World Cup 2010

[thrill]

What is a team director?

A GM.

[robbotis]

This is seriously ridiculous. FIFA, have the refs get a clue. Penalize diving. Let them tell the world what the call was.
But most importantly, get 2 more refs on the field. One ref clearly can't cover the entire pitch. Two more refs will have someone close enough to actually tell what's going on, not having them guess from 25 yards away.

[thrill]

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/ ... 901&ver=us
Jeff Bradley writes his first piece for ESPN since his brother was appointed as head coach. It's getting a little dusty in my cubicle.

Is someone cutting onions in here? Wtf is going on?

DON'T LOOK AT ME.

[G. Keenan]

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/ ... 901&ver=us
Jeff Bradley writes his first piece for ESPN since his brother was appointed as head coach. It's getting a little dusty in my cubicle.

Is someone cutting onions in here? Wtf is going on?

DON'T LOOK AT ME.

Nice piece.

[MrSaigon]

It seems to me that yellow cards and red cards should be reviewable. The guy that flopped epically to get Kaka run off is going to be disciplined, which is great--but doesn't it stand to reason, then, that Kaka's on match ban should be reassessed? Does that affect the integrity of the game somehow? Findley kind of looked like crap, but to have him available certainly wouldn't hurt.

[Leroy]

Uruguay 1 - Mexico 0 about half way.
South Africa 2 - The cluster [explative] that is France 0 about half way.
Edit - France scores.

[TabascoElvis]

Something I didn't know when I woke up this morning. And I was wondering. Makes perfect sense now. I wasn't much of a soccer guy back then.

For the World Cup novice who wonders, why after playing three games for the past 10 days, why for the next four days, when they play four games, would you not spread them out? After all, as the last group games, they’re more important. Why play two at once?

Well, my children, for that answer, we go back to June 24, 1982. It was the last day of play in Group 2 in the World Cup in Spain. The group consisted of Algeria, Austria, Chile and West Germany. Algeria, thanks to a stunning 2-1 win over Germany on June 16, sat in second place in the group with one game to play: Germany vs. Austria at El Molinon Stadium in Gijon, Spain. The first two teams from the group would advance to the next round. Austria led with four points (back then you got two for a win, one for a tie), followed by Algeria with four and West Germany with two. (Chile had gone 0-3 and was eliminated.)

The situation going into that last match was this: Austria would advance with a win, a tie, or a loss of no more than 2-0. Germany needed a win to advance. You may be able to see where this is headed.

Germany came out strong, needing at least a goal to advance and, in the 10th minute, did it, through Horst Hrubesch on a header. And all of a sudden, you had a situation where if nothing else happened the rest of the match, both teams on the field would go through. For the rest of the half, the teams made a few presses forward, most notably by Germany, but if you watch clips of the game, you can tell that even by late in the first half, the Spanish fans are whistling derisively. The teams moved at half speed, occasionally making runs forward but nothing ever comes close to materializing from them.

The match ended 1-0, Germany and Austria moved on — Germany lost in the final to Italy — and Algeria was out. Needless to say, there was outrage. If you ever see the official film of the ‘82 World Cup, the brilliant G’Ole, they refer to the game as a “squallid nonagression pact.” In Germany, the match is referred to as “Nichtangriffspakt von Gijon” (non-aggression pact of Gijon) or “Schande von Gijon,” the Shame of Gijon. (The game even has a Wikipedia entry; read about it here.) One German fan supposedly burned his country’s flag in disgust.

Algeria appealed but FIFA, not surprisingly, turned them down. The result stood. International condemnation rained down on the two sides, who denied they had reached any kind of a deal. And who knows, maybe they didn’t. Knowing the lay of the land, once the score got to 1-0, each team may just have lost the incentive to do anything else.

http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/f ... same-time/

[vinsanity]

Something I didn't know when I woke up this morning. And I was wondering. Makes perfect sense now. I wasn't much of a soccer guy back then.

The situation going into that last match was this: Austria would advance with a win, a tie, or a loss of no more than 2-0. Germany needed a win to advance. You may be able to see where this is headed.

Isn't there a situation like that this year in one of the groups?

Don't Uruguay and Mexico both advance in the event of a tie?

[Leroy]

It looks like that was the case, with poor South Africa tied with 4 points, but out of it.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Something I didn't know when I woke up this morning. And I was wondering. Makes perfect sense now. I wasn't much of a soccer guy back then.

The situation going into that last match was this: Austria would advance with a win, a tie, or a loss of no more than 2-0. Germany needed a win to advance. You may be able to see where this is headed.

Isn't there a situation like that this year in one of the groups?

Don't Uruguay and Mexico both advance in the event of a tie?

In that case they knew the needed result going into the game, their opponents had already played. The Uruguay/Mexico and South Africa/France games were played simultaneously. Obviously you couldn't keep them from conspiring if they both wanted a tie regardless of timeing, but both teams want to win the group to avoid Argentina in the knockout round, and South Africa could have moved on with a Mexico loss if they had won by enough.