cincydooley wrote: So.... How did the US hang with Germany for only a 1-0 loss?
Because Tim Howard
But I don't really recall him standing on his head vs Germany. He played well, yes, but I feel like the game was fairly close the entire time.
Oh wait. Nevermind. The US only had 1 shot on goal to Germany's 9. And only 37% possession.
Yikes.
Tim Howard man.
But there's also that whole, "We won't give up until the final whistle" thing that the US soccer team has... As with Rugby, and some other sports: we (America) can put up some stellar athletes, and we'll put up a good fight, but where we lack in many respects is the technical game.
very interesting so far, if uneventful in terms of goals.
I reckon Argentina might edge it (much better in possession), and I think the main men will be Higuain and Lavezzi. Messi's being mobbed every time he gets the ball, and Robben and RVP aren't getting much of the ball due to the Argentinian defense and the fact that the only properly good passer, Sneijder, is having some serious issues. I reckon 2-0 or 3-1 to the Argentinians, as much as I want a Dutch victory.
Really shouldn't have taken that second touch when he was still open and at a better angle. But no, he took that touch and got blocked *sigh*
Better from the Dutch this half, midfielders have actually showed up and Robben's been getting involved.
Sneijder needs to get his gak together with his long balls though.
Alas, it is over. The Netherlands played a good match, but they were rather weak on the mid field. Still a very close, exciting match though. The Netherlands played very well overall, they did much better than was expected and it has been a great tournament.
Guess it is back to cheering for Germany than.
Deutsch-land! Deutsch-land!
I predict a victory for Germany in the finals, Argentina is good, but Germany, given their past performances in this tournament should outclass them.
Netherlands can still win third place.
Don't worry, ze Germans softened up that Brazilian defense for ya
What defense?
Honestly, with Thiago Silva in there it won't be that weak. The main problem was communication, which Thiago Silva, as a very good defender and team captain, should fix somewhat.
Still relatively weak for a semi-final team, but hey, no weaker than Holland's.
Germany and Brazil also both have an extra day and only played 90 (well, Germany didn't have to play full steam for 90) minutes.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It's from the internet, so likelihood of bs is pretty high, but it was nice anyway:
This sad Brazilian fan was shown crying. But no ones published this beautiful picture of him handing the trophy to a German fan. He was quoted as saying "Take it to the final! As you can see, it is not easy, but you deserve it, congratulations"
(Roughly translated)
This sad Brazilian fan was shown crying. But no ones published this beautiful picture of him handing the trophy to a German fan. He was quoted as saying "Take it to the final! As you can see, it is not easy, but you deserve it, congratulations"
(Roughly translated)
I saw this, half the comments were people saying how gentlemanly and sportmanlike this act was, the other half were just saying "If my team got crushed 7-1, I'd give my trophy to the next random fan I saw... the next hot, blonde random fan." Gotta love the cynicism of the internet sometimes.
On another note, apparently the Argentinian goalie had notes of where the Dutch shoot during penalties, kinda reminiscent of that whole thing with Lehmann against the Argentinians two world cups back
people (mostly the dutch) are saying how unfair it is, but I say there's nothing in the rules against it, and it's literally what Krul did last game except the Argentinian had his in notes rather than by memory.
What are the chances that, despite only 90% of countries in the world have been beaten in war by Britain, several have gone on to win world cups? Staggering!
On another note, I really hope Low doesn't play Ozil in the final, he's had no impact whatsoever in the games I've seen, even in the crushing of Brazil or the game where he scored against Algeria.
The squad should be:
Well, that game was... well, pretty damned dirty. Lots of fouls on both sides. Glad to see Brazil get beaten again (really don't think they deserved to make it to the semis), but Oscar really should have won that penalty, awful decision from the ref, no way you can fake that kind of fall. Especially seeing as the defender the ref thought made no contact had to be substituted for slamming into him
only watched the second half and the second goal in the first half, but again the defense had a horrible game, and the midfield just didn't do anything to help cover for it.
I'm also rather glad that match is over... I watched the first two goals, and stopped watching. To me, as an uneducated soccer newb, I felt that Robben was trying to make up for a lack of diving in this match. His card I'm not sure if it was for fouling the other player, or for diving trying to get a foul
Ensis Ferrae wrote:I'm also rather glad that match is over... I watched the first two goals, and stopped watching. To me, as an uneducated soccer newb, I felt that Robben was trying to make up for a lack of diving in this match. His card I'm not sure if it was for fouling the other player, or for diving trying to get a foul
To be fair, I didn't see any outright diving from him, just lots of being fouled and/or exagerrating contact.
