USA GRINDS TO HALT FOR WORLD CUP GAME
Posted on 06/25/2014 11:39:16 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
When the World Cup pairings were announced in December, the date U.S. Coach Juergen Klinsmann circled most prominently on his calendar was June 26, the group-play final against Germany.
That's the country Klinsmann, the player, led to a World Cup title in 1990 and the one Klinsmann, the coach, led to a third-place finish in the 2006 World Cup. So playing against his homeland in his first World Cup as the American coach was something he both feared and embraced.
Now that the game is at hand, though, Klinsmann says he's feeling another emotion: joy.
"This is going to be so much fun," he said Tuesday. "I'm so excited."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Might be incentive but those are wages owed them in the first place. For the record, I know Togo had problems with wages before, perhaps Ivory Coast and Cameroon too. This is fairly common in African soccer/football.
I didn’t mean to give a snippy answer about drawing today, the Germans are our friends obviously. Still, you do have to be careful to trust your opponent. Also, there could be fallout if two teams just went out and were obviously time-wasting and passing it to each other. It would be negative PR and if Algeria saw that, I’m sure they’d double up against Russia to face Germany. Yes, Germany is 10 times better than Algeria on paper but the game is played on the grass.
Pulling Cameron from the XI is a good start.
And I wouldn’t seriously suggest colluding for a draw.
Well, people won’t take kindly to this and Ballack just predicted Germany.
Own Goal, Portugal up 1-0.
So far...so good.
Germany only won the WC in 74 because of rain.
Poland with their speed should have beaten them in the semis, but the rain slowed them down.
I know World Cup-lore per some people have it that the area of the goal in front of the Polish goalkeeper was soaked up but not the German end, maybe at half-time. I’ve heard this theory discarded but I know the pitch was flooded.
“The one thing that most people will remember about the 1974 finals is that it was plagued by torrential rain and many of the games were player in very bad conditions, particularly the game between West Germany and Poland with a place in the Final at stake. The pitch in Frankfurt was water-logged and the city’s fire department was called in to soak it up.”
http://www.footballworldcup.org/1974.html
Portugal is the much sharper side it sounds like.
Bradley needs replacing.
GHA 1 - 1 POR, biting nails again.
DFWGator everyone has had outstanding analysis and called this group pretty close before the first games were played.
If Ghana scores again, USA only advances on head-to-head, any additional GER or GHA goals would advance Ghana.
Correction: if Ghana wins 2-1 and USA loses 1-0, Ghana advances.
Translation: we could REALLY use a goal right about now.
That b*****d (CR7) scores!
GHA 1 - 2 POR
Everything in the end went according to the plan: get a win and a tie against Portugal Ghana, and lose closely to Germany.
USA 0 - 1 GER
GHA 1 - 2 POR
GER 7 pts +5
USA 4 pts +0
POR 4 pts -3
GHA 1 pts -2
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