2014 FIFA World Cup |OT3| Saturday 21st: ARG v IRN // GER v GHA // NGA v BIH

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One of the things that I'm glad is nowhere this WC. My god, watching a match on TV then seemed like there was a swarm of bees constantly around.
And with those Brazilian fuckers booing at every non-opportunity, such as a pause due to an injury, that's any different? Lol. I honestly think Brazil is the worst host ever because of it. At least South Africa brought something unique to the WC.
 
He made it right. Probably just had tunnel vision before the game.

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loooooool not even the same kid

Messi just gave him some of his HGH.

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So do you guys think Tiki Taka is officially dead? Or the players are just too old and it's still a viable strategy? I think the whole thing really hinged on Xavi+Iniesta playing perfectly, but also Puyol holding the defense together. I mean they won almost every game last WC 1-0, they have never been a scoring juggernaut. Seems like it was a really fine line between being best in the world and getting blown out by their peers.

I don't think it's a coincidence that tiki-taka has become less effective, offensively and defensively, since everyone has started adopting high intensity pressure at the front and in midfield, with disciplined defenders. Even teams who you don't think of as playing like that tend to have 3 or 4 players who close down effectively outside of the defense, and if they don't they lose control of games you expect them to dominate (Man Utd last season, us under Hodgson)

Look at Atletico in the CL final, as soon as their energy levels hit the brick wall in the 65th minute or so, it was one-way traffic and they were relying on Madrid making mistakes to see them through, as there seemed to be minutes at a time where Madrid were giving them the runaround.

The best way to fight tiki-taka is with energy, discipline and organisation, and neither Spain nor Barca have sufficiently added enough strings to the tiki-taka bow to deal with it when it hasn't quite worked against a good team. Against a Sevilla or someone they could get away with it as you can assume that eventually they'll leave a space to attack, or overcommit in midfield. But when they came to face Bayern (and when tiki-Bayern came to face Real) they fell apart in a tidal wave of pressing and defensive discipline, as have Spain this tournament.

The aspect of tiki-taka which is really stinking the place out is the sacrifice of chances for possession, with what seems to be an opinion that controlling possession is controlling the game. The fact of the matter is though that if one team has 40% possession and creates twice as many clear chances, they're probably going to win, and had a greater degree of control over the result.

Also, what we've seen this tournament is Spain almost trying to revert to the 2008 tactics of tiki-taka with attempts to attack properly. It clearly hasn't worked though, as they've made a complete mess of making use of said attacks, and the team is riddled with players whose primes are behind them, topped off with a striker who just doesn't fit in and ballsed up every shot he attempted anyway. So perhaps this is just a transitional tournament for Spain where they adjust their tactics for the upcoming generation who'll replace the 30+ year olds in the near future. I'm more inclined however to believe that Del Bosque just tried to fight fire with an electric blanket, and ended up with a triforce of disappointment, bad in attack, bad at retaining possession under pressure (false 9 would have helped), and terrible at keeping them out at the back. And let's be honest, it was tiki-taka and the players' suitability for it that was keeping the goals out at the back, not any great defensive ability of any 1 member of that back 5. Once teams figured out how to actually get at Spain, they've exposed Pique, Ramos and Casillas for what they are, good footballers, average defenders and a shaky goalkeeper.

In fact, I'd say Casillas is endemic of the tiki-taka persistence. In the team for no reason other than tradition at this point, even when it wasn;t working and they needed a proper plan B, rather than just slightly adjusting that which wasn't working. Lopez and De Gea are clearly, clearly better goalkeepers than him and have been for 2 years now. Del Bosque's idea of a plan B is to start passing more quickly, and making more long passes in the opposition half. That isn't enough when already losing and on the brink of such an embarassing exit.

Tiki-taka can still win plenty of tournaments, and excite fans when it doesn't become boringly safe, instead used to endlessly probe as Pep's Barca did in his first 2 or 3 seasons, and as Bayern apparently did last season in the Bundesliga, so no, it isn't dead. But it needs massive adjustments to become borderline unbeatable again, as top teams are finding it easy to overcome at the moment.
 
I was looking at the time table for today, hoping for boring matches at 21.00 and 24.00 so i could get some much needed sleep.

21.00 England - Uruguay.

Fuck.

Haha, me too. I like football but watching it everyday is a little too much. Will watch England - Uruguay though. I won't watch the 00:00 matches though, only in weekends.
 