I was a bit confused by the commentators when they said that maybe it's because Brazil are from lots of different leagues. The dutch have played people from the BPL, Bundesliga, Eredivisie, Super Lig, Serie A, La Liga and the Ukrainian League. That's 7 leagues.
Brazil have players from La Liga, BPL, Ligue 1, Brazilian league, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ukrainian league and Russian league, which is 8 leagues total. One league extra isn't a massive difference (especially when three of those leagues are between three players), that's just making up excuses for the fact that the team was, straight up, terrible.
If being defeated by Britain is the key to winning the World Cup, how come the Netherlands has never won yet?
We were defeated by Britain in the 4th Anglo-Dutch War! I demand war recompensations in the form of a World Cup!
glad to see it's the german lineup I wanted, except for Ozil instead of Schurrle. Looking good for the Krauts. I reckon 3-1, with Higuain or Messi, Klose, Muller and Kroos or Schurrle (if he's brought on) scoring.
The winger suddenly breaks away with a great burst of speed and energy. Gotze is there in the box. The cross is good. He controls it beautifully and delivers a super left foot volley.
So glad that the best team won. Argentina played really smart and did everything they had to do, just couldn't finish their chances.
Germany controlled the game and finally got the goal they deserved.
Congratulations to Germany. Happy for Klose and Lahm.
Great world cup. Germany is gonna be a force to be reckoned with for awhile... I mean... they always are, but a lot of their team is pretty young. They might be even better in 2018.
I've never liked soccer. Hated it. But I feel like watching soccer post world cup. My girlfriends watches it regularly (Teams over in England). Not sure where to start? soccer here in the states? (MLS) or Premier league? I like that team with the canon.
I've never liked soccer. Hated it. But I feel like watching soccer post world cup. My girlfriends watches it regularly (Teams over in England). Not sure where to start? soccer here in the states? (MLS) or Premier league? I like that team with the canon.
BPL gets you a higher quality of football being played, but then if you decide to support a team, watching them live is a little more tricky
The team with the cannon is Arsenal, who basically sit at fourth place every season, and other than one trophy a few months back, haven't won a trophy in something like nine years.
Though their fans are generally pretty great, because due to the aforementioned lack of trophies or season titles, there's very few glory hunters there. Plus they have a good defense, a very promising midfield, and every so often come out with the most ridiculous goals:
Cardiff has this awesome Dragon logo and their nickname is the blue birds, granted their is a blue bird on their logo... coat of arms? Crest? Sigil? what do you call it over there?
I'm looking at some of the stadium sizes of the teams. There seems to be a large gap between small and large teams. 20-some thousand to 75k+
Isn't there a minimum number of seats a stadium needs for a team to be part of the BPL?
Piston Honda wrote: In BPL, how come they refer to all the teams as City FC wear as all the Major sports in the US it's City and team name
Denver Broncos
Boston Bruins
New Jersey Devils
I'm a bit lost how BPL works.
Can't really speak for the BPL specifically, but I can tell you about why the Bundesliga (German 1st League Soccer) has the same name convention. I would imagine that the reasons for BPL are very similar though.
Pretty much all the teams in the Bundesliga are still members of what one might be able to consider "amateur clubs". These clubs don't just exist for the team in the league, but they are actually old sport clubs that have been around for a very long time which have managed to climb into the major league (relegation and promotion is another thing that is not present in US sports).
One such example is FC Bayern Munich, or actually "Fussball-Club Bayern Muenchen Eingetragener Verein (e. V.)" aka "Soccer-Club Bavaria Munich, registered Association". They have a pro-team that is known as FC Bayern, but the actual club by the same name is actually a sports-club that has amateur soccer teams, chess teams, gymnastics, handball, volleyball, etc. The reason you have so many SCs and FCs is because they are actual clubs in actual cities with many members. Another one would be "Turn- und Sportgemeinschaft 1899 Hoffenheim e.V" aka "Gymnastics and Sports Community 1899 Hoffenheim, registered Association". That's the legal name of the actual club which has many teams in many sports and is open to pretty much anybody. The soccer team uses the name "1899 Hoffenheim" with the number being the year they were founded. "1. FSV Mainz 05 e.V." was the first Soccer and Sports Club formed in Mainz in 1905.
