands for the win.

[AndyDufresne]

Is nation going to be the darling this time around -- the underdog who overachieves?


--Andy

[betiko]

Apart from all previous comments, I'd like to join kuthoer's (does anyone know what his username means in Dutch, btw?) opinion.

The Netherlands for the win.

Lol. We destroyed you guys 2-3 month ago, and I'm really not sure you guys can make it through against spain and chile in group stage.
France, england, italy, portugal and netherlands, none of them will reach semi finals even if they are historical powers.
I am just aiming for quarter finals and a loss vs germany. No need to get high expectations and to be too disapointed.

Tonight we won 4-0 vs norway in our first prep match. The team looks good since the second leg of the play offs against ukraine that qualified us for the WC. There is youth and enthousiasm.

[betiko]

I am appointing the following committee with the following two tasks:

Committee Members:

• betiko
• Serbia
• nietzsche

Task #1: Determine the validity of this current topic's existence outside of the Football topic.
Task #2: Determine whether iAmCaffeine's urine dispensing constitutes a hate crime, and whether or not his posting in this topic should be strictly verboten.

Findings Due: June 11th, 2014


--Andy

1) on one hand, lots of yankees will not write in a thread called football that isn't about american football. On the other, the football topic is where most of the people in here have been discussing the qualification of their national team to participate in the WC a few month ago. Discussing the WC elsewhere doesn't make much sense
2) nietzsche and myself have already urinated on this thread just before caf. This thread starts smelling strong, i think caf has eaten asparagus.

[nagerous]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

-TG

What's Wenger doing sending Wollcott in that early?

Is that an IT Crowd reference? If so... kudos.

Belgium are definitely my dark horses, not seen much of them live before but can't wait to see Kompany, Hazard, Lukaku et al in action.

England's chances? I'm hoping we reach the knockouts, don't hold much hope past that, if Germany/Spain/Brazil/Argentina or whoever don't knock 4 past us, then they'll surely beat us in penalties,

[betiko]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

-TG

What's Wenger doing sending Wollcott in that early?

Is that an IT Crowd reference? If so... kudos.

Belgium are definitely my dark horses, not seen much of them live before but can't wait to see Kompany, Hazard, Lukaku et al in action.

England's chances? I'm hoping we reach the knockouts, don't hold much hope past that, if Germany/Spain/Brazil/Argentina or whoever don't knock 4 past us, then they'll surely beat us in penalties,

Let's not make a huge fuss about belgium. They are quarter finalist material, nothing more, and it's already not too bad.

[Gillipig]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

-TG

What's Wenger doing sending Wollcott in that early?

Is that an IT Crowd reference? If so... kudos.

Belgium are definitely my dark horses, not seen much of them live before but can't wait to see Kompany, Hazard, Lukaku et al in action.

England's chances? I'm hoping we reach the knockouts, don't hold much hope past that, if Germany/Spain/Brazil/Argentina or whoever don't knock 4 past us, then they'll surely beat us in penalties,

Let's not make a huge fuss about belgium. They are quarter finalist material, nothing more, and it's already not too bad.

Well they're in one of the easiest groups so they might make it to the first round just because of that, and if they're even more lucky they could make it through that round, very much depending on who they face of course, If they draw germany for example they're screwed. But all in all Belgium shouldn't be taken seriously, I would be mightily surprised if I'm sitting there in front of the televison and get blown away by how well they play.

European countries usually struggle when the WC is played in South America, with that in mind I'm still going to pick Spain as the winner.

A real bummer for me personally that Sweden isn't in this World Cup either, we've missed two world cups in a row now. Stinks extra much given the history of success Sweden has had in previous World Cups.
We're still ranked number 10 on the FIFA World Cup all time rankings but it's pretty clear that Sweden's time is in the past. And it's not going to change anytime soon, we don't have any good players except one who has visions of grandeur that puts Maradona to shame. Not the type of player you build a dedicated and hardworking team around exactly. And the rest just suck, a 38 year old central midfielder who had his prime ten years ago is the second best player on the team. On second thougth I'm almost glad we didn't make it so we didn't have to embaress ourselves on the worlds biggest stage.

[betiko]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

-TG

What's Wenger doing sending Wollcott in that early?

Is that an IT Crowd reference? If so... kudos.

Belgium are definitely my dark horses, not seen much of them live before but can't wait to see Kompany, Hazard, Lukaku et al in action.

