Well , just because they re interested it doesnt mean they know everything about football ,specially european football . Hahahah we lost against them in a worthless match but they lost against us in 2006 FIFA world cup so i cant complain about that defeat. You know even if America was the 2010 world champion, it still doesnt mean that you know what you re talking about kid.
So, Italy draws against a team that can't play against a defending team and suddenly they're a top contender for the title? I hate the awful optimism and pessimism in these tournaments. And while the US has a decent team, most players are too old to really have a shot at any title. Well, maybe not the CONCACAF titles, but every team there's shit, with the exception of the US and Mexico. So, so far, Croatia and Russia have been doing quite well after their first game (which is the best time to draw conclusions on the rest of the tournament), the Netherlands were incredibly incompetent, Spain once again shows they can't breach an actual defence, and, well...that's about it, not too many surprises.
Italy draws against the world and (european) champions ,"a team that is stronger than us",plus you have no idea what the recent scandals (in the italian football) did to the italian team, someone even said we should retreat from the tournament because of that. P.s i never said we re the top contender .
Yes, but that's still just a single game. Especially with Spanish teams, who always seem to have trouble with highly defensive teams, which is Italy's speciality. "Incidents" like these happen to all teams, like what happened to the Dutch against Denmark. Especially in tournaments like these, people get incredibly optimistic or pessimistic over just a single game. I did hear about the scandals, didn't the Prime Minister talk about stopping the entire Italian competition for two years to have the whole situation calm down a bit?
Well can you imagine what a single match against the champions can do to players (and the country behind them)? It gives them hope ,it makes them hungry for victory ,and thats how teams win this kind of tournaments by being the hungriest around. Oh yea! He wanted to stop the italian football for three years! Damn i wonder what would have happened if he tried something like taking football away from my people, i guess horrible things,panem et circenses its what keeps my people from killing everybody inside the parlament! Italians fans are called "tifosi(typhos carriers)for a reason.
While motivation is a factor indeed, I still think Italy lacks the real class that teams like Spain and Germany have. Of course, like in 2004, the winner might be a complete surprise, but after a single game, I think it's still way too early to make predictions. To quote several optimists here in the Netherlands: "In '88, we also lost the first game, and ended up winning the tournament anyway.". While I think it's a good idea to let things calm down a bit, I agree with you, this isn't the way to do it. Then again, I don't know if the teams really take the point reductions seriously anymore.
In fact i said "we might get a shot to the title" ,the draw against spain raised our morale by a lot, we really needed a victory or a draw. Well, two of the three teams at fault are going to be severely punished,while the other team is going to pay a big fine for what they did.
When you watch the entire FIFA World Cup, and watch the Euro for the past two tournaments, you have a basic understanding of futbol. That was 6 years ago. Yeah, I know about what I am talking about.
Yes, but in essence, everyone has a shot at the title, just look at Euro 2004. However, I still think one game is too little to say anything about the entire tournament, and I still fully expect Germany to beat Spain in the final match. Which teams were involved, then? I've picked up a few random things about the issue, but I don't know the specifics. True. I haven't been following it too much, but I must say (once again, I believe) Hernandez has positively surprised me this season at United. Do you watch any European club games? Can you actually watch a majority of these games in the US? You better know how the offside rule works. Ah, who am I kidding, the FIFA barely knows itself.
After playing many FIFA games I understand it. If you get lucky they will show some Barclay's Premier League on ESPN, but not really. I seldom do because most of the time you have to pay for it.
Have you seen the Ireland game? I think they still aren't entirely sure if it was offside or not. Yeah, I figured, it's the same way with the NBA here. Luckily, my father decided to get a subscription to Sport1, which has NBA rights. It also has golf, which generally lasts for 4 hours or something...damn, I still wonder how anyone could watch that.
'Steve Gerrard Gerrard He's big and he's fuckin' hard He'll kick the ball forty yards Steve Gerrard Gerrard Steve Gerrard Gerrard He's Better than Frank Lampard He'll kick the ball forty yards Steve Gerrard Gerrard' Seriously, what a game by Stevie G. His perfect free kick causes England's goal, he cleared that shot by Benzema that was headed for the top corner, headed a ball right to an attacking player over 20 metres and was defensively supreme. It was a weak game overall but England's defense was pretty impressive, there is yet hope for them. The second goal Ireland conceded was very confusing. He gets the ball from an Irish player, but he was offside when his own player struck the ball, and still profited from that... I think it was offside. Croatia was the best team but Ireland did have the worst of luck (the two other Croatian goals were pretty lucky IMO) and the referee certainly didn't help - Ireland deserved a penalty after that dude kicked Keane down.
Yeah, even in the Netherlands, he's not the most popular referee. I stand by my point that all referees in any football game should be Portuguese. Damn, those guys are good referees. I do agree with you when you say it was a penalty. The commentator quickly dismissed it, as he thought Keane was falling too easily, and while I agree to some extent, it was still either a penalty or a free kick if it were outside of the box (which I don't think it was, but I can't remember). Still, Croatia earned the victory. Also, it seems like I managed to predict the England - France game as well. Right now, I'm 13th in the pool thingy, although it hasn't been updated for the this game, and the one between Sweden and Ukraine (which I predicted to be 2 - 1 for Sweden). I might have to edit some of the upcoming matches based on the first results, though. Shamefully enough, the guy who is winning the pool right now has predicted every single match to be a 1-all draw...he's ahead of me by 11 points...damn, good tactic.
You may have noticed that up until now, the team who scored the first goal has never seen their lead turned around completely. If you have to give actual scores it's probably good to keep that in mind - at this level the games are so damn tactical that it's very rare that a lot of goals are scored (on both sides). Of course, this is coming from someone who's only managed to predict Greece and Germany's results correctly, lol.
The problem with sports is that most of the time, earlier games don't completely dictate the others. While they influence, your observation, while true, doesn't have to mean anything. Then again, all I did when predicting was look at the names of the countries and go "Hmm, which one had the best team again?".
Football is indeed very random. Well, thanks to Ukraine I at least got another one right, though they did smash my theory, lol. Possibly the best team I've seen yet, and certainly the most enjoyable. I didn't really know most of those players but they're going to gather the interest of large clubs if they keep playing like this. That Nazarenko was great.
