At 6/22/06 11:56 AM, -Alex- wrote:
USA can't beat Ghana. Ghana is the size of one of our states for fucks sake.
Two. It's the same size as Illinois and Indiana.
Root for Togo!!
Rick's version: "Hey, I have to root for Togo. The country is twice the size of a football field and half their population is playing on the team. How can you not root for Togo."
My version: "If Togo ties or wins, France goes home."
At 6/22/06 11:59 AM, mighty_potato wrote:
This just tells me that the FIFA ranking system is completely wrong. Fifth ranked USA should have had no trouble beating Ghana. Also, the second ranked Czechs are out of the group round too. I definitely did not see Italy and Ghana coming out of the group. Group E was definitely a shocker.
Go back to page 2 or 3 when I was trying to see how I did against a FIFA re-rank; these people are as bad (or worse) than the BCS. Among other goofiness, Czech played Turkey and tied. For that match, Czech lost 4 points and Turkey lost 3 ...
At 6/22/06 12:16 PM, --Hybrid-- wrote:
I wish all you fans out there could be over here right now, it's absolutely fantastic!
Unfortuately, I was there until last week, then had to go back to the States for my brother's wedding tomorrow. Leipzig last Sunday (save for the "eins ist genug" nonsense) was all I had hoped for. Holland needs to stop playing "enough," and actually play a full match or they will get their asses handed to them by Portugal or Brazil.
At 6/22/06 02:20 PM, jonthomson wrote:
Well, Brazil and Japan play out a meaningless game tonight, leaving Australia and Croatia to playoff for second. It's got the potential to be a very good match.
It wasn't exactly meaningless. If Japan had managed to hold on and win, while Australia lost or tied, Japan could have been through. My hope was that Japan won and Australia won by a lot (enough to make up their 3 goals behind Brasil), making Australia first in Group and sending Brasil to the other bracket. Pipe dream it was, but one had to hope.
At 6/22/06 03:19 PM, Bluefalcon92092 wrote:
i think argentina will win.with that 6 to 0 victory that was cool.
6-0 over Serbia means nothing, just like 8-0 over Saudi meant nothing to the Germans last Cup. It's how you play against quality sides that matters ... and Argentina-Holland playing for nothing except getting out of the match without anyone having to sit out the next match means even less. The game we all expected to be (one of) the best Group games went out with a whimper.
At 6/23/06 06:12 AM, JesseRay wrote:
Is it me or does FIFA need to re-access Australias world ranking (42)
Rankings were last done in mid-May, and won't be re-done util mid-July. They held off in June as the pre-cursors to the Cup and the Cup itself were about to begin, and are waiting until the Monday after the Cup is over to tally up the results of the last couple of months. Even when they do that, see my comments above for how little you should trust the rankings.
At 6/23/06 06:47 AM, madknt wrote:
seriously.. most international sports have points system but it resets with the world cup.
Nothing resets. Matches from 8 years ago are still factored into the point total, expiring as time moves on. When this Cup is over and they redo the rankings, all of the rankings from Cup '98 will expire ... so expect France to take a huge point and ranking hit, even if they do manage to make it out of Group this Cup.
At 6/23/06 07:41 AM, JesseRay wrote:
Also how did USA score 7th I think it was in the FIFA world rankings, commercial ploy or what?
They made it as high as 4th back in April. What happened was that 8 year expiration bit affected Argentina more (dropping from 4 to 8) than it affected US, Mexico, and Spain, by retiring more points from Argentina than it did from the others while not replacing it with new points earned in April ... since pretty much no one played anyone. Going from April to May, Mexico had no points retired, but the US did, so US slipped a rank below Mexico. It will be only slightly less nonsensical after the Cup is over.
