oh, right, the world cup's on

[rone]

Needless to say, i'm ecstatic about Ecuador's victory yesterday.  The Germans seem to be a lot better than expected.  And the English are a huge wad of suck; England-Paraguay was a terrible game.

Also: Trinidad & Tobago played very well and held off the Swedes with only 10 men. Argentina played a good first half and a crappy second half; Ivory Coast's goalie had problems that were all too familiar to me.

For all the hype about England's and Argentina's chances to win it all, they sure didn't look like potential champions today.

Comments

[yong-mi.livejournal.com]

England-Paraguay was just terrible. The Univision announcers seemed more annoyed by the quality of the game than the ABC ones.

Trinidad

[rotojeff.livejournal.com]

Sweden not scoring against them has to be a huge upset, right?

Alas, I didn't get up in time for the England game, but it looks like I didn't miss a whole lot.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A lot was made of Sweden's 30 goals in qualifying play, but 13 of them were against Malta. Still, Trinidad & Tobago made it through on a half-spot vs. Bahrain, so they were definitely not very highly regarded. Plus, that was their backup goalie you saw; he didn't know he would be playing until about five minutes before the game was on. He was a monster when he needed to be, and his defense rarely let him down.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

My analysis, having no knowledge of the pre-qualifier stuff:

Sweden doesn't know what the hell they're doing and will be out in the first round of elimination.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, that depends entirely on whether they can dominate a crappy Paraguayan team in their next game. Which they should do if they're at all as good as they're supposed to be.

[thedarkages]

Yesterday, I was in a crappy Italian restaurant in Ferndale, New York, which is about the middle of upstate white trash nowhere. At the bar, there were six men cheering for Ecuador. The mind boggles.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Did they look Latino? Maybe they were just anti-Poland bigots...

[thedarkages]

No, they didn't look Latino. One of them was African-American. The rest of them were big white guys in their late 20's with buzzcuts and baseball caps. One of them had a mustache.

Listen, profiling is no good here. Realistically, they must have had a lot of money on Ecuador.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Touché, sir, touché.

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even coming over your side of the pond (I'm in Boston at the moment) didn't help me get away from this!

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Opener rocked.

Trinidad looked good; Argentina did killer and then sort of quit, mostly we just discussed how Ivory Coast is spelled in different languages.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I found out I do have cable in the apartment, so I can watch these when they're on, and this time, no British announcers. Yay! Do miss the Mexican telemundo announcers from World Cup in Chicago. I've posted about that before of course but ABC/CBS/FOX/NBC were all "this is a soccer ball! it is ROUND. It has SPOTS AREN'T THEY CUUUUTE? Here's a report on one of our players and his family!" during Brazil/England or whomever Brazil beat that round. Meanwhile, over on Telemundo.... 'spanish spanish spanish spanish spanishspanishspanishspanishspanishspanishspanishspanish GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!! spanishspanishspanish spanish spanish spanish spanish spanishspansishspanishspanishspanishspanish spanish spanish spanish' where even not understanding the language, the enthusiasm of the announcers was conveyed not only in volume, but speed, and it was infectious.
And they showed what, all the games?

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

I don't think performances in the group stages are very significant: all that matters are the results. For example, Brazil looked a bit shaky in their first couple of group games in Japan. OTOH, teams have looked like world-beaters in the group stages at a number of tournaments, to fall early in the knockout stages (classic examples were the USSR and Denmark in '86, when they each put 6 past Hungary and Uruguay respectively, only to lose in the last 16).

As for the England hype, I'll be surprised if they get past the quarter finals. Neither of their main strikers is fit (one of them probably won't be fully fit even if they reach the semis), and they only have two other forwards in the squad (admittedly, Crouch seems to be playing well). They have some good midfielders and defenders (but Neville isn't fully fit eaither), but Robinson is merely competent in goal, and they keep trying to play their best midfielders out of position, instead of putting together the best team. As a Scot, I'm not a fan of England, but I have enough sympathy to wish them a reasonable tournament.

I think Argentina have a better chance. The world cup is about a strong squad, not just the first 11, and their back-up players look pretty handy (Aimar is a very useful replacement if Riquelme(sp?) gets injured). I think we'll get a better measure of them, and the Ivory Coast, in their second game...