W?reldbeker, World Cup, Weltmeistershaft; its coming, yet we debate colons?

[Silfir]

And that was one of the most exciting finishes yet! The way Italy played after the 2-0 you could only ask yourself "Why did it take two matches and sixty minutes to start playing football?" Playing like that they could have easily beaten everyone in their group! (Boo points for assaulting the Slovakian keeper in his own goal. The referee's decision was fair; the Slovakian keeper did punch that Italian player but the way they heckled him that was closing in on self defense.)

A thrilling fight to the end, with the luckier finish for a thrilling Slovakia, who contrary to Serbia did not take the 1-0 lead as an excuse to stop attacking.

New Zealand manages to finish the World Championship without conceding a single loss and placed ahead of future former World Champion Italy, yet sadly it wasn't enough to see them to the second round.

[nathrakh]

I'm rooting for Japan! They played very well yesterday. Amazing team play and they all run and work like maniacs. Their skill level may not be as high as other teams but I wish them great success.. getting to top 16 already is.. anyway.

[grobblewobble]

North Korea cannot achieve more than third place in the group for which they'd have to beat C?te d'Ivoire. What will happen to this team now that they have angered their Dictator, no one knows.

Converted to dog food?

[Angelus]

Torres almost ruined the goal by diving just before it. Can't coaches tell players not to dive? Is winning so important that you need to do shit like that to win?

[pblack]

cmon! Germany and England!!! What a game!


Cmon Silfir and Grey... fight!

[gut]

so is this thing over, or is everybody finaly too drunk
to play more?

[The Metro Gnome]

I'd say too drunk. But isn't England and Germany like, rivals or something?

[vogonpoet]

It continues. Sadly, on the day I returned from paris I got a pretty horrible cold/flu type thingy, and as soon as I get home from a miserable day at work, I am falling instantly asleep... will now hope to catch second half of Portugal-Spain before crashing again.

Bleueargh.

Before the restart, I will say, Germany clearly deserved their win, even though the game may very well have been different in the second half with the scores at 2-2 - Englands defense, apart from being moloch-slow, were incredibly naive over and over again, and the teams failure to score in the second half of a football match for 10 games now or whatever the number is, just highlights how poor they are on the attack.

/reaches for tissues
/not shedding tears

[Silfir]

I had some serious fun watching that game, but I didn't want to post in here just to gloat.

I don't think England were as bad as the British tabloids are starting to make them. Okay, they were harmless right up until the second German goal. Then they equalized, with decent effort and attacking skill, against a German team which wasn't that good at defense either, Manuel Neuer or not. They were back in the game - they should have been back in the game at half time. And it's not like they just stopped playing. They kept attacking, they almost scored a couple of times. From the second English goal that didn't count up until the 3-1 by Mueller, I was really afraid it would be close in the end. Had they shown that level of play during the group stages I don't think the complaining would've been quite as bad - more importantly, they would have played Ghana instead.

But after that 3-1 and especially that 4-1, it was over. What fight there was in England - and there was some! - was broken at that point.

Neither team had a particularly great defense, but England's was worse, and less able to deal with German offensive play (a joy to watch!) by a fair bit than the German defense was able to deal with England's offense (not particularly well; defense is the weak point of our team). I think we would still have won even without that denied goal, but we cannot know, just like we cannot know whether England would still have won the World Cup without the Wembley Goal (although, to be fair, that one wasn't nearly as egregious. How could our referees have actually become worse throughout all this time? The tournament so far has been a disgrace). The game would've definitely been much more epic than it turned out to be!

[_Ln_]

*sheds some tears for Portugal and Japan*

Heck, 4 teams I was counting to win in 1/8s lost. I'm starting to feel responsible for something.