i watched the first half before i had to go cook dinner, it was sort of engaging despite the lack of goals and scrappy defending, and Ochoa made some spectacular saves
what just happened sums up the match quite well: the koreans played a pretty passing move, park chu-young headed it to son heung-min, who controlled it beautifully, beat his man neatly and then promptly whumped it into row Z
1-0 korea. akinfeev haslooked shaky in the Russian goal all night, a korean hits it from range and akinfeev basically throws it into his own net. brilliant stuff
spain are going to lose 5-0 to chile and then tim cahill will score a hat trick of diving headers against them in the next match and it will be wonderful
i have run the brazil 2014 world cup thru a very sophisticated simulator (football manager 2014) and i can exclusively tell you the final will be, uh, belgium versus norway???
i am also going to make some bold and cool predictions now that we are starting to see how things are panning out.
- france who have been very quietly absolutely pasting everyone else in their group, are going to get to the semi-finals at least, or further, because cabaye is good and cool
- germany despite their very good team are going to get knocked out in the semi finals like every other year, probably by france.
- chile are really good and will do well, getting to the quarter finals at least, quite possibly the semi-finals
- everyones favourite Tournament Dark Horses belgium are going to get out of their group and then get knocked out very quickly. no further than the quarter finals, and in this scenario we are assuming portugal bottle it and the USA qualifies from their group (a distinct ppossibility) - argentina are bad and will do badly, especially if messi gets injured. quarter-finals and that's only because the runner-up of group E will be a bad team. however i would love it if ecuador knocked them out which is possible.
- the netherlands are not as good as people think and will not get further than the quarter finals, and are in fact liable to being knocked out by brazil in the first knockout round.
- the semi finals will have one thoroughly unexpected team, which i am calling to be one of mexico, croatia, colombia or costa rica who have all looked very very tidy so far
- brazil are probably going to win it again which will be boring and fuck neymar, but only if the netherlands beat chile (thats going to be a fucking cracking game btw), otherwise chile will knock them out in the first knockout round.
germany - ghana is 0-0, not a very exciting game but an intriguing one, not at all boring. ghana are dealing with germany very very well. it's weird how theyre so tactically organised and composed now when they were so tactically naive against the USA
it will also remain to be seen how well ghana are keeping their defensive shape by the end of the match. sadly i will miss it because im going to the pub (probably one that isnt showing the football)
And it ended 2-2, surprisingly enough. Towards the end Ghana were still having a really good go at it, shame they didn't score again. Also Joachim Low is a massive prick.
And Argentina beat Iran 1-0, thanks to a late goal by Messi during stoppage time. I felt kinda sorry for Iran; they kept pace with Argentina really well and Haghighi performed best out of everyone on the field. Messi's goal was brilliant tho, and I would like to see him taking Maradona's place as most celebrated Argentine player.
Meanwhile Nigeria are 1-0 up thanks to a cracking goal by Odemwingie, although Dzeko had a goal disallowed earlier due to yet another wrong offside call.
Exciting match, too, with Portugal equalizing in the last minute of added time. It got a bit scrappy and foul-happy during the last 25 minutes, but nothing truly awful, I'm happy to note.
Apparently if the US loses to Germany then the best chance to advance is Portugal and Ghana tying?
That would leave Germany with 7 points, America with 4 points, and Portugal and Ghana with 2 points each, so yes.
If Germany beat America, and if either Portugal or Ghana then wins, then it will depend on who has the greatest goal difference. So if you must lose to Germany, you wanna lose by as little as possible, basically.
ghana could yet knock the USA out again, by letting in a shitload of goals against portugal. or scoring a shitload of goals against them, which is more likely, given that half of the entire nation of portugal is injured and ronaldo never brings his best to a world cup
but yeah i think your best bet is to be well-organised in defence like ghana were, if you can keep your shape you can make it hard for germany. a 0-0 draw would put you through no matter what
Comments
this is what happens when you try to sit pretty like that
Brazil were sloppy, Mexico's defence was tight and shut down any attempt at a goal, but both teams played a fairly scrappy and unattractive game.
about time
One all.
They're losing to Chile 1-0, if they lose this game they're fucked
And the unfortunate Australia, who've played well, but not well enough.
Was 0-0 at half time, end to end play but nothing happening, then suddenly we've had 2 Colombian goals in the space of just over 5 minutes.
what
That was a great run, and a perfect header.
And our defence were nowhere.
I felt that.
fucking finally
yes
fuck yes
i can't stand being at the mercy of other teams' results
good match tho
if italy do not win then england are out of the world cup
however england are going to be out of the world cup anyway because we are bad at football
so i would like costa rica to win
so obviously things are going to go the one direction i dont want and it will be a boring draw which sucks
1-0 to Costa Rica.
Bye bye, England.
- france who have been very quietly absolutely pasting everyone else in their group, are going to get to the semi-finals at least, or further, because cabaye is good and cool
- germany despite their very good team are going to get knocked out in the semi finals like every other year, probably by france.
- chile are really good and will do well, getting to the quarter finals at least, quite possibly the semi-finals
- everyones favourite Tournament Dark Horses belgium are going to get out of their group and then get knocked out very quickly. no further than the quarter finals, and in this scenario we are assuming portugal bottle it and the USA qualifies from their group (a distinct ppossibility)
- argentina are bad and will do badly, especially if messi gets injured. quarter-finals and that's only because the runner-up of group E will be a bad team. however i would love it if ecuador knocked them out which is possible.
- the netherlands are not as good as people think and will not get further than the quarter finals, and are in fact liable to being knocked out by brazil in the first knockout round.
- the semi finals will have one thoroughly unexpected team, which i am calling to be one of mexico, croatia, colombia or costa rica who have all looked very very tidy so far
- brazil are probably going to win it again which will be boring and fuck neymar, but only if the netherlands beat chile (thats going to be a fucking cracking game btw), otherwise chile will knock them out in the first knockout round.
it will also remain to be seen how well ghana are keeping their defensive shape by the end of the match. sadly i will miss it because im going to the pub (probably one that isnt showing the football)
And Argentina beat Iran 1-0, thanks to a late goal by Messi during stoppage time. I felt kinda sorry for Iran; they kept pace with Argentina really well and Haghighi performed best out of everyone on the field. Messi's goal was brilliant tho, and I would like to see him taking Maradona's place as most celebrated Argentine player.
If Germany beat America, and if either Portugal or Ghana then wins, then it will depend on who has the greatest goal difference. So if you must lose to Germany, you wanna lose by as little as possible, basically.
but yeah i think your best bet is to be well-organised in defence like ghana were, if you can keep your shape you can make it hard for germany. a 0-0 draw would put you through no matter what
hello portugal
why dont you take a seat...
gonna be fun watching chile beat brazil in the next round