2014 World Cup

**pineapple stu** · 22/06/2014, 11:44 PM

Five Portuguese offside.

Not seen that before.

**strangeirish** · 22/06/2014, 11:44 PM

Originally Posted by BonnieShels

FUPP!

Offside?

EDIT: Close one.

Definitely on.

**pineapple stu** · 22/06/2014, 11:45 PM

Originally Posted by ArdeeBhoy

Except there's no logic to doing so!

Sure let's kick everyone out of UEFA and take over it ourselves.

Dundalk - Champions' League winners!

Yay!

Or should we kick out "Asians" Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, Israel, Azerbaijan and Armenia, who are such threats that between them they have never qualified from UEFA?

And all because you don't understand the concept of "European"?

Right so Ted.

**pineapple stu** · 22/06/2014, 11:48 PM

Our 5-1 defeat isn't looking too smart now.

Nor is my earlier prediction that modern football should negate the local advantage of playing in South America.

**BonnieShels** · 22/06/2014, 11:49 PM

Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Our 5-1 defeat isn't looking too smart now.

Nor is my earlier prediction that modern football should negate the local advantage of playing in South America.

I think we can all agree that this is the mentalist world cup ever. And that we should be just happy that we survived,

**ArdeeBhoy** · 22/06/2014, 11:50 PM

Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Or should we kick out "Asians" Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, Israel, Azerbaijan and Armenia, who are such threats that between them they have never qualified from UEFA?

Yes!

And all because you don't understand the concept of "European"?

Right so Ted.

Aye. Try looking in an atlas...
And only one of your 'list' makes Wiki's. A country of which 95% is on another continent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

**DannyInvincible** · 22/06/2014, 11:51 PM

Originally Posted by A N Mouse

Three in both Bosnia Herzegovina and USA.
Two in Cameroon and Ghana
One in Iran. Probably also one a piece in Greece and Croatia

Too difficult to call Dutch and Swiss based only on place names. Schneiderlin is French side of border. I may have missed some.

One of the French players is listed as born at sea. How would that work?

Nice work. Have you got the names handy or where'd you get the info? Did you just scan through Wiki? I was thinking Bosnia might have had a couple. I think it's actually five German players the US have. Definitely more than three anyway.

Just found this piece, which claims that there are 25 France-born players playing for countries other than France at the World Cup with 14 from Germany playing for countries other than Germany: http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers...s-and-migrants

I assume they've double-checked the figures. It also explains how Rio Mavuba was "born at sea".

Originally Posted by New Statesman

The country of birth most likely to be rejected by a World Cup footballer, to play for somebody else, is France. No fewer than 25 French-born footballers will represent other teams in Brazil, ahead of Germany (14) and Brazil (5). The sole English-born player to play for another country is the Lambeth-born Middlesborough striker Albert Adomah. Having lived in Ghana until he was nine, and who has seized an unlikely chance to play at a World Cup for the Black Stars.

16 of the Algerian squad of 23 being born in France. This partly reflects an active Algerian strategy of diaspora recruitment, broadly similar to that which took the Republic of Ireland to several World Cups. But do the number of French-born players in the Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Ivory Coast sides also say something about the shortcomings of French integration?

Cameroon player Assou-Ekotto, born in Arras, France to a French-born mother, thinks that it does. He has spoken about his surprise at finding that his black British Tottenham team-mates naturally think of themselves as English.

He told the Guardian that "the country does not want us to be part of this new France. So we identify ourselves more with our roots. Me playing for Cameroon was a natural and normal thing. I have no feeling for the France national team; it just doesn't exist. When people ask of my generation in France, 'Where are you from?', they will reply Morocco, Algeria, Cameroon or wherever. But what has amazed me in England is that when I ask the same question of people like Lennon and Defoe, they'll say: 'I'm English.' That's one of the things that I love about life here."

France has done rather less with the inclusive patriotism of its World Cup and European champions of 1998 and 2000 than many had anticipated.

Yet the French 2014 squad does again capture the story of migration to France. Two of its players were born abroad - and more than half of the French squad have migrant heritage. Lille midfielder Rio Muavba's father had played at the 1974 World Cup for Zaire. But Muavba's own birth certificate reads "born at sea", as he was born, without a nation, on a boat, as his parents fled the Angolan civil war in 1984, before the family was granted refugee status in France. "I grew up in France, and I am French", Muavba said, when turning down the offer to play for Congo instead.

**pineapple stu** · 22/06/2014, 11:51 PM

Originally Posted by ArdeeBhoy

Aye. Try looking in an atlas...

You wouldn't think of asking them what they think?

Bordering a bit on the racist there, ArdeeBhoy.

**pineapple stu** · 22/06/2014, 11:53 PM

What a suitably dramatic finish!

What a tournament! Just keeps on giving!

**Stuttgart88** · 22/06/2014, 11:54 PM

Bradley, what an idiot.

Ronaldo, what a cross.

Interesting draw scenario in final games.

**ArdeeBhoy** · 22/06/2014, 11:54 PM

Nothing to do with being racist...you have to have geographical limits, or it makes it a farce...we could join up with N.America...along with Iceland!