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Hi all,

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

Apollo, I am trying to find the video of Mr Craig's press conference (on youtube) but apparently no one uploaded it. I saw it this afternoon on TV. The guy was clearly saying that they should not have shown the goals (both matches).

Thanks for trying!

Although I still don't believe that they showed Lampard's disallowed goal on stadium... they might have shown regular 4:1 goals that were allowed (and that were not "controversial" / "suspicious")...


Leo "Apollo11"

Spain 1  - Portugal 0.

 Paraguay, here we go !!!!!

[no more comments added as the poster is a bit drunk]

Hi Traskott, I hope you could not give your orders in your game after the football match.... [:-]
Paraguay should be a soft opponent than Portugal... we will see the next saturday.

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

Apollo, I am trying to find the video of Mr Craig's press conference (on youtube) but apparently no one uploaded it. I saw it this afternoon on TV. The guy was clearly saying that they should not have shown the goals (both matches).

Thanks for trying!

Although I still don't believe that they showed Lampard's disallowed goal on stadium... they might have shown regular 4:1 goals that were allowed (and that were not "controversial" / "suspicious")...


Leo "Apollo11"

For what it's worth, as I remember it the commentators on Danish TV also said the "goal" was being shown in slow motion on the stadium screen. And commented that it was unusual and against normal practice.

If it's true, it really was a bad move.

Well, Turn from vanilla WitP arrived, but with wrong file, looks like I wasn't the only spaniard a bit drank yesterday....

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Soccer will never catch on in the US.

I mean, this is Soccer's grand stage... the World Cup... and what do you see? 

Compare this to the Stanley Cup Finals, just concluded.  Chicago had a player take a puck to the mouth and lose 7 teeth.  Good ole Duncan Teeth came back into the game a couple minutes later.  If he were a soccer player, he'd still be whining.

Speaking of the SCFs, nobody watched them. Pitiful ratings. Sorry. (And I live in the State of Hockey--Minnesota.) I'd watch the NHL if they would play hockey and stop all the crap fighting (??) (More like dancing, usually.) I enjoy Olympic hockey a lot, because they actually, you know, PLAY HOCKEY. No other major sport tolerates the crap the NHL puts out every night, and, perhaps not coincidently, baseball, the NFL, and the NBA are all doing far better than the NHL in the competition for sports fans.

Perhasp you were around when fighting was made illegal in hockey, and the sport nearly failed becasue there was nothing to stop players from using their sticks as bats. Injuries skyrocketed. Sorry, but every time I hear some "hockey fan" complain about fighting in hockey, it tells me they really don't understand the sport.

SOCCER tolerates the crap that the soccer puts out. What crap referee-ing. Really, how many disputed goals were there? I wonder what the game would have looked like had England tied Germany in the 38th minute, but nope, bad ref says no, and the game is decided. No replay. Oh wait, I think another soccer player just fell down screaming in agony because an opponent touched him with his pinky finger.


It's too bad, because I like soccer. I want it to succeed in the US. I even lettered in Soccer in college. But this sport will forever be a flash-in-the-pan for the US. Seriously, go backc to '94 US World Cup. Soccer was "coming into popularity in the US" back then. It was going to be "huge in the US in a couple years" thanks to '94. Never happened. We hear this "just around the corner" every 4 years, and every 4 years, after the World Cup, it sinks back into the background.

It's funny how it's always "just around the corner" with these things, no?

Congrats to Spain [:)]

Paraguay should be a soft opponent than Portugal... we will see the next saturday.

I think so. Your team is more stronger.

Well, Turn from vanilla WitP arrived, but with wrong file, looks like I wasn't the only spaniard a bit drank yesterday....

I was in a pub watching the match...I know what you mean [:D]

Well, Paul the Octopus has already predicted the next German result. According to him, Germany will defeat Argentina [8D]

Yeah, ok, sorry guys for ranting, I"m done ranting. 

I think I'm going to root for Argentina the rest of the way.

