La Coupe Du Monde

[GodalmingYellow]

Thread to discuss the WC if you know what I mean.

I'll start as I'm here.

Terrible ref. Cheating Brazilians.

Neymar should have had a straight red.

It was never a penalty.

The disallowed Croatian goal should have stood.

[SWA]

Think you've pretty much summed up the first game in a nutshell there! I would add the Croatian keeper looked a bit dodgy.
Looking forward to Spain v Holland tonight.

[Kernow Yellow]

Yes, gutted for Croatia who did at least enough to earn a draw.

In general I thought the ref did really well with the play-acting, keeping his cards in his pocket and telling people to calm down and get on with it. Long may this continue to make the World Cup watchable. But he got three big decisions very wrong, and this handed the game to Brazil. He bottled the Neymar decision - an obvious straight red for premeditated violent conduct. He seemed far too keen to give Brazil a penalty, which even in real time looked nothing like. And he made a forgivable (but ultimately crucial) mistake in disallowing Croatia a second goal.

Not very impressed by Brazil, who looked surprisingly European - too much long ball and misplaced passes. They've always been cheats even when obviously the World's best team, which is why I've never bought into the Jogo Bonito love-in. Croatia have also been appalling play-actors in the past, but approached last night's game really well, working hard and looking more comfortable on the ball (and more dangerous in attack) than the hosts for much of the game. I hope they qualify if they keep that up.

Still, a pretty enjoyable game to watch - far from the nervy stalemates which World Cups often open with. Looking forward to a decent night in the pub for England vs Italy tomorrow, but I don't hold out much hope of winning it or qualifying from our group.

[The Enforcer]

I thought Oscar was the stand-out player who dragged Brazil through that game. They could consider bringing in Bernard instead of Hulk for their next match. Modric was the biggest threat for Croatia and could have a lot of joy against Mexico and Cameroon.

[Snake]

The police seem to be enjoying themselves.

[Mooro]

It's alright though, at least if this tournament is a organisational and PR disaster, we already know that the next two are set to go without a hitch !!!

I was thinking that Platinis idea for spreading the Euros across differnet countries was an awful idea, but I'm beginning to wonder whether both that and the WC need to spend time being based in places where the facilities and grounds are already in place without all these large scale building projects that always run so close to the wire.

[SmileyMan]

So the legacy of the last World Cup was the introduction of goal-line technology. I reckon post-match bans for diving will be this one's.

[Snake]

I like the ‘invisible line’ to stop encroachment at free kicks.

I don’t like ITV’s coverage so far and in particular Adrian Chiles, which is probably why this happened - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldc ... nding.html

[GodalmingYellow]

Just finished watching the Chile v Oz match. Neither team will trouble the later rounds I suspect, especially given the result from earlier in the evening.

Spain were annhialated in the second half by the Dutch. If Holland keep that upduring the tournament, they'll be tough to stop. The van Persie headed goal was really something special. Great match although Spain were very disappointing with some shocking finishing. I expect Spain to give Chile and Oz a bit of a hiding to scrape through, but they may have to face Brazil in the next round if they do so.

The Mexico Cameroon match was fairly sub-standard, with Mexico justly edging it.

[Kernow Yellow]

It's all very well letting plucky little minnows enter the World Cup, but the resulting games are often rather one-sided and embarrasing for all concerned.

Spain last night were a good example - Holland could have scored ten!

Glad Mexico won, otherwise we'd be banging on about the officiating again.

[SmileyMan]

Not sure The Netherlands were that good, they just had an anti-tiki-taka strategy at half time that worked brilliantly after half time, and Spain didn't have a Plan B. They also had a defense that stupidly held a line far too high against such quality strikers, and a goalkeeper who isn't first choice for his club and showed it.

Robben's headed goal was superb though.

Aus vs Chile was a pretty entertaining match. It's a shame the Aussies were a bit 'rabbit in headlights' for the first half an hour or it could have been a lot closer. Bad news for Spain though - if Chile get a draw against them and the Dutch, they're going home.