But each of them is technicall just a gym/sports club/soccer club that is open to the public and which has managed to recruit enough players to field a team that was successful enough to make it to the 1st league. A US equivalent would be having a sports league with the following teams: Oklahoma City YMCA, Dallas Gold's Gym, St. Louis Soccer-Club (like the after school soccer club that kids play in), etc.
Cardiff has this awesome Dragon logo and their nickname is the blue birds, granted their is a blue bird on their logo... coat of arms? Crest? Sigil? what do you call it over there?
I think the British term is Crest.
The Dragon is from the coat of arms of the city of Cardiff, and the Blue Birds seems to be the mascot of the actual club itself.
I'm looking at some of the stadium sizes of the teams. There seems to be a large gap between small and large teams. 20-some thousand to 75k+
Isn't there a minimum number of seats a stadium needs for a team to be part of the BPL?
There usually is a minimum standard for promotion to the different leagues. Things like stadium size, lighting, room for TV crews, changing rooms for visiting teams and officials, etc. It depends on the individual leagues.
Again I am ignorant with all this.
European Soccer is very different than US sports and even the US soccer system.
Piston Honda wrote: In BPL, how come they refer to all the teams as City FC wear as all the Major sports in the US it's City and team name
d-usa has the right of it, at least in it's foundation... I think that many of these sporting clubs are so far removed from the amateur sporting clubs (I mean, they are no longer a Gold's Gym whose membership is paying for a football team). Most of them operate in the same manner as American professional sporting teams, but with a few differences.... I know that English Rugby operates somewhat similarly to MLB, in that they have the big club (Saracens, Harlequins, Saints, Leicester, etc) but then they have "minor league" teams, in the form of their Academy teams (U-20, U-19s, etc). But yeah, the naming thing hails from a time when organized athletics were seen as the "proper" form of gentlemanly pasttimes, outside of work. During the formative years of what is now the Premier League, the Premiership (Rugby), etc. there were strict rules of Amateurism.... Well, strict wouldn't quite be the way to look at it, but that was the intent... As time progressed, FA was the first organization to go full professional, with Rugby having a schism and forming Rugby Union and Rugby League (League being the first form of Rugby to professionalize).
Personally, I think it's cool that it's still a big deal for Rugby and Soccer to have their [City Name] [FC, United, RFC, etc.] naming conventions, as the teams are literally tied to their cities. Whereas in the US, it'd be just as easy, theoretically to move the team from Chicago to L.A. to become the Los Angeles Bears... there's not as much "ownership" of the team names (for the fan base there is, but often times there's nothing intrinsically valuable about the team name in conjunction with the location)
Also, one of the things that is different from US sports to European, is the priority placed on Scholastic athletics.... Kids growing up playing soccer or rugby, or curling, etc. don't play for "Winston Churchill Senior Highschool", or when they do there isn't nearly as much emphasis placed on them through the school. Instead they sign up for their local clubs and, especially as 16-19 year olds, they'll play for "Arsenal U-19s" or "Harlequins U-19s" etc.
The closest thing I can think of in the US to this, would be the American Legion Baseball leagues in the summers for High Schoolers (even though they quite often have to be an all-star on their school team to make a Legion team)
I hear that the World Cup was actually filmed on a sound stage by Stanley Kubrik.
North Korea played very well.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Also, one of the things that is different from US sports to European, is the priority placed on Scholastic athletics.... Kids growing up playing soccer or rugby, or curling, etc. don't play for "Winston Churchill Senior Highschool", or when they do there isn't nearly as much emphasis placed on them through the school. Instead they sign up for their local clubs and, especially as 16-19 year olds, they'll play for "Arsenal U-19s" or "Harlequins U-19s" etc.
The closest thing I can think of in the US to this, would be the American Legion Baseball leagues in the summers for High Schoolers (even though they quite often have to be an all-star on their school team to make a Legion team)
That is really a huge difference. School and sports is completely separate for the most part in Germany. If there is a sports team it is more of an "intra-mural" type setting than an actual league.
You go to school for school (although there was still a PE class) and to a sports club for sports.