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Perhasp you were around when fighting was made illegal in hockey, and the sport nearly failed becasue there was nothing to stop players from using their sticks as bats. Injuries skyrocketed. Sorry, but every time I hear some "hockey fan" complain about fighting in hockey, it tells me they really don't understand the sport.

I'm not a hockey fan, as I said. I watch it in the Olympics. I also note that the NCAA doesn't allow fighting, nor do HS leauges, nor do Pee-Wee leauges, and they flourish in hockey country. The NHL, not so much. They're a far weaker professional proposition than they were in 1980. The other pro sports surged ahead, especialy with TV deals, and the NHL languished. Expansions failed, the blue-collar fan base drifted to the NFL. Asserting that a sport "must" have fighting to survive is just . . . looney.

Wait a minute - fighting (I assume you mean fist-fighting) is legal in the NFL hockey league?
Players won't get punished if they assault somebody?
What about criminal charges?
Or is the hockey rink just some lawless no-man's land where you can get away with murder...? [X(]
Don't like somebody, just challenge him to a hockey game and tear out his entrails... Police can't touch you [;)].
Sort of the modern equivalent of a Gentlemen's Duel - fists or skates, sir?

We once had an ugly case in the Danish hockey league, where a player assualted another player and knocked out most of the teeth in his upper mouth.
He was banned from the league for long time, fined a very large amount of money from both the league and his own team, charged with violent assualt by the police and sentenced to jail + another fine, sentenced to pay damages to the victim, murdered and ridiculed by the press and I think eventually kicked from the team.
Here, the national hockey league would have died if they hadn't come down hard on such an act of violence.

Oh, and Brasil is going to go all the way this year.
They've got their defense sorted out, their attack is at european effectiveness finally and they still have enough of their technique, instinct and inventiveness left to outplay most teams.
Dunga has this World Cup by the balls.

Well I wonder where this discussion leads to?
 
Everybody knows that football (soccer) is all about love and peace...
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6x7WKtQKQU

Lo Baron, ah the classic youtube gay referee [:D]

Briny, me too I am rather shocked when I see these morons fighting in hockey games [X(] No one stops them. Apparently they are not arrested and handcuffed, not fined, not banned from the team / game. What the...? They want to fight? That's what boxing, kickboxing, kung fu, karate were made for. They chose the wrong sport [;)]

Eric Cantona kicked the hooligan and his OWN team fined and banned him (6 months)...

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

Wait a minute - fighting (I assume you mean fist-fighting) is legal in the NFL hockey league?
Players won't get punished if they assault somebody?
What about criminal charges?
Or is the hockey rink just some lawless no-man's land where you can get away with murder...? [X(]
Don't like somebody, just challenge him to a hockey game and tear out his entrails... Police can't touch you [;)].
Sort of the modern equivalent of a Gentlemen's Duel - fists or skates, sir?

No, fighting isn't legal by the rules. It leads to penalty minutes. But it's accepted by the leauge as necessary to keep bringing in the yahoo fans. The teams use "enforcing"--planned assaults on opposing players--as a game tactic, and stock specific brawling players (usually with pooor hockey skils) for this portion of the games.

Re criminal charges, it's an intereasting quesiton. In civil terms pro sports carries an assumption of the risk provision that protects the leauge and the manaagement from most tort exposure. In hockey, football, pro basketball, etc. players engage in behavior that would expose them to civil liability if they did the same thing on the street. My understanding is that every sport requires a LOT of waiver paperwork to be signed by players to wall off most civil liability. That said, if player-on-player violence reaches the level that "shocks the conscience" ( a legal term of art), there might be enough factual support to support a civil suit for battery or another tort.

Criminal behavior is, of course, prosecuted by the state, not individuals. The local prosecutor has broad discretion to bring charges for criminal assault, aggravated assault, etc. (required elements and names vary by state and are statutory) if the behavior would lead to the same charges anywhere else in the jurisdiction. In short, just because the players are engaging in professional contact sports does not mean they are in some sort of protective legal envelope where criminal laws do not apply.

