2006 WORLD CUP - Day 14 Thread - U.S. needs win in group E finale

MLSnet.com ^ | 6-22-06 | MLSnet.com

[jjbrouwer]

'Bruce has been instrumental in almost every job I have ever had in soccer.'

When do you plan to call the game 'football'...?

[jjbrouwer]

That would have provided England with an easier draw. The problem with your method though is that England would play Sweden twice running, which is a nonsense.

[Perdogg]

That would be no different in an NFL playoff or possibly an NBA, MLB, or NHL scenario.

[jjbrouwer]

Those are all sports I hate. I think the current system is more than adequate.

[notfornothing]

It sucks that we have to wait another four years, but in the meantime I'm getting a Clint Dempsey jersey.

Good call. Dempsey made a fan out of me this World Cup. The kid's got some heart.

[phantomworker]

Nice victory pose. How did you get that army running away like that?

[Roy Tucker]

Soccer doesn't suck. And I played competitive baseball and basketball through high school.

What bothers me about soccer is that because scoring is generally low, the decisions of the referee and linesmen are more critical than just about any other sport. Why at the professional level, they do not use video camera technology is beyond me. Limit the number of times it can be appealed to (as they do in the NFL), but use it to reduce the number of bad calls.

On the ESPN WC threads, the Europeans and self-hating Americans are jumping on the US team and US sports. Professionally, the Europeans and Latin Americans could learn a lot about how professional sports teams are run in the US.

Arena must go. The US has some talented athletes, but for the time being the best should be encouraged to ply their trade in Europe where the money and competition is. The best Latin American players all play in Europe for that reason. Landon Donovan who was atrocious in this tournament should be honing his skills in Europe, otherwise he's toast.

The American passing yesterday was atrocious. We also don't seem to produce any strikers of note (as much as I admire Brian McBride as a person and athlete). We do seem to have a lot of speedy, small midfielders (or in the case of Reyna, slow midfielders). I would go down to the favelas of Brazil and pick out a couple of young strikers, and give them US passports.

Our defenders were a little shaky but young and show promise.

[stainlessbanner]

the decisions of the referee and linesmen are more critical than just about any other sport.

How 'bout Olympic sports such as gymnastics? I would rather count on 10 mates to help me win the game than rely on some international judges to score my performance. You got more of a fightin' chance with your mates, even if the ref is against you.

[Roy Tucker]

In gymnastics, they are judges more than refs and as you know there are six to eight equal judges, the highest and lowest scores get eliminated to get an average.

We would probably get better calls in soccer if they did that, but it would slow the game down immeasurably.

[romanesq]

Ukraine will continue the momentum for Eastern Europe.
Sheva! Sheva! Sheva!

With service one of the world's best striker's will do it again.

[Berlin_Freeper]

"What bothers me about soccer is that because scoring is generally low, the decisions of the referee and linesmen are more critical than just about any other sport."

That is true but what I am seeing is pattern in the WC where the team against the US is allowed to play like savages while the ref is harsh with calls against the US.

At this point I really don't encourage Americans to get excited about the WC because the pattern against us in the way I mentioned is just too much of a burden considering the competitiveness of the tournament. No team in the world could surmount such obstacles in a tournament and come out on top no matter how good our passing and other techniques are (though I agree with you as you pointed out the USA game was not great this WC).

One thing is for certain. If it were England or Germany in the same circumstance as USA in that game, there would be dead people in the street. That is how atrociously bad the German ref was. I know Germans that are hanging their heads low today and are very apologetic. It's not their fault, but the main problem with this particular ref is that not long ago the Germans had a corruption scandal much like Italy is going through now and instead of fixing it they did all they could to contain the damage by covering it up.

So what happened is we got stuck with a German ref that comes from a culture of corruption that got covered up rather than cleaned up.

I enjoy soccer, real soccer, what we watched last night was not real soccer, it was a monstrosity of soccer that was allowed by the German ref from a notoriously corrupt Bundesliga.

[Berlin_Freeper]

And in the future when opposing teams study this game as well as other similar savage and biased officiated WC games against us, in preparation for the match, what can we expect from them?

That is a WC game?

That is a snake pit!

If you are an American forget about the so called World Cup. It's not going to happen.

[Rummenigge]

good morning micky mouse

[Rummenigge]

shhhh he's the only optimist left in this country - protectected wildlife so to say.

[Rummenigge]

I wrote that down....


:)

[decal]

"That is true but what I am seeing is pattern in the WC where the team against the US is allowed to play like savages while the ref is harsh with calls against the US."

Doesn't FIFA want the US to do well in the WC in order to encourage the American sportsfan (and more importantly his $$) to start following soccer on a permanent basis, not just every 4 years?

Or does institutional anti-Americanism still trump enlightened self-interest?

[FostersExport]

I the US had scored another goal, I think there would be more case for bitterness, but they didn’t.

There is no anti-US bias; it’s just harsh luck to have bad calls go against you. Italy and Spain were victims of far more atrocious refereeing at the last world cup and I doubt there’s some grand conspiracy against those teams.

Australia had decisions go against them last night that were just as bad as the ones that went against the US, but in their case it made no difference. That’s just the way it goes.

[spetznaz]

Good point. Whether or not the refs were anti-US or not (and in terms of being anti a specific country there are nations that got a 'worse deal' than the US) the point still remains that the US team did not play well. Period. Perfect example is the Australian case ....the Aussies got a raw deal, but they still whooped @$$ and thus it made no difference to them whether the ref was blind/biased/drunk/asleep/you-name-it. We lost.

[Berlin_Freeper]

My German friends, all agree that a German ref is expected to officiate better than that, especially in a World Cup.

They offer no excuse such as "bad luck" and accept that there is a corruption problem that is systematic. (Note: "Systematic" and not "grand conspiracy theory" that you ridiculously talk about and not I.)

If you want to accept it as "bad luck" then your non-American point of view crowding a board meant for Americans has been noted, and rejected both by me and the Germans that I know.