England's chances? I'm hoping we reach the knockouts, don't hold much hope past that, if Germany/Spain/Brazil/Argentina or whoever don't knock 4 past us, then they'll surely beat us in penalties,

Let's not make a huge fuss about belgium. They are quarter finalist material, nothing more, and it's already not too bad.

Well they're in one of the easiest groups so they might make it to the first round just because of that, and if they're even more lucky they could make it through that round, very much depending on who they face of course, If they draw germany for example they're screwed. But all in all Belgium shouldn't be taken seriously, I would be mightily surprised if I'm sitting there in front of the televison and get blown away by how well they play.

European countries usually struggle when the WC is played in South America, with that in mind I'm still going to pick Spain as the winner.

A real bummer for me personally that Sweden isn't in this World Cup either, we've missed two world cups in a row now. Stinks extra much given the history of success Sweden has had in previous World Cups.
We're still ranked number 10 on the FIFA World Cup all time rankings but it's pretty clear that Sweden's time is in the past. And it's not going to change anytime soon, we don't have any good players except one who has visions of grandeur that puts Maradona to shame. Not the type of player you build a dedicated and hardworking team around exactly. And the rest just suck, a 38 year old central midfielder who had his prime ten years ago is the second best player on the team. On second thougth I'm almost glad we didn't make it so we didn't have to embaress ourselves on the worlds biggest stage.

Ah come on, don't criticize zlatan, you should be ashamed of yourself. Zlatan has all the rights to play the diva whenever he wants. he deserves it and isn't really serious about it when he does. The world cup will miss zlatan.

regarding belgium: no they don't play well. They just have a bunch of good players this year and have pretty good results, but they are not a beautifull team to watch, they are in fact quite boring.

I can't really think of a team that play a nicer football than germany these past few years....

[JBlombier]

This will be so painful to admit...
And yet I will...
Betiko is right this time...

Germany has played beautiful football. If you want to prove me wrong, please don't post videos of years past, but from within the past few months. Germany's football has been splendid.

Of course I hope Holland will take its revenge for the last WC final and conquer the cup (perhaps even take 2500 conquer credits), but if Germany takes it, I'll be satisfied as well. As long as they play they're "total football".

- JB

PS. I'm taking the train away from Holland. I'm gonna get slaughtered for these comments, just like I should be.

[Gillipig]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

-TG

What's Wenger doing sending Wollcott in that early?

Is that an IT Crowd reference? If so... kudos.

Belgium are definitely my dark horses, not seen much of them live before but can't wait to see Kompany, Hazard, Lukaku et al in action.

England's chances? I'm hoping we reach the knockouts, don't hold much hope past that, if Germany/Spain/Brazil/Argentina or whoever don't knock 4 past us, then they'll surely beat us in penalties,

Let's not make a huge fuss about belgium. They are quarter finalist material, nothing more, and it's already not too bad.

Well they're in one of the easiest groups so they might make it to the first round just because of that, and if they're even more lucky they could make it through that round, very much depending on who they face of course, If they draw germany for example they're screwed. But all in all Belgium shouldn't be taken seriously, I would be mightily surprised if I'm sitting there in front of the televison and get blown away by how well they play.

European countries usually struggle when the WC is played in South America, with that in mind I'm still going to pick Spain as the winner.

A real bummer for me personally that Sweden isn't in this World Cup either, we've missed two world cups in a row now. Stinks extra much given the history of success Sweden has had in previous World Cups.
We're still ranked number 10 on the FIFA World Cup all time rankings but it's pretty clear that Sweden's time is in the past. And it's not going to change anytime soon, we don't have any good players except one who has visions of grandeur that puts Maradona to shame. Not the type of player you build a dedicated and hardworking team around exactly. And the rest just suck, a 38 year old central midfielder who had his prime ten years ago is the second best player on the team. On second thougth I'm almost glad we didn't make it so we didn't have to embaress ourselves on the worlds biggest stage.

Ah come on, don't criticize zlatan, you should be ashamed of yourself. Zlatan has all the rights to play the diva whenever he wants. he deserves it and isn't really serious about it when he does. The world cup will miss zlatan.

regarding belgium: no they don't play well. They just have a bunch of good players this year and have pretty good results, but they are not a beautifull team to watch, they are in fact quite boring.