I can only think of one hockey case in the past decade (details are fuzzy in my memory) where criminal charges were filed. It was for a cheap shot at the back of the head of an unsuspecting player, I believe when the action was preparing for a face-off maybe (?) and the struck player had life-threatening injuries and was out for the season. I believe the asaulting player was also released by his team, but again, details not in mind.

It leads to penalty minutes. But it's accepted by the leauge as necessary to keep bringing in the yahoo fans. The teams use "enforcing"--planned assaults on opposing players--as a game tactic, and stock specific brawling players (usually with pooor hockey skils) for this portion of the games.

And this is EXACTLY why fighting should be in the game. So that you don't have planned assaults agianst your star-players by other players that aren't so good, because if the not so good players know that they'll get their arse pounded, they'll avoid making runs at YOUR players.

And if you think the "fighter" types have poor skills, you just go trying to fight another guy while wearing 2 blades of steel on ice. Dinna forget, ice is slippery [:)]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

And this is EXACTLY why fighting should be in the game. So that you don't have planned assaults agianst your star-players by other players that aren't so good, because if the not so good players know that they'll get their arse pounded, they'll avoid making runs at YOUR players.

If this logic held, you'd have the same behavior in pro baseball, football, and basketball. Fights every night. But you don't. Why? Those owners want to make money. Watching brawls is boring to fans of the game.

The NHL was on the rise in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The NFL hadn't learned how to market the Super Bowl run-up yet, and baseball had over-expanded. The NHL had a network contract--a nationally televised game of the week. Same game, every household, in an era when homes got three channels. A theme song, pre-game show, the works. And they blew it. They lost the contract and the revenue because of brawling, and the NFL took the air time and ran with it.

A recent thumbnail sketch of the NHL:

"3) NHL Ticket Sales Slow - The average NHL team as of late 2008 was worth $219.5 million, up from $200 million in 2007. Operating incomes averaged $4.72 million in 2008, compared to $3.2 million in 2007. Revenue sharing in the NHL is active, with predominantly Canadian teams ponying up the lion’s share. Six teams (Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadians) contributed $41 million to lesser teams, most of which are in the southern U.S. This is a typical pattern in the NHL, and, not surprisingly, the Canadian NHL owners are frustrated with the system, and also with an increasing salary cap that forces teams to carry a minimum payroll of $40.7 million. The outlook for the 2009-2010 season is flat at best. Teams are looking for ways to cut their budgets, 50% of which come from ticket revenue, which is expected to slow."

http://www.plunkettresearch.com/AboutUs ... fault.aspx

Contrast this to the no-brawling, disciplined, NFL:

"1) NFL: The Biggest Money in U.S. Sports – By far, the NFL commands the greatest revenue, plays in the largest and most expensive stadiums and amasses more viewers in the United States than any other sport. This is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that the NFL plays far fewer games per season than does MLB (Major League Baseball) or the NBA (National Basketball Association). NFL owners agreed to increase the salary cap from $116 million per franchise in 2008 to $128 million in 2009 and the minimum NFL team salary in 2009 was $107.7 million. Currently, the NFL is actively seeking new revenue through several ventures. One is NFL On Location, a unit which offers fans the chance to purchase travel packages to major games such as the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl. Another potential revenue generator is the NFL’s attempt to drum up interest in foreign markets. In China, for example, the league began introducing flag football programs for children in five cities in 2003. In 2007, Chinese state TV channels began airing weekly NFL games. "

Holland! [X(] YESSS!! [8D]

The other side: on the next days suicides will be on the rise in Brazil... NO kidding.

YEEEEHAAA! I hope they wont get overconfident by that.

TBH its bad that one of those teams have to be out of the tournament but my heart was with the Oranjes and my money on Brazil.

Well done.

Very surprising to see Brazil lose their cool in the second half. They just didn't perform and Holland capitalised to punish them. Come on you on you Oranges !! [:'(]