The World Cup Brazil 2014

Most are really corny and PC.. I do love the French one, though.
 
....
That isn't a homage to the (alleged) George Bush line " .. the French don't have a word for entrepreneur ..." ? :lol:

iF i am not mistaken "impossible n'est pas fran?ais" dates from the Napoleonic wars .
Anyway it's a lame slogan , impossible to win the world cup? : yes !!
 
iF i am not mistaken "impossible n'est pas fran?ais" dates from the Napoleonic wars .
Anyway it's a lame slogan , impossible to win the world cup? : yes !!

Ah, thanks for that clarification.

Too bad that Samir Nasri has missed out on going to Brasil, as he had a good season for Manchester City.

What do the French sports newspapers say about the French World Cup squad or maybe Nasir not going? :?

(Maybe he dones not get on well with Didier.)

EDIT:


Which EPL Clubs Have the most players going to the World Cup?


Daily Mirror said:
Manchester United and Chelsea have the most players selected with 16 each.

Man City, Liverpool and Arsenal each have 12 players in World Cup squads.

(Note: Includes players from the 30 man squads plus reserves.)

Manchester United

Belgium Marouane Fellaini
Belgium Adnan Januzaj

Ecuador Antonio Valencia

England Phil Jones
England Chris Smalling
England Wayne Rooney
England Danny Welbeck
England Michael Carrick
England Tom Cleverley

France Patrice Evra

Japan Shinji Kagawa

Mexico Javier Hernandez

Netherlands Robin van Persie

Portugal Nani

Spain David De Gea
Spain Juan Mata

*****************

Chelsea


Belgium Thibaut Courtois
Belgium Eden Hazard
Belgium Romelu Lukaku
Belgium Thorgan Hazard

Brazil David Luiz
Brazil Ramires
Brazil Willian
Brazil Oscar

Cameroon Samuel Eto'o

England Gary Cahill
England Frank Lampard

Germany Andre Schurrle

Nigeria John Mikel Obi
Nigeria Victor Moses

Spain Cesar Azplicueta
Spain Fernando Torres
 
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Ah, thanks for that clarification.

Too bad that Samir Nasri has missed out on going to Brasil, as he had a good season for Manchester City.

What do the French sports newspapers say about the French World Cup squad or maybe Nasir not going? :?

(Maybe he dones not get on well with Didier.)
...
It has been reported that he is not going well with the team and that some others players complain about him.
Well, I don't follow that case closely, i must say because i don't care much about a footballer's "feelings" .

However the tweets of his girlfriend saying that France is a racist country and Didier Deschamps a s**t manager has created a little buzz about it .
Didier Deschamps is just suing her for "public insult".
 
It has been reported that he is not going well with the team and that some others players complain about him.
Well, I don't follow that case closely, i must say because i don't care much about a footballer's "feelings" .

However the tweets of his girlfriend saying that France is a racist country and Didier Deschamps a s**t manager has created a little buzz about it .
Didier Deschamps is just suing her for "public insult".

It may have been more prudent if Deschamps had delayed suing the girlfriend until after the World Cup. Making lots of bad media news before the competition is perhaps not very wise.

This is what he said to TF1:
BBC from TF1 TV said:
"Samir is an important player for Manchester City but he has not performed that well with France.

"He is a starter at City, which is not the case with France and he has made clear that he is not happy when he is not (a starter), and I can tell you it can be felt in the squad.

"I built the best squad, I did not pick the 23 best French players."

Deschamps is the head Coach and responsible for the sucess of the team. If any players are thought to be disputive, then he is correct to exclude them, as any good Coach should.

:smile:

EDIT:

BBC Trailer
 
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100% drank the kool-aid. USA to win the World Cup. You heard it here first.

Edit: Also I can do nothing but thank Norway for this
 
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This might come randomly but I think the whole of the Americas should have one big association and do qualifiers like that. Its really crappy that the US and Mexico pretty much will get a free pass to every world cup ever because everyone else in NA sucks. After all the Americas have less amount of countries than Europe and we manage to make relatively fair qualifying rounds...
 