I can't really think of a team that play a nicer football than germany these past few years....

Divas don't fit into the Swedish system well, they reduce the morale and amount of effort other players put in. Sweden didn't have any divas when we came in third place in 94', everyone worked together and that was how we faired so well. You need more than one diva to make a good diva team, if there's just one guy like that everyone looks for mister ego to do everything himself and in the end nothing gets done. I'll criticize Zlatan as much as I want, he's representing my country in my favorite sport, he's fair game to say the least.

[betiko]

well playing for Paris Zlatan has a special status and he is delivering more that he has ever delivered. He is the team's superstar and all other stars that has ego problems just need to know that whatever they say/do, zlatan is the star and they need to shut up. Even Ancelotti last year knew that. If you treat him well, he will be at 100%, and given his talent you want to have him at 100%.
The rest of the swedish team is half shit, so obviously everythng had to work around zlatan. You guys are a bit crazy to talk about zlatan. no one says anything to zlatan here. He's even got his own verb in the french dictionary now.

[Gillipig]

well playing for Paris Zlatan has a special status and he is delivering more that he has ever delivered. He is the team's superstar and all other stars that has ego problems just need to know that whatever they say/do, zlatan is the star and they need to shut up. Even Ancelotti last year knew that. If you treat him well, he will be at 100%, and given his talent you want to have him at 100%.
The rest of the swedish team is half shit, so obviously everythng had to work around zlatan. You guys are a bit crazy to talk about zlatan. no one says anything to zlatan here. He's even got his own verb in the french dictionary now.

No you're wrong, the rest of the Swedish tema is COMPLETE shit! We don't have any good players. You're a neutral observer here, can you even name a single player on the Swedish national team except Ibrahimovic? You shouldn't, because none of them have big roles in successful teams.
There are some people here that think Zlatan is beyond criticism but they are also a lot of people who recognize that as good as he is individually, he's not a team player and not a very good captain.
Can you believe this though, Sweden's coach, Erik Hamren, failed to qualify to two WC's in a row and still get's to keep his job! This guy must give great blowjobs, I can think of no other reason to keep him around.

[betiko]

well playing for Paris Zlatan has a special status and he is delivering more that he has ever delivered. He is the team's superstar and all other stars that has ego problems just need to know that whatever they say/do, zlatan is the star and they need to shut up. Even Ancelotti last year knew that. If you treat him well, he will be at 100%, and given his talent you want to have him at 100%.
The rest of the swedish team is half shit, so obviously everythng had to work around zlatan. You guys are a bit crazy to talk about zlatan. no one says anything to zlatan here. He's even got his own verb in the french dictionary now.

No you're wrong, the rest of the Swedish tema is COMPLETE shit! We don't have any good players. You're a neutral observer here, can you even name a single player on the Swedish national team except Ibrahimovic? You shouldn't, because none of them have big roles in successful teams.
There are some people here that think Zlatan is beyond criticism but they are also a lot of people who recognize that as good as he is individually, he's not a team player and not a very good captain.
Can you believe this though, Sweden's coach, Erik Hamren, failed to qualify to two WC's in a row and still get's to keep his job! This guy must give great blowjobs, I can think of no other reason to keep him around.

I actually can name a few because they play/have played in france: Ola Thoivonen is actually a very decent forward now playing for Rennes, Johan Elmander was a pretty good attacker delivering good passes for Toulouse, kim kallstrom had his good days in Lyon now injured at arsenal, christian wilhemson played for nantes and he was total shit, looks like now he is playing in the MLS; the rest to tell the truth I don't really know them.
And Zlatan won the trophy of the best scorer, the best in assists and the MVP of the league for the second consecutive year. He really deserved it, and I am a marseille fan so I'm not supposed to say it. It's really a pleasure to watch him play in our league and it's really a shame that his team didn't qualify. Portugal has a way more ballanced and talented team, they deserved to go through; I would've prefered to see sweeden rather than greece to tell the truth.

[Serbia]

I am appointing the following committee with the following two tasks:

Committee Members:

• betiko
• Serbia
• nietzsche

Task #1: Determine the validity of this current topic's existence outside of the Football topic.
Task #2: Determine whether iAmCaffeine's urine dispensing constitutes a hate crime, and whether or not his posting in this topic should be strictly verboten.

