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FIFA World Cup 2006 [R]

 
 
el pohl
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Jul, 2006 11:31 pm
Well, I generally root for the underdog, so, my last card is Portugal... which can display some pretty footy. If that one fails, I'll stick on any other team except the host.
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Pantalones
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Jul, 2006 11:36 pm
I'm rooting for the host, mostly because of the friends I made during my stay in Italy... contradictory? Maybe.
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Lord Ellpus
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Jul, 2006 11:40 pm
CalamityJane wrote:
Lord Ellpus wrote:
I wish them good fortune, competent refereeing and plenty of goals from Klose, who just happens to be in my fantasy football top five (other thread).GO GERMANY!


Great spirits coming from you, Spanky Smile
I favor Klose as well, he is one of the fairest players in all of football,
plus I love his little acrobatic salto numbers.


Nice to see you around again, CJ.
Next time you bugger off, I expect an "absentee" note from your form tutor, giving a full explanation.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Jul, 2006 11:54 pm
From today's Guardian (page 13, online version/full text here):


Quote:

Their team is beaten, but England's travelling fans win high praise

Andrew Culf in Gelsenkirchen


The team lost the game, and yesterday their captain too. But the fans who supported them at least set a record of their own. Police yesterday estimated 80,000 England supporters flooded into the small provincial town of Gelsenkirchen, which has a population of only 280,000 and barely 1,900 hotel beds.
Where they slept (if at all) was as perplexing as where they have gone to now.

After a night of drinking, singing and hoping on Friday, nearly all had slipped away quietly by yesterday morning. Police estimated that English supporters made up 40,000 of the 45,000 saleable capacity of the Arena Auf Schalke, with a further 40,000 watching on big screens in two separate public viewing arenas. The total beat the previous record of 70,000 who travelled to Frankfurt for England's opening match against Paraguay last month.

More than 350,000 supporters attended the venues of England's five matches during the tournament and Stephen Thomas, assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester, who was in charge of the British policing operation in Germany said: "I think our fans, the real football fans, have been absolutely superb."
... ... ...

http://i3.tinypic.com/16iw9ao.jpg
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McTag
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 12:21 am
McTag wrote:
Lord Ellpus wrote:
It very much surprises me to say this, CJ, but I really do hope that the German team go on to win.
England, on the whole, was embarrassed by the naive, "one trick pony" tactics that Sven Boring Eriksson imposed, during this world cup.
I am glad that he's gone (with his sack of cash over his shoulder) but fear that McClaren will be no better.

The players are used to playing a 4-4-2 day in, day out in the English Premiership. Why Sven chose to go with the isolated lone striker and get everyone to kick long balls to him throughout virtually every game, no bugger knows!

Germany have played good, solid and entertaining football throughout this tournament, and it is fantastic for their people, when the host nation wins.

I wish them good fortune, competent refereeing and plenty of goals from Klose, who just happens to be in my fantasy football top five (other thread).

GO GERMANY!


Agreed but- football is a simple game which is IMO over-complicated by no doubt well-meaning theorists and over-qualified coaches and pundits.

There is no reason why Steve McLaren can't be as successful as, say, Brian Clough...although he would have to learn to be a bit more outspoken.

Thinks....do all successful football managers have to be a bit mad? (Thinking of Scolari, Mourinho, Martin O'Neill, Clough...)


I forgot to add, Bill Shankly
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 06:55 am
Quote:
The Wrap: A worm's eye view

Monday July 3, 2006

England's exit from the World Cup has cheered Andrew Brown up enormously

I don't often feel a surge of patriotism, but England losing its decisive match in the world cup was a marvellous moment. Whether football is in general an ennobling sport is a question one can leave to greater minds, like Timothy Garton Ash. But that football is bad for modern England is obvious. It makes us nastier, more brutal and sentimental.

If we had, by some terrible combination of luck, bribery and widespread food poisoning among our opponents, actually won the World Cup, the country would have been uninhabitable. A kind of neutron bomb of national pride would have destroyed all human life, leaving only the buildings standing, splattered to shoulder height with vomit and similar evidence that the British know how to enjoy themselves.

