why are they better off without him?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Amazing the US won that match. They were awful after the Dempsey goal. Clumsy, plodding, and oafish. Piss poor first touches and wasteful with all the easy giveaways. I actually agreed with Taylow Twellman last night! The fucking pud douche. It's hard to get around the fact Twellman sounds and looks like a guy you'd want to beat with a 2x4. But he's actually not that bad of an analyst compared to the rest of these talking rectums. Lalas just spews words about intangibles and "American" victories. God, he's useless. Get that ginger asshole off my tv. I'm done with Wright Thompson and his poignant memos about Brazil. MIke Tirico? Get lost, guy. His head is abnormally large and odd-shaped for a human being. Reminds me of the blockheads from Gumby.

Just think, without Adolf Hitler the US never would have won last night.

And we finally got our first 0-0 draw yesterday!

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

jan vertonghen started over thomas vermaelen for a belgium squad starting 4 CBs today. that doesn't bode well for arsenal's captain.

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great goal by belgium there.. you saw that one coming from a mile away. it'd take a colossal fuckup (vertonghen anyone?) for them to blow this one now at 2-1 @ 80'

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Mertens, all 5'4" of him, was a half-time sub, fresh-legs.

welp now for the main course of the afternoon... does anyone think/hope that mexico has something for brazil?

how many pens will it take to get brazil comfortably through to the next round? i'm thinking they'll get at least 1-2 today depending on how fucked mexico is, seeing as brazil got refballed at 1-1 when they were handed a rather nice penalty to put them up 2-1 and have croatia chasing the game... and then the refs tried to hold back mexico by fucking over dos santos, well, twice.... but yeah, i'm thinking brazil gets their 1-2 pens and at 6pts with mexico taking a big L they'll be through comfortably if they win today like 3-1 or 4-2 or something (cuz that ~4-5 GD would hold up barring a total failure in the final match)

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Should be lots of scoring since neither team plays defense.

btw i think you guys might get a kick out of this quick lil analysis of the USA's big win >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPhroNXrxvw

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mexico needs to chill out and let the game come to them a little bit. if they keep forcing the issue they'll get countered to death and/or those 1-2 pens will come and allow brazil to walk with that easy 3-1/+ victory.

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dedicated to the mexico national team and their somewhat spirited first half

chant it wiht me if you know the sounds!

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He tends to only score against Caribbean garbage nations for the national team and was horrendous for his club team this year, scoring one league goal all season. Before he transferred to his current team in the English Premier League he scored a bunch of goals in the Dutch league where nobody plays defense and all of a sudden people think he's great.

I've heard that the Brazilians just go by one name - like "Madonna" or "Cher". Usually they are catchy and hispanic sounding....

Dude's name is "Fred".

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Loving the pitch today.

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-- source

Mexico taking it at Brazil, right now. Brazil hates to play defense and it shows.

welp depending on how this finishes up, i'm nominating the mexican keeper for MOTM. huge save just now in the 85th minute

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Breaking news:

Brazilian women are gorgeous.
These crowd shots are something.

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well slap me silly and call me susan i SO did not see that one coming. i had mario kart wii u come over by the 2nd half so i wasn't watching 100% as attentively as i was in the first half, but i'm patently shocked that brazil didn't end up with a PK in the second half cuz clearly that's what the doctor ordered (and i buy the hubris that this brazil wouldn't be a favorite if this WC were played in europe/asia/not-brazil-or-south-america cuz this side isn't all kinds of amazing)

so yeah wow shocking result that says that brazil will definitely get the red carpet treatment in the next match. they'll get their 1-2 penalties.... so now supertard in tinfoilland over here can say this game was there to neutralize the haters (or to tell brazil to flop harder, something they definitely need to embrace) and yeah.... i expect it will take an act of god for brazil to outright lose the next game (or draw if thats how the points work out) and therefore not make it through out of the group. they're getting out of the group by hook or by crook, prisoner fans.

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Very impressive game by the Mexico keeper. Probably the best game he has or ever will play.