If FIFA accepts Platini's 40-Teams-WC, chances will be better for smaller countries. The qualitiy of the matches would dive tremendously though.
40 team WC? Someone needs to show Blatter Iran vs Nigeria. No one wants to see those fodder matches...but I'm sure FIFA did the math beforehand and decided that the quotes going slightly down in the established countries would be made up by the additional viewers from the new eight countries.

It also gives us Germans even more fodder to plow through with 4-0 or higher (dat 2002 8-0 doe), soo...Imactuallyokwiththat.gif ?
 
Just imagine the salt that would pour all over the internet should Brazil be knocked out of the tournament.
Salt? Celebration more likely. Especially after they should have lost their opening match already.


I don't think someone should get fined for a fun fan chart. However I'd be glad to see Brazil fined, as their so-called fans are the most unfair and asshole-ish I've ever witnessed!
 
And with those Brazilian fuckers booing at every non-opportunity, such as a pause due to an injury, that's any different? Lol. I honestly think Brazil is the worst host ever because of it. At least South Africa brought something unique to the WC.
So what if it was unique. Being unique doesn't mean shit if it adds NOTHING of value and actually drags the experience down.

That being said, the booing Brazils get old pretty fast, too. But those at least also can cheer if a match is genuinely good. All South Afrika had was the bee humming of death.

From my (biased) standpoint Germany 2006 stays the best WC of this millenium so far.
 
from Cahills wiki page

Tim Cahill is renowned for his goal in the 2014 World Cup against Holland where he volleyed the ball from a long range pass causing people around the world to clean their televisions from the amount of spoof that the goal created

somebody was having fun typing this lol

Also, renowned? it just happened today lol, his 2006 japan performance was better than everything.
 
40 team WC? Someone needs to show Blatter Iran vs Nigeria. No one wants to see those fodder matches...but I'm sure FIFA did the math beforehand and decided that the quotes going slightly down in the established countries would be made up by the additional viewers from the new eight countries.

It also gives us Germans even more fodder to plow through with 4-0 or higher (dat 2002 8-0 doe), soo...Imactuallyokwiththat.gif ?

Lol , I remember that game. Saudi Arabia got owned badly. Seriously tho, 32 teams are enough. The play-offs are fun to watch.
 
So what if it was unique. Being unique doesn't mean shit if it adds NOTHING of value and actually drags the experience down.
It arguably added excitement. I'd take South Africa's positive vuvuzela atmo over Brazil's clouds of negativity any day of the week. There's nothing more asshole-ish and unsportsmanlike like booing at random players in the world's biggest celebration of sport.

If you boo and whistle at a seemingly bought ref, that's something else, but why the fuck would you ever boo at a poor player, who just got injured and will possibly miss every other match in the world's greatest sports tournament? Why?
 
It arguably added excitement. I'd take South Africa's positive vuvuzela atmo over Brazil's clouds of negativity any day of the week. There's nothing more asshole-ish and unsportsmanlike like booing at random players in the world's biggest celebration of sport.

If you boo and whistle at a seemingly bought ref, that's something else, but why the fuck would you ever boo at a poor player, who just got injured and will possibly miss every other match in the world's greatest sports tournament? Why?

Vuvuzela was goddamn horrible. I had to turn off the sound to stop me from hurting myself.
 
It arguably added excitement. I'd take South Africa's positive vuvuzela atmo over Brazil's clouds of negativity any day of the week. There's nothing more asshole-ish and unsportsmanlike like booing at random players in the world's biggest celebration of sport.

If you boo and whistle at a seemingly bought ref, that's something else, but why the fuck would you ever boo at a poor player, who just got injured and will possibly miss every other match in the world's greatest sports tournament? Why?

They just like to cheer for the weaker team but yeah booing to a injured player it's not ok.
 
Fuck Vuvuzelas. I realize now that I didn't watch much of 2010's WC. I watched important matches muted and couldn't keep interest in less interesting matches with no sound.
 
There are no expectations here, as far as I'm aware. The team has potential, but the rebuilding process from the disaster of 2010 is still not near finished.

Tomorrow is must-win.

Pretty much

Even though we may well exit this a round earlier than we did in 2010, that team was a complete and utter mess, and it wasn't much better in 2012. We couldn't put in a reasonable attacking display to save our lives, the players were either old and declining, or young and not good enough. The defense was reasonably solid, at the cost of any attacking flair. The squad clearly didn't get on with eachother, Terry+Ferdinand situation, Emile fucking Heskey being a prominent squad member.

Hodgson ain't perfect, but he has us on the right path even if we don't reach the scond round. Once Gerrard has retired and Rooney is dropped, we've pretty much lost every player we've been so disappointed with over their England careers. Just a shame Cole has (unfairly) gone with them.