Thinking of the 3-2 drubbing we gave you in 2002? ;)
 
This might come randomly but I think the whole of the Americas should have one big association and do qualifiers like that. Its really crappy that the US and Mexico pretty much will get a free pass to every world cup ever because everyone else in NA sucks. After all the Americas have less amount of countries than Europe and we manage to make relatively fair qualifying rounds...

Ah! The politics of FIFA.

They have wanted the game to develop and expand in the USA for more than 20 years. (e.g.1994 World Cup in USA.)

Anyhoo, I don't really understand how the CONMEBOL qualifiers work anyway, for South America. So to add another bunch of teams in there would not be so good, perhaps.

Thinking of the 3-2 drubbing we gave you in 2002? ;)

Football fans have long memories. :cool:
 
Ah! The politics of FIFA.

They have wanted the game to develop and expand in the USA for more than 20 years. (e.g.1994 World Cup in USA.)

Anyhoo, I don't really understand how the CONMEBOL qualifiers work anyway, for South America. So to add another bunch of teams in there would not be so good, perhaps.

CONMEBOL's qualifiers work like a league table where teams play each other once home, once away, and points are added. The top 4 go to the World Cup, the 5th plays a play-off with someone from the AFC. This year it was only 9 teams out of 10 cos Brazil were auto-qualified as hosts.
Obviously wouldnt work if you brought in all those small tiny irrelevant teams that CONCACAF are made of (41 of them). They get 3 spots + 1 play off for the World Cup, when they should probably get 2 or even 1 qualified 1 play off.
If you dont know what Im talking about, teams like Honduras and Costa Rica which are basically free wins for whoever draws them in their group, qualified. Mexico went 4th and to a play off with the OFC guys, they really didn't deserve to be there.
To further my point, Honduras and Costa Rica are taking up places that could be filled by other teams such as Denmark, Sweden, Romania, Scotland...

Thinking of the 3-2 drubbing we gave you in 2002? ;)

I was discussing the group with someone today and reminded them that the US is not to be underestimated cos that leads to stupid defeats like in the past, but I wasnt able to tell when and where it'd been that the US beat us that one time. Thanks for the reminder.
 
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Thinking of the 3-2 drubbing we gave you in 2002? ;)

Football fans have long memories. :cool:

30 years of hurt? Or is it more like 48 now? ;)

For England football fans, yeah probably. The 2010 World Cup was terrible for them and the 2014 World Cup probably won't be much better.

I was discussing the group with someone today and reminded them that the US is not to be underestimated cos that leads to stupid defeats like in the past, but I wasnt able to tell when and where it'd been that the US beat us that one time. Thanks for the reminder.

Well, the England team did once upon a time:

United States 1?0 England (1950 FIFA World Cup) - Wiki

:smile:

* * *

More nostalgia now:

The BBC showed this today. Shot in 35mm colour film with different POV and better quality to the 1970s TV colour video.


FIFA Official World Cup Film 1970 - No.6

BBC iPlayer said:
An in-depth documentary looking back on the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, which saw Brazil legend Pele make his final appearance on the world stage.

The 1970 tournament was the first to be broadcast in colour around the world. Carlos Alberto led a Brazilian side, often regarded as the greatest ever World Cup team, to their third global title - a feat that gave them permanent ownership of the Jules Rimet trophy.

If you can't get the iPlayer to work, then the documentary will probably be around the interwebs somewhere.

Along with these others:

List of official FIFA World Cup films - Wiki

I watched the 1954 Switzerland film a couple of weeks ago, that was good too.

:cool:
 
CONMEBOL's qualifiers work like a league table where teams play each other once home, once away, and points are added. The top 4 go to the World Cup, the 5th plays a play-off with someone from the AFC. This year it was only 9 teams out of 10 cos Brazil were auto-qualified as hosts.
Obviously wouldnt work if you brought in all those small tiny irrelevant teams that CONCACAF are made of (41 of them). They get 3 spots + 1 play off for the World Cup, when they should probably get 2 or even 1 qualified 1 play off.
If you dont know what Im talking about, teams like Honduras and Costa Rica which are basically free wins for whoever draws them in their group, qualified. Mexico went 4th and to a play off with the OFC guys, they really didn't deserve to be there.
To further my point, Honduras and Costa Rica are taking up places that could be filled by other teams such as Denmark, Sweden, Romania, Scotland...

