Posted on 06/30/2014 12:03:51 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
SAO PAULO – Lost amid all the talk about the World Cup making soccer grow in popularity within the United States is one very real and unexpected development taking place right here in Brazil.
The United States is growing in popularity within soccer.
Don't look now, U.S. men's national team, but you are increasingly becoming the second favorite team for a lot of folks from other countries, including the host nation.
"Brazil is falling in love with the U.S.," said Brazilian businessman Mario Ribiero, who partied with American supporters in Recife last week. "It is seen as something new and exciting and surprising. We love the team because it is an underdog. And we love the fans."
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.yahoo.com ...
It was awesome! And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed wearing my orange NL soccer stuff around town in SoCal yesterday.
Do you only watch soccer once every 4 years, maybe not that often and you see Netherlands is doing okay and cheer for them?
There are many Dutch on the internet, really from Holland and they are not using the accomplishment of the Dutch team to take pot-shots at other countries.
They made the round of 16, it’s the World Cup. They did well no matter what you say.
And Losing until the 88th minute.
Greece came out ahead of Ivory Coast and Japan, Japan who advanced last time and everyone predicted them to advance. Some people really don’t know much about the sport.
You bet I’ll go with underdogs than some of the overdogs, some with a real history of cheating in the World Cup even if they’ve won the trophy and that’s a good number of them.
Great stories are teams like Costa Rica, not the usual 4 teams that have won most of the World Cups. Yeah, I’ll cheer for the smaller nations.
PS - Next I look forward to the Algerians getting sent back to their wasteland home and to all their criminal supporters across Europe getting teargassed by cops during the inevitable riots.
Whatever.
Holland deserved the victory, they have good politicians over there, I was kidding. I doubt if you would find people from there actually taking that victory lightly and of all things, Robben’s remarks but I don’t fault him, they were denied a penalty and he was being honest.
Cheating is a part of the game. I’m not a fan of Italy but they were obviously cheated in that game vs. Uruguay.
I thought about going to the local Mexican restaurant wearing my Holland hat. But then I thought, why risk my health?
Will check later today if he's still alive.
Nigeria holding their own so far.
Nigeria gets one called back. I don’t know, I thought it was very close. I thought he was barely onside.
Amen to that. I still have the bad taste in my mouth of the Algerians, with a win being the only way through for them, still shutting up shop and playing for a 0-0 against the US in the last world cup. Fortunately the US (barely) prevailed.
Fantastic save by the NIgerian keeper.
Not ready to say Austria and the Germans conspired ahead of time, but once the Germans scored, there definitely seemed to be some unspoken wink/wink, nudge/nudge action going on.
Ah yes, "Soccer Made In Germany", I remember watching that religiously.
PBS also used to show English First Division games, again edited to an hour, in the mid to late 70s. Leeds United, Notts. Forest (and County), Derby, Sheffield Wed., etc. were all mainstays in the top flight back then. Now, not so much...
If I miss a match I wanted to see, the “90 in 30” programs are a food way to see the best part of the action. Wish they would show the highlights at night using that format.
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