The physical effects of football probably balance out. Some fans do play the game, and so get exercise; the overwhelming majority, who use it as an excuse to eat and drink in front of a television would be doing much the same, with less drinking, if there were no football on show. But the moral or spiritual effects are almost all bad. This is not a point in the general Orwellian sense that mass hysteria excites nationalistic passions. It does, but this need not be harmful. What makes football so damaging in English society is that our nationalism is at the moment so poisonous and corrupted that anything that excites nationalistic passions will excite anger and resentment far more than real pride.

It is obvious from any dispassionate study of the results over the last decades that the reason English teams keep losing fairly ignominiously in the World Cup is that none of them are very good. Year in, year out, we learn that our players are not as good as the French; they are not as good as the Germans. They are not as good as the Italians. Argentina will beat us. Brazil will beat us. Against Sweden we can hope to draw. About the only team we could comfortably hope to beat is the USA, and they are not trying.

These are simple and obvious facts which newspapers, television - and even politicians - exert themselves enormously to deny. The result, obvious at least from abroad, is an extraordinary public delusion. Football has become a way for England to understand its place in the world, and all the evidence suggests that we can't do this. We can't honestly contemplate our own insignificance. Instead, there is an oscillation between wild optimism and resentful scapegoating of whoever is elected to take the blame for the fact that no English football team actually plays very well against foreigners

The problem with penalties suggests that our failure is not just a matter of stupidity or of lack of talent and imagination, important though these doubtless are. England tend to lose their decisive matches because at the final moment, very highly paid footballers, who have done nothing much but kick footballs for fifteen or twenty years, cannot hit the goal from 12 metres out. I'm sure they could do it if they weren't playing for England. This suggests that the players themselves are caught up in the national neurosis as much as the fans - something that isn't necessarily true in other sports.

More than that: football has become an expression of our national character. English teams don't just lose because because our players aren't very good. They lose because many of our best and all of our most popular players are brutal cheats, who get caught when they play in front of neutral referees. On Saturday Wayne Rooney kicked a fallen opponent in the crotch, pushed away one of his victim's team mates who remonstrated, and then walked out of his way to swear at the referee who sent him off.

And this sportsman was expected to restore England's pride. After the game, another English hero, Alan Shearer, suggested that Rooney, when he returned to club football, would probably beat up his Portuguese club teammate for complaining to the referee. A country where men like that are treated as demigods has got something repulsively wrong with it: football is turning the English into Argentinians. Thank God it's over, at least for another four years.

* Andrew Brown has a blog, the Helmintholog.

The Wrap is one of Guardian Unlimited's paid-for services. http://www.guardian.co.uk/wrap
0 Replies
 
Lord Ellpus
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 07:58 am
Obviously a netball fan.
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 09:09 am
McTag wrote:
Lord Ellpus wrote:
Walter Hinteler wrote:
Francis wrote:

Btw, Lehmann is the best!


Hmm, he now got my absolution about changing from Schalke to that club I hardly can name ... Bxrxsxix Dxtxmxnx! :wink:


Bxrxsxix Dxtxmxnx! - is that German for brilliant Arsenal, Walter?


[Ready for an old joke? Okay then...]

Q: Who is the most unpopular man in football?

A: He's the fan in the stand at Borussia Muenchengladbach who stands up and shouts

"Gimme a B...."
that got me going mct Laughing
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 09:18 am
Now the definitive post on this thread. My mother in law said

"GERMANY WILL WIN THE WORLD CUP BECAUSE THEY DONT CHEAT AND THEY PLAY THE BALL ON THE GROUND".
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 09:42 am
You're mother-in-law has not only grown up an intelligent child, but is a very clever one as well!
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 09:52 am
As aside: Fifa today announced that they had suspended the Greek Football Federation for allowing political involvement in their running of the sport.
The suspension means that Greece, the reigning European champions, will be suspended from all international football until further notice.


(And Frings can't play in the semi-final.)
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 10:16 am
Walter Hinteler wrote:
You're mother-in-law has not only grown up an intelligent child, but is a very clever one as well!
Yes indeed, and I will take all her comments on politics, immigration, The Royal Family, etc etc in an entirely different light from now on. Shocked Laughing
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 10:48 am
Aahh... can you feel the love? Very Happy

WORLD CUP-GERMANY: SCORES FOR INTEGRATION

Quote:
A German flag the size of a bath towel flaps in front of the Anadou bakery, one of umpteen meeting points for Turkish immigrants in central Berlin.