Messi just gave him some of his HGH.

Ha, one of the few times I've actually laughed at one of those comments
 
Puta or puto is an extremely common word in Latin America. I see little kids in Chile say Puta la wea everywhere. I use it 4000 times a day to mean "fucking shit" or "bitch" when something doesn't go my way. Stub my toe? Fucking puta. Miss the bus? Puta puta puta! Etc.

Never thought of it as a homophobic slur but I guess it has different meaning to some.
 
It arguably added excitement. I'd take South Africa's positive vuvuzela atmo over Brazil's clouds of negativity any day of the week. There's nothing more asshole-ish and unsportsmanlike like booing at random players in the world's biggest celebration of sport.

If you boo and whistle at a seemingly bought ref, that's something else, but why the fuck would you ever boo at a poor player, who just got injured and will possibly miss every other match in the world's greatest sports tournament? Why?
People boo and cheer at games, that's called atmosphere. When that was stifled with noise pollution in 2010 the games were worse for it.

Brrrrrrrrrr

Fuck that shit
 
Man, did Australia make it very hard for us yesterday, gg Australia. It honestly shouldn't have been as hard as it turned out to be. It's funny, the thing that made us so strong against Spain (our backs) is what made us really lacking yesterday. Blind and especially Janmaat had a very bad match. Good thing our attack is so great or else we would've definitely lost this one.
 
Man, did Australia make it very hard for us yesterday, gg Australia. It honestly shouldn't have been as hard as it turned out to be. It's funny, the thing that made us so strong against Spain (our backs) is what made us really lacking yesterday. Blind and especially Janmaat had a very bad match. Good thing our attack is so great or else we would've definitely lost this one.

I'm getting sick about the talk about the used tactic though.

I mean it doesn't really matter if you play 5-3-2, 4-3-3, 4-4-2 or whatever if your passing is as terrible as it was yesterday, especially in the first half.

Also, the Dutch have to be the ones that pass back to the goalkeeper the most, and I hate that, we see enough of it in the Eredivisie already...
 
It's a good thing he's good at soccer.

He should stick to scoring goals


Not sure I want to subject myself to this... how does it compare to Don't Tread?
Let's just say that if I can somehow convince Deuce to make this his full time passion after the World Cup I will have succeeded as a Timbers fan #rctid

That being said, rip it up Deuce. Country over club. His grit to play with a broken nose was amazing. Just please start devoting yourself to rapping when you're back in Seattle. Deuce is uh... Definitely... Better at rapping. Yeah. He sure is. -.-
 
40 team WC? Someone needs to show Blatter Iran vs Nigeria. No one wants to see those fodder matches...but I'm sure FIFA did the math beforehand and decided that the quotes going slightly down in the established countries would be made up by the additional viewers from the new eight countries.

It also gives us Germans even more fodder to plow through with 4-0 or higher (dat 2002 8-0 doe), soo...Imactuallyokwiththat.gif ?

FIFA/Blatter/Platini math: more countries in the WC = more votes in the election
 
It arguably added excitement. I'd take South Africa's positive vuvuzela atmo over Brazil's clouds of negativity any day of the week. There's nothing more asshole-ish and unsportsmanlike like booing at random players in the world's biggest celebration of sport.

If you boo and whistle at a seemingly bought ref, that's something else, but why the fuck would you ever boo at a poor player, who just got injured and will possibly miss every other match in the world's greatest sports tournament? Why?

Did we watch the same World Cup in 2010? The only excitement instilled by Vuvzelas was when TV stations managed to filter those pieces of shit out of the audio feed.

Positive atmosphere also isn't what I'd use to describe the urge to rip one's ear drum out to make the annoying humming stop.

I usually don't like baseless claims, but I can comfortably say that you are probably one of the only non-South African who watched the WC 2010 and felt the Vuvuzelas added anything REMOTELY positive to the experience.

There's a good reason those fuckers were banned just about everywhere during the WC...
 
I'm getting sick about the talk about the used tactic though.

I mean it doesn't really matter if you play 5-3-2, 4-3-3, 4-4-2 or whatever if your passing is as terrible as it was yesterday, especially in the first half.

Also, the Dutch have to be the ones that pass back to the goalkeeper the most, and I hate that, we see enough of it in the Eredivisie already...

Yeah true, we couldn't chain two or more passes together yesterday. Poor Cillesen, I think he doesn't enjoy all the passes he's getting, he got some weak passes that almost lead to goals.
 
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