2014 World Cup

[thrill]

Draw today and a win over Portugal and the US is through.

Draw vs Portugal or god forbid, a loss means I have 4 days of nerve-induced IBS having to hope for a draw vs Germany, or a win if we lose.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

OMG that guys head got knocked pretty good. At least it wasn't head to head. Still looked bad.

[thrill]

I'm not going to sleep well tonight. Jesus. Pressure is turnt up.

[thrill]

OMG that guys head got knocked pretty good. At least it wasn't head to head. Still looked bad.

Ghana: 2 games, 2 broken faces.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

ha. I think that guy was worse than dempsey. But, no doubt about it. Germany's game against the US will mean something. Win tomorrow and move on.

[slide_into_first]

If we tie Portugal we must tie Germany. Piece of cake.

[Vidor]

Ghana tied Germany? That's....good for us, right?

I would read on Deadspin, but their pointless affectation of adopting British English when writing about soccer drives me nuts. "Equalizer", using plural verbs with countries ("Ghana are"), so irritating.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

USA need (get it no 's' following Deadspin) to win tomorrow to move on. If they tie tomorrow in order to move on:
Beat Germany
Tie Germany
Lose to Germany and hope Ghana/Portugal ends in tie.
Lose to Germany and have a better goal differential (which will at best be '0') than the winner of the Ghana/Portugal game.

[Vidor]

USA need

gaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[thrill]

Ghana tied Germany? That's....good for us, right?

If you operate under the assumption that Germany is going to win the group by beating us, it complicated things. It means to do that, Germany will be motivated to smoke us on thursday. A Germany win would have eliminated Ghana which would put us in a position where a tie tomorrow vs Portugal basically meant we would be directly competing with Portugal for second and since Germany steam rolled them, we would have been in the drivers seat for a better goal differential to advance via that tie breaker should they beat Ghana. And we lose to Germany.

Now if we tie tomorrow, and lose vs Germany and Ghana beats Portugal by more than two, they go through.

Basically, a German win today would have simplified the possible outcomes.

AW earlier was pretty much correct that we have to win tomorrow to control our destiny in any scenario. That's just life in a difficult group like this. A German win would have let us tie tomorrow, lose on Thursday and hope Portugal and Ghana play close, which could easily have been the case.

That's complicated. Basically it means:
Lose tomorrow, we have to beat Germany.
Tie tomorrow we have to tie Germany, beat Germany or lose to Germany and hope Ghana and Portugal tie.
Win tomorrow.