It's really hard to determine how many countries get represented from each confederation. I feel like Europe is already borderline over-repersented in the World Cup, and UEFA's qualification process involves way to many countries. The knock that CONCACAF has irrelevant countries like Honduras and Costa Rica (or Cuba and Haiti) going through qualification is equally negated by UEFA's inclusion of impossibly long shot Malta, San Marino, The Faeroe Islands, etc. I feel that the worse teams in CONCACAF are on par with those countries. So how do you fairly represent every confederation? Taking away a slot from a team like Costa Rica to give to a team like Sweden, who are ranked better but simply didn't qualify due to better opponents isn't globally fair. Hell, just make the World Cup straight out play, and it'll be Brazil OR any one of a hand full of European countries every time. May be fun football to watch, but really doesn't get me excited for every 4 years, knowing that we'll have every style and every corner of the globe represented. Just like taking CONCACAF down to 2 AQ teams, 99.99% of the time it'll be the US and Mexico. Why would the rest of the nations have an interest?

tl?dr: Qualifying is the best as its going to get, and making space for "better" footballing nations eliminates the fun of actually playing the games.
 
Live WC warm up game in progress in Miami, Florida.
(Delayed by thunderstorm for 40 minutes.)

Half time:

Full time reuslt:

Honduras 0 - 0 England

Pretty poor and unimpressive, but Honduras played well, despite having one guy sent off.
 
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I'm sorry but am I the only one who thinks Germany's is a little... ehh... 4 words out of the 6 are the same as some famous slogan by an infamous political party.

:lol::lol:

I've heard that for the first time today (not such a surprise because I care shit about soccer...) BUT... I'm surprised that despite of all political correctness we're forced to represent they dare to chose such a slogan...
 
It's really hard to determine how many countries get represented from each confederation. I feel like Europe is already borderline over-repersented in the World Cup, and UEFA's qualification process involves way to many countries. The knock that CONCACAF has irrelevant countries like Honduras and Costa Rica (or Cuba and Haiti) going through qualification is equally negated by UEFA's inclusion of impossibly long shot Malta, San Marino, The Faeroe Islands, etc. I feel that the worse teams in CONCACAF are on par with those countries. So how do you fairly represent every confederation? Taking away a slot from a team like Costa Rica to give to a team like Sweden, who are ranked better but simply didn't qualify due to better opponents isn't globally fair. Hell, just make the World Cup straight out play, and it'll be Brazil OR any one of a hand full of European countries every time. May be fun football to watch, but really doesn't get me excited for every 4 years, knowing that we'll have every style and every corner of the globe represented. Just like taking CONCACAF down to 2 AQ teams, 99.99% of the time it'll be the US and Mexico. Why would the rest of the nations have an interest?

tl?dr: Qualifying is the best as its going to get, and making space for "better" footballing nations eliminates the fun of actually playing the games.

tl;dr - with more international games between confederations and by using the already existing FIFA Rankings to work out which percentage of the top 32 teams are from which confederation

No dont start doing the math right now because as I said youd need like mandatory, "test" matches between confederations to get realistic numbers

Remember, the world cup should be the top 32 teams in the world. Not the politically correct way to assign 32 spots.
 
tl;dr - with more international games between confederations and by using the already existing FIFA Rankings to work out which percentage of the top 32 teams are from which confederation

No dont start doing the math right now because as I said youd need like mandatory, "test" matches between confederations to get realistic numbers

Remember, the world cup should be the top 32 teams in the world. Not the politically correct way to assign 32 spots.
I see where you're coming from, but tbh that just feels like it'll be a European/South American heavy affair. There are no Asian teams in the top 32 right now, and by my count 9 non European teams. I get where you're coming from, but I honestly feel like the best teams qualified.
 
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