2014 World Cup

[Stuttgart88]

Yep, I think he sent the keeper one way, but It could be that he caught it a bit fat and too centrally in an attempt to push it further to his right. Virtually any penalty that goes in looks good I suppose. Commentators almost always say a penalty is good if scored and will always say a saved penalty was a poor penalty, even if it was a super stop.

[Crosby87]

Only 35 mins in but Belgium might be over rated. Is that one word or two?

[pineapple stu]

Never a free kick here. Hope they don't score.

Edit - justice done. Toby kicked the Algerian (by accident), not the other way around!

[Crosby87]

Roberto Martinez will tell us how difficult it is for the Belgies to break down the Algerian Defense after commercials.

[Charlie Darwin]

Don't panic lads, Fellaini's coming on.

Algeria playing very well I think. They're contributing a lot more to the game than the US did last night against a similarly superior team who are dominating the ball.

[DannyInvincible]

Belgium have looked limited and predictable. It's somewhat frustrating given their wealth of talent. The lack of mobile full-backs certainly hasn't helped them. Who would they usually play with in those positions?

There shouldnt be a penalty there bc he would not have gotten to the ball even if he hadnt been trampled.

Whether or not he would have gotten the ball has no bearing on whether or not it was a foul. Vertonghen held and tripped his opponent inside the box. Irrespective of where the ball was (so long as it was in play), that constituted a foul and, thus, a penalty was correctly awarded.

If the ref had judged that the ball might have been within reach of the Algerian player when he was fouled, he might well have punished Vertonghen with a red card for having denied Algeria an obvious goal-scoring opportunity. Clearly, he didn't, so Vertonghen received a yellow card.

[pineapple stu]

Don't panic lads, Fellaini's coming on.

Ha!

Must be one of these weird Postiga/Forlan players

[Charlie Darwin]

Is it possible I can spin that one like I was being serious?

[pineapple stu]

Yeah, go for it.

Only just crept under the bar; I wonder if he'd have scored that without the afro?

[Charlie Darwin]

Who was it on Match of the Day a few years back who theorised that Fellaini would score more headers if he didn't have all that hair to cushion the impact?

[Charlie Darwin]

Algeria pay the price for trying to win the game, ouch.

[DannyInvincible]

Has anyone else noticed what looks like a bullet crack or something in the ITV studio window behind Andros Townsend to the right?

[BonnieShels]

It's really staggering the neck a lot of these pundits have. It wrecks my head. Before the late game last night Whelan was on about "what you'd normally expect from USA teams" ... tough, well drilled, organised, etc. Any idiot that's watched a few World Cups would know that kind of stuff. His perception is a minimum of four years out of date.

He has no knowledge of players outside of the PL or reasonably high profile others. Surely it should be a minimum requirement for them to watch five or six recent games to get a feel for what's going on with them right now! It doesn't matter what you'd usually expect, we're interested in what we should expect right now. As much as I'm not a fan, Brian Kerr is very professional in this regard.

Put it this way. All of us here watch an awful lot of football. An insane amount. Some of us (SkStu) are not able to watch games live and watch the recordings later on.

Now imagine, our entire life was like that of Lawrenson or Whelan, and we got to watch soccer for a living, you can be certain we would be on the ball with everything even more so than now.

On no level is it acceptable to be unprofessional in that regard. Unbelievable that the analysts of soccer get away with so much.

It really grinds my gears.

It should be noted, that I actually thought that Andros Townsend was surprisingly good earlier. The Strachan, Vieira, Townsend axis wasn't bad. If only ITV had decent presenters.

Agree with all this. It's actually showing a lot of contempt for football fans by spouting a lot of outdated and/or stereotypical nonsense and assuming viewers are so ignorant about football that they'll just believe it.

In an age of internet, cable tv, live streams etc, football has never been more accessible, and they should know that.

Giles in particular seems to live off his ability to analyse a game as it is happening, which I still think he does well. But he will say, very often, that he doesn't really know much about this or that team. Well that's your bloody job, isn't it, to know about this or that team!

I would give Giles the benefit as he's still the best analyst of a game live.