Findings Due: June 11th, 2014


--Andy

#1. This thread is important. It is designed for the casual fan, fans like myself. I don't follow much club football. My exposure to soccer is biggest during the Euro and World Cup. Die-hard fans have been posting in the Football thread for years. Us casual fans don't know enough to participate. Here, we can come in and say stupid things, and everyone else can forgive us because we're probably just ignorant Americans.

#2. Definitely a hate crime. He is displaying utter intolerance for us footballing noobs (aka 'Americans'). Allow us to have our cute little thread. This way we won't clutter up your hardcore thread with comments like "DeMarcus Beasly is easily 10 ten in da world! 'Murica, FUCK YEAH!

I am a forgiving soul, so I do not yet feel his offenses have warranted a full ban. One more pissing episode, and I'll reconsider my position.

Bollocks.

[Gillipig]

well playing for Paris Zlatan has a special status and he is delivering more that he has ever delivered. He is the team's superstar and all other stars that has ego problems just need to know that whatever they say/do, zlatan is the star and they need to shut up. Even Ancelotti last year knew that. If you treat him well, he will be at 100%, and given his talent you want to have him at 100%.
The rest of the swedish team is half shit, so obviously everythng had to work around zlatan. You guys are a bit crazy to talk about zlatan. no one says anything to zlatan here. He's even got his own verb in the french dictionary now.

No you're wrong, the rest of the Swedish tema is COMPLETE shit! We don't have any good players. You're a neutral observer here, can you even name a single player on the Swedish national team except Ibrahimovic? You shouldn't, because none of them have big roles in successful teams.
There are some people here that think Zlatan is beyond criticism but they are also a lot of people who recognize that as good as he is individually, he's not a team player and not a very good captain.
Can you believe this though, Sweden's coach, Erik Hamren, failed to qualify to two WC's in a row and still get's to keep his job! This guy must give great blowjobs, I can think of no other reason to keep him around.

I actually can name a few because they play/have played in france: Ola Thoivonen is actually a very decent forward now playing for Rennes, Johan Elmander was a pretty good attacker delivering good passes for Toulouse, kim kallstrom had his good days in Lyon now injured at arsenal, christian wilhemson played for nantes and he was total shit, looks like now he is playing in the MLS; the rest to tell the truth I don't really know them.
And Zlatan won the trophy of the best scorer, the best in assists and the MVP of the league for the second consecutive year. He really deserved it, and I am a marseille fan so I'm not supposed to say it. It's really a pleasure to watch him play in our league and it's really a shame that his team didn't qualify. Portugal has a way more ballanced and talented team, they deserved to go through; I would've prefered to see sweeden rather than greece to tell the truth.

Kim Källström is way past his prime, he's an attacking midfielder but hasn't scored a single goal for team Sweden since October 2011, that's including friendlies. He used to be good but he is no longer, I do understand why you know of him from his past however, he was a pretty big part of Olympic Lyonnes.
As for the other two (not even going to talk about Wilhelmsson because he's a joke, he plays in abu dabi or something and it was at least four years since he was a national team regular.), Elmander is and always has been good at one thing, running, that's what he can do, he runs like crazy for the first 70 minutes and then he tires, he gets a lot of chances because of this but he doesn't have the scoring touch. Ola Toivonen is decent, but not dependable, hasn't had any success in the national team nor is he that good of a player internationally. Perhaps because you're French and he plays in Rennes you know who he is, but that's pretty much it. None of these players are consistent, none of these players have top notch talent, and none of these players are what I would call "good players".

[betiko]

Yes, kallstrom is far from his best years, i don t know how he has been doing, i know he wasn t playing much for lyon when they sold him to arsenal, and that he got a bad injury just a few days after signing for arsenal. Good deal for lyon!
Elmander is now old but he has been good. He isn t a scorer, he is there more to weight on the defense and to leave spaces for the other forward, in that case zlatan. He did a very good job in that role for toulouse and for bolton.
Ola Thoivonen has actually impressed me. He signed for Rennes last winter from PSV eindoven without making too much noise. (The owner of Rennes is actually a french billionaire, husband of salma hayek but he doesn t spend a lot in his team). Rennes is probably the less consistent club in france, they are very unpredictable and will win against big teams then lose cup finals against shit teams. Anyway, Thoivonen has played 5 month for rennes so far and has scored at least 8 goals including some really beautiful ones. I was surprised that a guy arriving in winter could adapt and blend in a new team (that isn t very good and inconsistent) so quickly. Anyway, let s see next season how thoivonen responds, but his first half season in france has been very promissing.

