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

This makes me so happy.

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you know, when i stop and think about how many defending WC champions turn around and get beaten rather quickly and easily in the next WC i'd be willing to bet that most of those teams end up being near-complete-rehashes of their previous WC winning squads. while the thought is that you're trying to bring out the same winning side/formula and repeat what you did 4yrs ago, i think there's something to be said about these teams being comprised of world/class players who most likely play for big clubs making deep runs in the CL and their respective domestic cup tournaments all while playing a full complement of 30+ league games per year that often ratchet up in intensity as the season goes on as they're contending for the league title; there's a lot of mileage these guys have put on between their last triumphant world cup and the next one.

in the case of spain, i'm pretty sure they basically trotted out no less than 8-9 of the same starting XI that won not just the 2010 WC, but also euro 2008/2012. or at least the core creative players and likely non-pique defenders are the same, as the one big change (other than pique retiring) was that you don't have young and pacey torres (read: pre-knee-injury torres as the scousers got one over on chelsea pretty bad with that 55mil transfer of damaged goods) at striker, and personally i don't think that diego costa is on the level that the young gazelle-like torres was at. he's a solid striker but in no way is the dude world class enough to step out there and be one of the main reasons your side prevails over netherlands/chile.

so yeah, i'm thinking while he might not be bad at chelsea he's probably not going to be the saviour that they're looking for at striker, and thus he'll be torres v2.0. bring it on i say!

ah well, with spain out at least the chances of one of my preferred teams (germany, france, england) to win the cup!

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I'd be happy to see England win the World Cup in the same sense that I'll almost always be happy to see the Canadiens win the Stanley Cup: it's been long enough that it would restore some much-needed balance to the universe, and even though this is supposed to be the world's game, it's really England's. I'd be cool with France, too, having my sliver of French extraction and all, but I feel like England/France is a situation where you really have to pick a lane. Anglophilia/Francophilia is sort of the Beatles/Stones of vestigial European longing: you can like both, but whichever one you ultimately decide on as yours defines you, in a sense.

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This is a good point. I thought that a similar thing had happened to the Netherlands after the 2012 shit showing in the Euro. I thought maybe they held on to a core that never really got along well to begin with. I guess they are proving that wrong so far in the WC but after seeing Chile easily dispatch Spain and seeing the struggle to eek out the victory against Australia, I'm torn about what to expect in the round of 16... Either way I'm happy because I was worried they wouldnt even get out of group stage.

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Considering 80% of Spain's roster is from Atletico, Real, and Barcelona --- three squads that hate each other --- its not surprising that they have a hard time gelling once the World Cup started.

They have won the last three major international tournaments. I dont think gelling is their issue.

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Looking forward to seeing the pitch today.

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-- source

i think he's ready to come to arsenal now...

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Fuck that! England has the same sense of entitlement that you find in Team Canada hockey fans. There isn't a team in the world (other than Mexico) that I enjoy seeing lose more than those limey fucks.

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yea, that makes perfect sense...until you take a look at the 6 years preceeding this World Cup when Spain dominated the world with a roster of players from rival club teams.

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Until you look at how the past season went in La Liga and Champions League and how contentious it was. This season was brutally contentious between these rivals. It was very heated and I think it showed out on the field in the World Cup. They did not look like a team that liked each other at all.

to me that's what makes it so endearing to follow england. yeah they've scaled down the expectations since they peaked around 98 and 06 (and made going out on penalties an artform) but still it's like they're the little train that couldn't whenever it's time out to go and show the world that the sun never sets on the english football empire.... which is unfortunate because if the sun set maybe it would be harder for their opponents to see rooney's "marked man" operating with plenty of space as the team counter/attacks downfield.

i'll be very interested to see what kind of squad woy puts out there today. methinks if they keep fucking around with rooney on a wing uruguay's midfield/wings/attack will be better suited to making them pay for allowing that kind of open space on either side of the field when they're counter/attacking and then..... well, hey shoot roy said that this team is supposed to "attack attack attack" so let's have at it!