Cardiff has this awesome Dragon logo and their nickname is the blue birds, granted their is a blue bird on their logo... coat of arms? Crest? Sigil? what do you call it over there?
...
The correct term is "heraldic achievement".
The most basic heraldic achievement consists of a shield, also known as a coat of arms because in mediaeval times the knights often wore a coat over their arms (i.e. armour) with the same colours as their shield. In heraldry it is always depicted as a shield with the other elements arranged around it.
Other elements that can be added to the full achievement include a mantling, helmet, wreath, crest, coronet, orders, supporters and motto.
Although people commonly call the shield a crest, the crest actually is the ornament attached on top of the helmet.
not got much to weigh in on the whole american vs european sports thing seeing as I know sod all about American sports, but:
Ensis Ferrae wrote:Saw this on my FB feed... thought it definitely applies here, in preparation for our dominance in 4 years time
I think Germany would have something to say about that, Kroos, Muller, Ozil, Gotze, Neuer (still relatively young by goalkeeper's standards, got another 1-2 more WCs), Hummels, Mustafi, Schurrle, Boateng, Draxler, Kramer, Grosskreutz, all (but Neuer) 25 or under and playing in the top leagues of football.
That is one thing I try to tell people. The German Team that won yesterday is the result of the work that was put in starting with the preparation for the 2006 World Cup. The changes Klinsmann made to the Mannschaft that year shook the team to the core. He changed the tactics completely, he got rid of a lot of the old guard and got new blood involved, he changed the style of the team. Those are all things that continued and were improved even more under Loew and look at what the results have been.
I always hear some people complain about what Klinsmann has done to the US team so far and it sounds pretty familiar: "He got rid of Donavan. We should be bunkering instead of attacking so much. Who are all these new people?" But I see a lot of the same moves that I saw in 2006, and I already saw some impressive results. I can see the US team making a good run if he is allowed to do his thing for 2018.
That is one thing I try to tell people. The German Team that won yesterday is the result of the work that was put in starting with the preparation for the 2006 World Cup. The changes Klinsmann made to the Mannschaft that year shook the team to the core. He changed the tactics completely, he got rid of a lot of the old guard and got new blood involved, he changed the style of the team. Those are all things that continued and were improved even more under Loew and look at what the results have been.
I always hear some people complain about what Klinsmann has done to the US team so far and it sounds pretty familiar: "He got rid of Donavan. We should be bunkering instead of attacking so much. Who are all these new people?" But I see a lot of the same moves that I saw in 2006, and I already saw some impressive results. I can see the US team making a good run if he is allowed to do his thing for 2018.
Same with Hodgson, people are giving him a bit of stick for playing too many youths, but they played pretty well; all that needs improvement is their teamwork/communication skills, really.
Only three things he did wrong in the games; playing rooney on the right instead of Sturridge or Welbeck, both faster and neither as good a target man, leaving Ashley Cole at home, because his expertise would do wonders for the defense, and playing Ben Foster in the Costa Rica game instead of Fraser Forster. Forster is equal to or better than him at every aspect of goalkeeping, has had a far better season, and as a 26 year old with two caps (one for a 15-minute appearance), he needs the experience far more than the 31 year old with 8 caps, who, let's be honest, is never going to be first-choice.
Over the games, as individuals the only guys messing up were the older elements of the team- Rooney with just not being able to score, Gerrard with his back-header and Hart with his poor attempt at saving Suarez's second goal.
For me, Belgium, Germany, USA and England are gonna improve massively over the next four years, whilst Italy and Spain are gonna see a downward decline. Brazil could go either way, depending on whether they're gonna be crushed by the WC humiliations, or force a massive improvement in their approach to playing.
shrike wrote: Brazil could go either way, depending on whether they're gonna be crushed by the WC humiliations, or force a massive improvement in their approach to playing.
I hope it pushes them towards improvement, for the good of the game, but it could go either way.
Germany sucked it up big time in the Euro 2004, and that stomping gave us the willingness to shake things up in the next 2 years. So I hope that Brazil will go the same way.
Would I love Germany to win it again in 2018? Sure do! But having more teams playing at a higher level is only going to make the World Cup better.
I think Germany really did deserve becoming Weltmeister. They played splendidly for most of the tournament. Argentina on the other hand... Their playstyle was really boring most of the time. I am glad Germany won. Yay for good football.
Thanks Mario! 