Anyway, overall sweden has a world class superstar and all other players are very average. You guys better come up with some young talents soon if you don t want your national team to disapear from the football map for over a decade..

[Timminz]

I thought this was the world cup thread.

If you guys want to talk about non-world cup teams, there's another thread for that.

[iAmCaffeine]

I thought this was the world cup thread.

If you guys want to talk about non-world cup teams, there's another thread for that.

[betiko]

I thought this was the world cup thread.

If you guys want to talk about non-world cup teams, there's another thread for that.

We re talking about an "almost world cup team" with one of the top 5 players in the world that didn't make it in the playoffs. So as soon as the US is eliminated in the group stage, it will be absolutely prohibited to talk about them in this thread?
As far as i m concerned the world cup hasn t started and I don t see the problem to talk about the teams that didn t make it.
Like what happened to canada? I didn t follow the concacaf qualifiers.

[Sackett58]

The World Cup deserves a separate topic.

I for one am looking forward to it. I don't see any way the US gets out of the group. The other team I'm pulling for, England, also has a very tough draw. Brazil as hosts are huge favorites. Germany, Spain, Argentina, all solid.

Underdogs I'm interested in (other than the US) are Bosnia (obviously), Belgium and Uruguay. Belgium is interesting because they're actually good this year. Uruguay could have a shot at going far, if Luis Suarez is healthy, which is obviously a huge question right now.

Bollocks.

I forgot Croatia. I'll be pulling for them as well.

From a historical stand point Croatia being in a group with Brazil, Mexico and Cameroon they wouldn't stand a chance. How are Cameroon and Mexico now?

[sempaispellcheck]

I thought this was the world cup thread.

If you guys want to talk about non-world cup teams, there's another thread for that.

We re talking about an "almost world cup team" with one of the top 5 players in the world that didn't make it in the playoffs. So as soon as the US is eliminated in the quarterfinals, it will be absolutely prohibited to talk about them in this thread?
As far as i m concerned the world cup hasn t started and I don t see the problem to talk about the teams that didn t make it.
Like what happened to canada? I didn t follow the concacaf qualifiers.

Fixed.

sempai

[betiko]

The World Cup deserves a separate topic.

I for one am looking forward to it. I don't see any way the US gets out of the group. The other team I'm pulling for, England, also has a very tough draw. Brazil as hosts are huge favorites. Germany, Spain, Argentina, all solid.

Underdogs I'm interested in (other than the US) are Bosnia (obviously), Belgium and Uruguay. Belgium is interesting because they're actually good this year. Uruguay could have a shot at going far, if Luis Suarez is healthy, which is obviously a huge question right now.

Bollocks.

I forgot Croatia. I'll be pulling for them as well.

From a historical stand point Croatia being in a group with Brazil, Mexico and Cameroon they wouldn't stand a chance. How are Cameroon and Mexico now?

Cameroon has a few acceptable players on every line, lead by eto'o forward that is a bit of a prima dona too. I don think they will do too good, but it s still quite decent overall.
Mexico, you need to ask nietzsche. Most of the players known in europe are not playing and they picked a team with basically only players from the mexican league.
Croatia has a pretty good team, definitely the most dangerous challenger for brazil. They got world class players such as midfielders Modric playing for the real madrid, Rakitic captain of the sevilla FC that just won the europa league, the forwards Mandzukic from the bayern munich or Olic that used to play for the bayern as well. The goalie Subasic plays for monaco and he is pretty good.
They have decent defenders with Srna, Lovren, Corluka... For me a better team than Bosnia or Serbia or any other team from the balkans.
I remember croatia finishing third in the world cup 1998 and do pretty well in an other one.

[betiko]

I thought this was the world cup thread.

If you guys want to talk about non-world cup teams, there's another thread for that.

We re talking about an "almost world cup team" with one of the top 5 players in the world that didn't make it in the playoffs. So as soon as the US is eliminated in the quarterfinals, it will be absolutely prohibited to talk about them in this thread?
As far as i m concerned the world cup hasn t started and I don t see the problem to talk about the teams that didn t make it.
Like what happened to canada? I didn t follow the concacaf qualifiers.

Fixed.

sempai

I don t even see what you changed