World Cup Countdown Thread
 

32 days to the world cup. Place bets now.
In the last thread I predicted Germany would win but this was before the NZ squad was announced with a record low total of 4 amateurs, including a policeman.
With their revolutionary strategy of arresting the opposition before the game,
I'm predicting a NZ surge to the semifinals before being knocked out due to an injury to said policeman.
Last odds I saw on them are about 2000-1, the are my inside tip for you.

What kind of barbarian actually likes soccer?

As for picking a winner, I'll go with Team USA; I can't think of a more spiteful thing for us to do to the rest of the world than to beat all y'all at a game you love but we really don't care that much about.

The Netherlands are go-*snrk*.
This year, the Nethe-hehehe.

No, okay, I can do this.

The Netherlands are totally going bring home the World Cup!

... BWAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, right. It'll end up Netherlands - Germany, and we'll lose the match in the last five minutes, or something like that.

That's why you support Team NZ. We care it about it far far less than the US does- the US actually has a reasonable league and a reasonably good team.
Also our football team is basically the 11 NZers closest to the ground at kickoff time.

Also what kind of pussy likes US sports which are basically girly versions of rest of the world sports!


I do have Holland losing to Germany in the final if I remember correctly. 1974 all over again.

No one likes soccer. No one cares about soccer. This is football. But it's ok, you yanks can go play your sissified version of rugby while we talk real mens sports.

*Waves an england flag a bit*

What the fuck is "soccer"?

Rugby? You mean that sport where sweaty men get in a big circle and have a big group hug?

Oi, you're worse than the Yanks!
Once again my key hope for the world cup is "Anybody but England". Fortunately they are useless and will always be knocked out at last 16 or 8 for ever and eternity.

And rip each others testicles off! It's happened more than once! Also isn't American football even more huggy duggy! They stand in a line waiting to just hug each other. Like that's the point of half the team!

It's this.

Football was our way of un-gaying rugby, mainly in that we wear protective gear to prevent skin-on-skin contact.

That looks about as boring as American "we've got to sit down and have a 30 second chat about our next move and have a rest every 10 seconds" football.

Believe me, it is. I think somebody did a study of several football games and found that in a 1 hour game, there is on average like 10 minutes of actual footballing action.

I can't talk that much because I love cricket where matches are played over 5 days but at least they play the majority of those 5 days.

I said this for years. I wish I were born to a country like Andorra or NZ. I would have fighting chance of some sort to get into the team!

Wasn't there a team in the 1970's who were absolutely rubbish but were hilarious? They just appeared for the hell of it.

As for bets? To be honest I have not been following the World Cup at all this year. Would anyone care to fill me in on what are the haps?

I was hoping to find a youtube clip from the first ninja turtles movie where raph was making fun of casey jones' choice of cricket bat as a weapon. oh well.

also, the 2002 world cup in korea was an interesting time. when korea had to play the US team the embassy issued a public safety warning. several of my mothers students wanted the US team to just take a knee so they could advance in the tournament because americans don't care about soccer anyway. the match ended blessedly in a tie ( in the words of a british famous-among-local-expats reporter).

Shhh, you know how many boring things like school and work you can skip by pretending to support England over here? I'll pretend to care about anything if it'll let me be lazy. *Hangs flag out of window*

Happy for anyone to win thuogh. Unless it's france.

You from the US? You could join their Rugby or cricket teams. You might even make the rugby world cup- the second largest watched sporting event in the world (depending on how you count the Olympics).


As for the World Cup, Spain are massive favourites after winning the last Euro competition and for playing a very attractive form of football built on short passes and lots of possession.
No other major stories apart from the usual rampant corruption of Fifa, with South Africa basically getting screwed by the world cup, locals getting kicked out of their homes, local vendors being cracked down upon to make way for official sponsers, the money that is going to African causes is a small fraction of the massive profits, locals priced out of games, unsold tickets, some teams nervous after the Togo team got shot at during hte African cup. Same old same old.

Also, didn't the American team shock the shit out of some top ranked team in one of the last qualifying tournaments?

he United States are reigning Olympic Champions at Rugby!
And they managed to qualify for the last world cup over Uruguay who are pretty good and at the world cup managed to cause problems for England, who were the reigning world champions at the time.
They do pretty well in the minor competitions at Rugby sevens too.

England squad announced and completley bugger up the chance of playing:
Hart
Johnson Ferdinand Neville Ferdinand
Cole Johnson Neville Cole
Johnson Cole.
Just try marking that team!

Man, this bites. Why does Canada have to suck so bad at Soccer(FootBall) :(

I was going to cheer for the lowest ranking team but that's North Korea and no one wants to cheer for them. I suppose I should cheer for England so my Grandpa doesn't kill me.

Go Sealand!

Since Canada is too busy whipping ass in Hockey all the time, we don't have the luxury of having much of a soccer team I guess. There is quite a big following in Quebec though, we loved when the world cup came on.

For me, I'm not too much into the teams and stuff and since teams I would root for aren't in the cup (Canada, Israel), I will root for the always fun Brazil.