Half eclipsed by Germany's black, red and gold stripes hangs a far smaller Turkish flag.

"We are all for Germany," says Bayram, the bakery's owner who has been in the country for 30 years but can hardly speak German. [..]

[A]s the World Cup gathers pace, many Turks are vociferously supporting their country of residency -- especially after Turkey failed to qualify for the tournament.

In Kreuzberg, a region nick-named Little Istanbul for its large Turkish population, football fever is infectious. On the sprawling twice-weekly Turkish market, the "schwarz-rot-gold" flag is draped over stalls selling spices and olives.

And following Germany's 2-0 win against Sweden on Saturday, the nationwide party was an international affair. Minutes after the match, immigrants, including women in headscarves, were among those driving a celebratory circuit around the city, cheering and sounding horns. Flags fluttered on car roofs, with the German flag often carefully positioned alongside its Turkish or Arabic counterpart. [..]

"It has taken us by surprise," Eren Unsal, spokeswoman for the Turkish community group TBB told IPS. "It is a positive signal that there is so much solidarity with the national team. It sends a strong message about people's identification with Germany."


WORLD CUP-CHINA: SPIRIT OF MASS REVELRY REVIVED

Quote:
China failed to qualify for the World Cup but the country is, nevertheless, in the grip of genuine football fever which has had the effect of reversing long-standing government restrictions on unbridled public revelry and large gatherings.

Haunted by memories of youthful crowds during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations on Tiananmen Square, Chinese communist leaders banned 'illegal' rallies and frowned on spontaneous festivities. But this year, Beijing seems to have given in to the intoxicating thrill of the world's most watched sports event and relaxed its strict rules.

The place to be in Beijing on summer nights, when the games are beamed in from Germany, is the Summer Temple in Ritan Park where centuries ago Chinese emperors held ceremonies and made sacrifices to the sun god. These days, the imperial altar for sacrifice is occupied by a giant screen and the circular space around it is taken by a beer garden.

Thousands of football fans -- old and young, men and women, gather here to share tables, applaud, jeer and laugh. They take in every toss, header, goal kick and red flag. The crowds multiply whenever the game is played by a team the Chinese have adopted as their own.

"It is amazing -- I so love the feeling of sharing the excitement with other people," says Li Junxia, a 26-year-old Beijing girl who learned about the Sun Temple football gathering from a cellphone text message (SMS) she received. [..]

"The World Cup means enjoyment and this is something Chinese people have lacked for long periods of their history," says social commentator He Jiahong. "For years, Chinese people lived very austerely and with a sense of grave historical burden. The World Cup is a chance of pure enjoyment, of release and Chinese people are taken with it."
0 Replies
 
Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:06 am
Thats terrible news. 1.3 billion Chinese mad for football. They should be able to get a good team together soon. Lets hope Sven Goran Eriksson manages them.
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CalamityJane
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:09 am
Lord Ellpus wrote:
Nice to see you around again, CJ.
Next time you bugger off, I expect an "absentee" note from your form tutor, giving a full explanation.


I'll promise, you're the first one to know the next time I am out
of town http://www.borge.diesal.de/smilies/wub.gif
0 Replies
 
CalamityJane
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:11 am
Steve (as 41oo) wrote:
Now the definitive post on this thread. My mother in law said

"GERMANY WILL WIN THE WORLD CUP BECAUSE THEY DONT CHEAT AND THEY PLAY THE BALL ON THE GROUND".


And I am ready for that!!!

http://k.domaindlx.com/geli/win.gif
0 Replies
 
CalamityJane
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:13 am
ooops, it got a bit too large http://www.borge.diesal.de/board02/images/smiles/shameblue.gif
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:16 am
wow that must have been some party cj to get, erm, shadows like that under the eyes.

(nice pic btw Smile)
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:18 am
(I'm glad, Mrs. Walter only painted those colours on her arms .... until NOW: NOW WILL DO THE VERY SAME Shocked )
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Jul, 2006 11:22 am
well thats ok so long as she stays indoors and doesnt scare the genteel folk of 51° 43' 3.96'' N, 8° 20' 8.83'' E

edit...was this rude? I think you know it wasnt meant to be..
0 Replies
 
 

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