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It was really out of hand during that time period but it extended to 2010 as well. Ray Hudson summed it up....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7zjhYKkOW0&feature=kp

Business has picked up here in the second half of Colombia and Ivory Coast.

The World Cup: where no one cares about concussions.

Uruguay dude just knocked unconscious on the field. They wake him up and let him keep playing.

Rooney finally scores a WC goal.

England = Choke

I have now watched 4 or 5 WC games and I have a question. Why are throw ins on the offensive side of the pitch not used as an offensive weapon? It seems like throw-ins usually go about 5-10 yards.
Why not throw a 50/50 pop up towards the goal ? This part of the game I don't get.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Basically, at this level, the quality of the goalkeeper is far too good to just lob a ball into the box.

Spain just got older. If you compare their distance traveled per 90 this year (soccer advanced metrics, ugh) to previous tournaments they had nothing in the tank. Fuck tiki taka and that dude that decided to play for Spain rather than Brazil, he deserved to go out like this.

So you're saying it would work in MLS?

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>moyes is truly the gift that keeps on giving...

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Man, England are so plodding. I wonder if the English fans are genuinely surprised by their team's performance? Gerrard looked so past it yesterday. Every time they showed his face he looked like a two pack per day guy trying to run the 100m dash. None of their players, with the exception of maybe Rooney, would start in a squad like Barca, Madrid, or Bayern. They're just so average.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

I think Sturridge and Welbeck look pretty good. I think over the next 4 years they could become a force. They aren't quite there yet, though.

woy has to go. gerrard is a mascot. if you're going to play rooney play him in his damn position...

personally i think welbeck is useless. if he had an auto/biography penned today it could be called "two steps behind: the danny welbeck story" because there was that nice cross in from baines that welbeck was predictably 2 steps behind (which would have equalized the game earlier) that was a play where the english team really missed theo walcott because he has the type of pace to get there (granted that he's already bricked his 2-3 close range wide open shots because he has to do that before he's able to score)

between arsenal and now the english team i've supported outfits that have missed theo since the beginning of the year. crikey. barkley should have started, and sturridge was running out of gas after ~45-60mins on the pitch so i think he would have ideally been used as an impact sub. woy was playing him as the #10 IIRC, so you could have started rooney or barkley at #10 and then brought in sturridge if you needed an athletic boost either chasing the game or trying to hold onto a draw, which fearless leader gerrard now says they should have played for. c'est la fucking vie.

so yeah at least by the time euro 2016 rolls around you figure gerrard will have officially gone to pasture (likely lampard too cuz he can't even catch a sub nowadays) and you can finally start barkley and by then you hope wilshere is 100% fit and back to top form cuz having a guy whose ideal form has him wield a soft first touch with a lightning fast first step upfield that gets the ball into dangerous positions for the opposing defense = what this team needed in their midfield, not gerrard.

at least rooney wasn't as exposed on the wing vs uruguay because the failures came from the defensive backs. wtf was jagielka doing when he didn't even pay attention to suarez for a good 5sec before he trotted up and scored that first goal?

ah well this was a team in transition. they should have gone "all in" with the "young lions" and started getting key players like barkley some experience for 2016/18 seeing as you already knew the rooney/gerrard/lampard era wasn't going to win a goddamn thing. now this 2014 hybrid team of that old rooney/gerrard/lampard era and the "young lions" era has some ~13% chance of getting through and needs a miracle which likely comes in the forms of some 4-0 type victory. good luck with that.

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Gigi returns! I love Buffon.

One of those Deadspin asshats penned a turgid treatise on Spain's losses at the World Cup, comparing their decline to that of Roy Jones Jr in boxing. Stretch! It was rambling, reaching, and repetitive. The TLDR was Spain got old. Very insightful.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

When did Costa Rica become a world power in soccer?

At least until Honduros plays.