Also (and this might just be my lack of being a huge soccer fan), why aren't Scotland or Ireland in here? Are they really that bad? I thought that they had good teams...

Didn't Canada lose every game at the last hockey world cup?
Oh wait, you mean "hockey", another bastardised sport that you guys play because you're too crap at anything to compete with the rest of the world. My bad.
Nope, they both terrible. They do get to the world cup every so often (depends on what qualification groups they draw) but that's it.
That said they do expect to get through and there wa sa lot of bitching when they didn't. But only 32 teams get to the world cup and a lot more temas than that have good squads.

Surely the NZ team are the lowest ranking, they have amateurs in their squad compared to players earning 100s of thousands of pounds a week! Also they will lose every game.

They have a tough qualifying area. And Ireland lost to France due to hand ball goal. Really controversial and what not.

Canada's should be content with kicking ass in Hockey and Lacross! We need to start kicking ass in Soccer, we have soccer fields all over the damn place anyways so we might as well be using them! Put all the kids through soccer farms!

Edit: I got lazy and made a list of the rankings for world cup teams


BRA =1
ESP =2
POR =3
NED =4
ITA =5
GER =6
ARG =7
ENG =8
FRA =10
GRE =12
USA =14
CHI =15
SRB =16
MEX =17
URU =18
CMR =19
NGA =20
AUS =20
SVN =23
SUI =26
CIV =27
PAR =30
ALG =31
GHA =32
DEN =35
SVK =38
HON =40
JPN =45
KOR =47
NZL =78
RSA =90
PRK =106

Yeah I know, I'm a stat junkie

Oh yeah I forgot about that. The main reason it was so controversial was that it was deliberate, he hit the ball twice into perfect kicking area and didn't deny it afterwards.
Also France are a much stronger team than Ireland so having to cheat to go through was even worse.

Also if Canada needs a new sport, totally rugby. You ahve a reasonable squad already- as in better than the other minnow countries, with mroe players you could be real good.

Er, we won Gold Medals at the Olympics in both men and women's hockey.

Also, I wasn't trying to be an ass or anything to you, and I certainly didn't talk badly about your country, so I'd appreciate you not being an ass to me or my country. I don't know what brought on your "Canada sucks at everything so suck it" attitude, but I didn't go around saying how shitty NZ is (and I wouldn't, I have no idea about your sports other than the All Blacks), so I'd appreciate a little more respect.

Smarty's being a his smart ass self and talking about Field Hockey. He's bitter towards any sport that involves Ice or snow. Probably because he thinks it's to freakin cold out to go out and play those sports. Also, you can always mention how his lovely All Blacks can't win the big game!

It's not just Canada, he was doing it towards America like a page ago. He's indiscriminately bitter.

Are you talking about the same SMB that normally posts on these forums?

Can you blame him? Last time New Zealand won anything in big in sports was 1986. And he has to suffer through the All Blacks choking continuously. Canada was pretty Bitter about Hockey in the Olympics till 2002 ya know.

Have you seen that thread where he shoots down every scientific(and a few not so scientific) idea that is thrown at him, even those he cherishes and looks favourably upon?

I think they still have a better track record than Ireland(where I'm from, specifically the North) which has been stated in this very thread to not even have made it to the World Cup. The best we can usually hope for is the Six Nations Rugby.

Is your country both Germany and the Netherlands at the same time???
NZ is a shithole! Canada is probably better in lots of ways! I just funning yah.

Bro, we made a sweet movie!
And the America's cup??? Does that count? I don't know.

I said sports not movies! And yeah NZ is a great place to make movies and tv shows. It's got Warm Mountains. WARM MOUNTAINS. That's freaking awesome.

I dunno about America's cup well, that's just Sailing, no one cares about that.

I could say the same thing about your "ice hockey"!
The America's cup is pretty stupid because it's all professional teams in various places but the top two teams are pretty much mostly New Zealanders and a lot of the boat builders for most teams are New Zealanders and yet Team NZ still can't win because other countries buy all our dudes.

Also I think a NZer won the big cheeserolling competition in the UK a few years ago.

Ice Hockey is the greatest gift ever to human kind. Did you not see how much awesome controversy the Canadian's Woman team created by going out on the Ice after winning the Gold medal and smoking cigars and drinking booze. It was great! How can you not love that?

America has to get it's boat building slaves from somewhere don't they? Why not steal em from New Zealand.

Though the cheeserolling thing is something an accomplishment I can support! If New Zealand call's it's Football team the Cheese Rollers I'll cheer for them!

No, if you paid attention to the Olympics this year, you'd know that Canada won gold in both events.

There was an olympics this year? I heard about some people playing around in the snow, there was maybe some diplomats there?? I think it was some kind of peace conference? And you get medals for showing up? Certainly seemed that way anyway

Well, it had some sports, had a lot of drinking and sometimes people, the Russian in particular, got mad cause they did horrible. There were a lot of snowball fights and drunken parties in the streets. Seriously SMB you would have fit right in. You could have even wow'd us Canadians with your skills!