Lot of action in this game. Both teams attacking relentlessly. Mexico took way too many outside shots. Mexico's keeper saved the day in the end. Both will most likely get through to the next round now.

agreed on all points. as an arsenal fan i can tell you that having too many "outside shots" isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world because the extreme alternative is "the arsenal way" aka trying to make 2-4 super-difficult super-cutesy passes in the box until you end up with an ideal goal like jack wilshere vs norwich this last PL season which hey dont get me wrong.... it's fantastic when it happens. but it's only gonna happen something like 1/1000 times.

so that said, having watched olivier giroud absolutely freak out when he's got a 10-15ft wide open shot at the net and kick it out wide to monreal who the has to attempt an impossible cross into the box and hope that a perfect ball can get headed/tapped in, well, i'm a fan of longer shots (within reason) as long as they're acceptible endgames within the flow of the play itself so yeah while mexico had a few too many 2pac moments (it's just me against the world baby!) i wanna point out that at the same time if the whole team is mortified to take the open ~10-15ft shot you've got a whole different problem that you can argue is bigger than taking too many long/ish shots because when the shot is there you need to pull the trigger like wargames taught you as a wee lad.

as the visionary football genius ray hudson once said in a postgame presser when he was managing DC united in the MLS--- "possession without penetration is masturbation" and welp, also quoteth george carlin "i never fucked a dime... but one night i fucked five 2s" --- and if one of those 2s goes in, welp, you're not chastising mexico for taking long shots right now. and if you don't have a + midfield like belgium it's hard to expect to be able to walk the baal (named after louis van gaal after his 5-1 triumph) up into the goal by virtue of a trailing mertens.

so yeah like everything in life it's all about the grey areas and a balance.. and i think if mexico has the werewithol to make long/ish shots happen, welp, at least they have the requisite calhones to do so.... cuz if one of them goes in we talk about what a badass visionary piece of football acumen that was as opposed to saying "they shouldnt have taken all those shots they missed" --- "the distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success" - jonathan price in taht james bond movie tomorrow never dies.

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sorry that wasn't really directed at you. i didn't think about that when i clipped your quote.

Hey Lips, I got to say, I'm anti-Hudson. Way too much Barcelona love, as if they are the only team capable of playing at a majestic level. I could also do without his excessive superlatives. I understand its his style but give me something else besides empty gush.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

oh shit dude.... holy fuck i just realized one of the casualties of my laptop hard drive going splat on friday the 13th..... towards the end of last season i started working on ray hudson bingo. it'd be an awesome drinking/game to play whenever you hear his dulcet tones massaging your brain via the network that you're not supposed to remember was once called al-jazeera sports (beIN tv)

however, fate conspired against me as the laptop hard drive died horrorshow bad and then when i tried to open it up and install my other craptop's still-working HD (protip: when you've had a dead screen for 2+ yrs and said screen is hanging by one thick cable as the rest of the casing is cracked and something has to give, dont cut said cable with scissors. you figure the rest of the computer portion of the laptop would keep on working because all of the key components are in the "lap" part as opposed to the "top" part however that cable up to the screen had something important to do with the power circuit and yeah..... i've had 3 comptuers die in the last two weeks; c'est la vie)

AHEM. so when i tried to open it up and put that hard drive in from the freshly snipped 2009 toshiba craptop, well, the palmrest cables kind of came out weird and the little bracket that held the keyboard cable in snapped off as i was reattaching it (the youtube videos make it look so easy and show you how to do it in one 2sec motion. my fucking arse) so i put the KB cable in there as best i could and sealed it with duck tape (i have to use an external KB anyways cuz dell inspiron 3520 keyboards are hot garbage) once i got the still-working HD in and went to power it on.... yeah absolutely nothing. thank god i caught another nice toshiba open box @ a local best buy otherwise you guys might have to suffer with me typing little short messages on my cellphone for awhile.

so yeah god willing after another ~3-4 games to start this la liga / serie A season i'll remember most of the key phrases and have ray hudson bingo ready to roll circa october-november of this season. i know you'll be waiting with bated breath.

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Cahill has been playing his ass off in these first two games.

Hell of a goal, right there.

Australia is playing out of their minds right now. Netherlands playing like shit. This would be something if Australia could get a result here.

Damn has this game been entertaining.

Helluva game. Aussies had a few gifts they declined. Would've been a fun upset had they pulled it out.

Happy to see Netherlands pull out a victory in a game they played so sloppy... Now losing RVP against Chile shouldnt be the end of the world unless Spain wins tonight by 5 goals.

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Well they have 20 minutes to score 7.

Spain is gone. Netherlands and Chile advance.