Well, true. Though Drogba's 36, Essien's 33 and Odemwingie (who I was going to mention in my original post, along with Ameobi, but thought it might be stretching the definition of a great player!) is 32. I had counted them in the first team, but it seems they've dropped off enough not to be considered for the first team, which, coupled with how poorly the African teams have done so far, could be taken as strengthening my point.

Boateng is an interesting one as he quite after the last World Cup and only came back for the second leg of the play off! I wonder how that went down in the Ghana camp.


It's true that it's a bit of a stretch to group them all together, and I don't expect them all to have the same fate. You're right that Ghana's goal was lovely, and of course Ivory Coast (who have way more than their fair share of 30+ stars) deservedly won their game. But Ghana and Ivory Coast in particular came from relatively nowhere to fairly impress at the last two World Cups, having never previously qualified. Now we see them with ageing squads not doing as well as four years ago. Football often comes and goes in waves, and teams in particular; we've seen that ourselves, when a small country in footballing terms has a golden generation, and then drops off as those players retire, not to be adequately replaced.

There's time to go before 2018 of course, but who's going to replace those players, who are mostly genuinely world class? Or are we going to see returns for the likes of Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa or Senegal? Or maybe a new country emerge, like Egypt (well, not entirely new, but it's been 24 years), Ethiopia or Burkina Faso?

It's funny, I was thinking there was a serious tendency to group the African teams. Though there is a certain similarity in regional groupings of teams.

Algeria so far are the best of the lot (of the African teams I've seen).

I don't know if the German entirely "simulated" (what an awful word); he merely reacted angrily, almost as if Pepe had said something.

But you're right that there was a marked contrast in the treatment of two very similar events. And the latter refereeing action was definitely preferable.

Worth noting too that Portugal could maybe count themselves a bit lucky not to have been reduced to ten for the penalty; I wonder was the ref trying to even things up?

Muller got hit in the face. Pepe the idiot reacted and whatever the ref's opinion on card colour he had no real option but to send him off as it was more likely he was about to give him a yellow for the "elbow".

I haven't got an opinion on the penalty, I missed all the replays etc, but if the ref did try and balance out a poor decision with another poor decision, then we can truly say he was a poor ref.
Anyway, Pepe is one player who fully lives up to his red rag to a bull reputation and Muller is a player who simulates getting hit.

As above.

[Crosby87]

Why can stu not watch the matches live bon bon? Has his doctor warned him off excitement due to a weak ticker from years of eating poutine, or is it simply that his village in the outback only has one tv, and he can only get access to it during off hours, after the rest of the town have watched you cant do that on television?

[DeLorean]

Surprised nobody mentioned (saw?) the RTE screw up just before the Brazil game. Dunphy was giving out about Neymar bricking it for the penalty in the last game, Didi was looking through his phone and Kenny was robotic. To alert them that they were on air Bill asked a question to Eamon, who still didn't realise he was on air. He preceeding to say his second on air "f**king" in a few seconds. A visibly shocked Bill alerted Eamon that he was on air, a very uncomfortable Eamon half apologised while looking around in shock and went on to give his prediction for the game... Didi subtlety putting the phone under the table and Kenny, well, robotic.

[DeLorean]

"No flow to the game" says Ray after two minutes and six seconds.

[ArdeeBhoy]

Stu lives in Canada Crosby, 6 hours behind us in theory, 20 years in reality...

Not his fault, just one of the sticks.

[Crosby87]

I know. You guys dont have poutine in Ireland do ye?

Not sure about Mexicos uniforms here. They look like the NJ Devils. Are you guys getting as many shots of the female fans as on the espn feed? What an amazing place. Charlie Darwin would be locked up within minutes of exiting the plane.

[DannyInvincible]

Surprised nobody mentioned (saw?) the RTE screw up just before the Brazil game. Dunphy was giving out about Neymar bricking it for the penalty in the last game, Didi was looking through his phone and Kenny was robotic. To alert them that they were on air Bill asked a question to Eamon, who still didn't realise he was on air. He preceeding to say his second on air "f**king" in a few seconds. A visibly shocked Bill alerted Eamon that he was on air, a very uncomfortable Eamon half apologised while looking around in shock and went on to give his prediction for the game... Didi subtlety putting the phone under the table and Kenny, well, robotic.

Simply beautiful.

[osarusan]

Mexico looking in more control at this stage.

I wonder are they under instructions to shoot whenever possilbe.