I'm pretty sure I could make up at least 6 sports on the spot and convince the organisers they were real and to give me medals for them. That's pretty much how the winter olympics works.

I dunno man, You are a New Zealander so there is still a chance you could choke on winning the medals.

Go to google.com right now. Click on Images.

Team type Brazil soccer fans, Brazil Football fans, Brazil Futebol fans (Futebol is how we say it over here). Go on... i'll wait

...back?

...and that's why Brazil should win this time.

I got to hand it to him. If brazil winning means getting to watch those people celebrating on tv for several hours I will TOTALLY support it.

Hell, anyone but Italy. They should not have won last time.

Most brazil football fans are fat old men supporting them because of notions of how they play the game based on the 1960 world cups. Also it's not like they need to wi anymore.

What was wrogn with Italy winning it Gems? Apart from THAT game against Australia they played pretty well and you can't blame them for the penalty really.

On no no... yeah, we don't actually need to win this one. We just have to make it to the finals just to put the Full spotlight over Brazil's team again. Now, the NEXT world cup, that one we have to win... because it's going to be in Brazil. It would get very ugly very fast if we loose the world cup here.

Actually the last World Cup was quite ugly... most games were just really lackluster and the final was just... "meh", plus Italy got involved in a really messy situation that placed their position to even be at the world cup under suspicion. And there was also all that stuff with Zidane.... it was overall a very low key event.

Not that this one will be that much better. I mean, you can find dozens of reports online right now questioning if This cup has any change of being a success with some serious security issues and slow ticke sales...

On the technical side, i like to consider the Climate and environment and factor that in on how it might affect some of these players and teams.

The Zidane thing was nnot a slur on Italy but more France.
I thik this world cup already has failed due to the rampant shit it heaping on South Africa in complete opposite of what it was supposed to do. But there might be some good footballs.
I jut want Spain to lose. and England but that's a given. Noboy wants England to win.

Fut' balls comin' 'ome
 

Especially the English. Pretty sure most English people fully expect the choke by penalty thing! Been over 10 years and it still hasn't been shaken off.

At least there is hope in the Rugby Union and Cricket for them.

Kinda depressing I had that exact phrase in mind before I even got to the end.

They pretty shit at those too. Better than they are at football though. They somehow manage to win Rugby world cups despite their many flaws though. Not so much the cricket which is pretty much an australia/india/south africa bitch fight at the moment.
The have a shot at the League world cup too, one of only three teams who could win it.


And Argentina has thrown away their chance to win. When they put a drug addict in charge everyone kind of jokingly predicted his teams would be the result of wild mood swings. How right we were.

Is there anytime you actually like besides New Zealand Smarty? Actually, I'm sometimes surprised you like New Zealand...

like hats.
North Korean squad is a mess of Chol, Ri and Kim. I predict set piece carnage, complete inabiiltiy of other sides to mark properly.
Also if one team will be good at bombing on, it will be North Korea.

And their first game is with Brazil!

High-larious!

EDIT: Also, FIFA's website has this amazing Background comparison system where you can put any 2 teams and get their full Stats in detail. It's really great.

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/matches/index.html

That will cause them trouble as Brazilian team is not really down with the man marking. They really needed someone like Italy.

Edit: New world cup ball- I think people may have a problem kicking it around.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...many-i-006.jpg

Why?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two reasons: 1) I have a long standing bet that they will never a world cup. I'm not particularly worried that they'll win- I'm predicting second round exit for them- I think against Portugal (if I remember draw correctly).
2) Too much tippy-tappy, flashy nonsense, reminisicent of our modern age of frivolity over industry, looking good over producing results. They have no heart, no grit. The final shall be won by bombing on, by determination, by courage, by whichever team has the bleeder. I also hope everyone playings the WM, truly the greatest formation of all time.

Edit:
I'm trying to work out why South Africa are ranked so low in the world- they've got a reasonable record in tournaments and their squad is not bad- certainly better than North Korea or New Zealand (who play most of their games with a majority of amateurs- including 3 at this world cup). New Zealand are ranked 78, South Africa 83 whereas South Africa has a far far better team.

I'm thinking about getting beer from each nation to be consumed at appropriate times.
Only 15 days to go

Edit2: World cup fever, world cup fever. NZ just beat Serbia 1-0, a team ranked 62 places higher than them in the rankings. Must make them favourites.
England beat Japan 2-1 with 2 own goals, own goal also scored 13 for Man U this year- talk about him being drafted into English squad. Also England's key penalty taker missed from the spot which is relevant as England pretty much always go out to penalty shootouts- in penalty shootouts England shooters have only a 50% success record compared to a 98% for German shooters (only 1 german penalty taker has ever missed- and they still won the shootout).
North Korea offered cash bonus if they beat England in revenge for Beckham posing with journalists freed from NK prison. Also we not allowed to call them North Korea, only DPRK
At their one previous world cup apperance they beat Italy to get to second round where they lead Portugal 3-0 before losing 3-5.