[Snake]

It’s Uncle Roy’s big test tonight and I hope that half the population are not talking about dodgy officials in the morning as to date there have been so many mistakes. I’m off for a kip now as I’ll be watching Ivory Coast (and Wilfried Bony) after the Engerland game and the birds will be tweeting by the time that match ends.

Meanwhile - http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/ph ... R_700b.jpg

[Mooro]

Happy watching folks, I'll be on the nightshift trying to convice myself the extra pennies for doing overtime cos of the sudden bout of 24 hour flu that has struck here which will leave us with about 50% of the staff we should have, will be worth it....

.

[SmileyMan]

As the designated non-Premiership fan in the office this morning, I'm finding my opinion on Rooney is much in demand, because apparently anyone who follows Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Man City can only possibly think he's rubbish because they hate Man Utd.

So I'm trying to distil my thoughts into a well-reasoned argument, which goes something like this:

All of his supporters are saying that he's being unfairly judged because he's being played out of position, although when pressed none of them can agree what that position might be. For me, on Saturday night he seems to be frail in all those possible positions. As a wide left player, despite the excellent cross for the goal, his total inability to protect the left-back meant that they could attack up the right at will for the whole first half, so that's out of the question (and apparently that's definitely out of position). As a playmaking 'number 10' he was lead-footed and predictable in the first part of the second half, and once Italy switched to their trademark 8-1-1 formation for the last ten minutes he showed no imagination at all - a fresh legged Barclay sprinted across their line to try and play a dinky one-two with Rooney, only to see him trap it, stand still and then kick it straight into a defender as Barclay stood open in the only 5 yards of space across the whole pitch. He was also hopelessly out of position for several crosses and corners - our go-to corner was clearly supposed to be a long ball to him on the back of the six-yard box, so why did he fail to jump every time? He also totally failed to read the cross from the left that went across the face of goal - he ran to the edge of the penalty box instead of attacking the goal, so their defenders just doubled up and bundled off the other striker.

And then there's the miss. At the World Cup, especially against a team like Italy, you'll get one or maybe two striker's chances in a game. He missed his one - Sturridge took his. So the argument isn't so much should you drop Rooney, but more that if you do play him in one of those other positions, who do you drop based on Saturday night's performance? If you're saying that he was played out of position, then you can't really use the cross as justification for keeping him in the team, and apart from that, he was slow and made mistakes all over the pitch.

A lot of it's clearly down to frustration and trying too hard, but I wonder if that might be best served by keeping him on the bench, using the kids to try and sneak an early goal and get a first half lead, and then bring him on when the opposition has to chase the game and he'll have a bit better luck. I'm sure once a shot goes in the weight will drop from his shoulders - you don't go from being the first name on the Man United team sheet to a crap player overnight, so we need to kill the two-ton monkey that clings to his England shirt.

As for the rest of the game, well despite the result I thought England were great - I've seen much less convincing wins at the last few tournaments. Italy's first goal was well-worked but went streakily through three defenders, and if that was missed and the England goal two minutes later had sent us in at half time with a lead, it would have been a completely different game. Also, if we'd been wearing yellow shirts we'd have had at least three penalties. Uruguay looked very beatable and I hope we're practicing a variety of corner options for that match too. All in all I'm more confident that I was on Saturday morning, which is an odd feeling considering we lost.

Edit: Sturridge was thescorer

[Kernow Yellow]

Yeah it was a decent game and we played ok, but I'm not confident of progressing at all. Presumably Uruguay have been saving Suarez for the (on paper) harder games, and I don't fancy our defence to keep him at bay if he plays. It was defensive errors that did for us against Italy, and I don't think we're strong enough in attack to make up for our weaknesses at the back. And Costa Rica have shown they're no mugs as well - we couldn't beat Ecuador or Honduras last week, so we're not going to steamroller Costa Rica imo. Nice to see a bit of attacking flair though.