The "joy" of football!
oneeyedjacks said:
Today Trinidad and Tabago tied 0-0, and they are celebrating in the streets.
You should try watching Test Match Cricket. The game lasts 5 days, play lasts pretty much all day with breaks for lunch and tea, and you can still draw at the end of it!!!!! Still can be very exciting as The Ashes Test series last summer (England vs Australia) clearly showed.
noman said:
The side bars are almost as interesting as the matches..Not only did your government request not mentioning the war, but I see they prevented well over 200 known "thugs" from traveling out of country.
If you look at the tabloid press over in the UK they start foaming at the mouth whenever we play Germany at football - all the old stereotypes start to get plastered over the front pages with clear references to WWII, Nazis, Dambusters, etc and to be honest it makes me ashamed to be English when I see that sort of thing. The germans have moved on, why can't we?
As for the thugs, you probably know back in the 1980's there was a real problem with football hooliganism in the UK and Europe. So called "fans" would arrange with rival firms to have full scale riots loosely arranged around football matches that were savage, bloody and incredibly violent. People were sometimes killed albeit rarely. In fact English football clubs were banned from playing European football for many years after a massively tragic incident in Heysel in the European Cup final where 39 Italian football fans were killed in the stadium directly as a result of football related violence. Although the problem is now largely under control there are still many incidents occuring every weekend all over the country and in Europe and in fact it could be on the rise again. We need to makes sure that it doesn't.
Anyway it's USA vs Czech Republic today which promises to be a good game. Incidentally did you know that the USA are ranked joint 5th in the FIFA rankings with Spain with only Brazil, Czech Rep. Holland and Mexico ahead of them? FIFA will be changing the ranking system after the WC as it probabaly doesn't truely reflect the relative stengths of the teams and depending on the outcome of the next 5 weeks would probably see the USA drop to somewhere between 10 and 15 which is still pretty good considering you are a "non-footballing" nation.
Incidentally what's the betting like on the World Cup over the pond? Much volume? I suspect that there is some money to be made as the bookies might not be terribly clued up on form etc so might be some good odds around. Anybody recommend a good online bookie based in the US?
Cheers
Reachy
