Posts by Peter Darlington
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Gio's right on the Suarez chat. It's reasonably clear cut and it's an automatic red card.
Suarez is actually a very handy player and just like Ronaldo he cops his share of highly dodgy challenges. The 'fall easy' accusations need to be tempered against the fact the best players are getting clattered all the time. Someone like Tevez doesn't tend to drop and that's part of the reason he's a bloody legend but in many ways the kick and fall is like a chicken and egg, one thing leads to another.
There's also the matter of 'guile'. Much harder to defend but if you're clever and the defender is a hopeless pile of bricks, it's in your interest to make him look stupid. In latin football, keeping the ball is a macho issue, more important than scoring goals, and what stems from this is the culture of fooling the defender. I think the penalty drawing has probably come out of this.
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Oh look, here he is now! :-)
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Does anyone else think the South African goalkeeper was a little hard done by? Yellow card, sure, penalty OK, but a red AND a penalty, for that? Really?
Yes, I think my colleague Mr Green might have some feelings on this matter. I still haven't seen it so can't comment.
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I hope Mexico get a run on as well, for their fans if nothing else. Some awesome beer explosions during the goals this morning.
And did anyone else see Maradona's cute little back flick with the ball going out, today? Dude's still got the magic.
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You're not fooling anyone, Mr Kick It.
It's an old blogger's trick to include deliberate mistakes in a post to provoke replies. Not going to work. Oh, all right then ... the USA did make the second round in 1994. There you go.
Aaah, yes, that's right, an old bloggers trick... *coughs*
Of course it was the best 3rd team rule in the old 24 team competition and the USA did indeed go through to be beaten in the next round by Brazil. I do remember the drop-off in interest when they went out though.
Thanks for that.
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"A freak lightening storm has felled the Brazilian team as they take the field, handing the quarter final match to the All Whites who now progress to the Semi Finals to face England."
England in the semi-finals? That's just crazy talk...
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The only thing better than this result was my pick of 1-1 with a piece of Smeltz brilliance! No, honestly this was a huge result for the All Whites, our first ever point in a World Cup finals, the third time we've beaten a team ranked dozens of points above us in the last 6 months, and you only have to look at the shell shocked faces of the Slovakians at the end to realise the incredulity of this result.
For people complaining about the state of play you're crazy, Herbert had one chance for a result in this game and that was slow it to a dirge and pray for a miracle coming out of nowhere, that's why he partnered Vicelich with Elliot and boy oh boy he did a job for us. Likewise, the subs late on, we were still in the game and he could've gutsed out and left things as they were or take a bit of a chance, he played positive.
Were we lucky? Hell yeh but I just think you can't take anything away from this team or the coaching staff for a superb job done. We played to our strengths and we now have our first ever WC point, we're joint top of Group F(!), so well done to the boys.
And whichever scout found Winston Reid tucked away outside Copenhagen, give the guy a bloody medal!
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Why does that sound unfair?
Was available for use apparently, it was only the Germans with their quiet efficiency and diabolical cleverness who had the sense to bring it in.
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Don't they complain about the ball at every World Cup?
Oh absolutely, but I think the issue here is the characteristics of the ball at altitude. Hence the German game at Durban where the ball behaved more as you'd expect, less bounce, shots remaining low etc... The Netherlands-Denmark game this morning was almost comical for shots rising and just continuing on up into the air. Like playing footie on the moon.
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Also, re the Jabulani ball. Players seem to be really struggling to get any shape on it at altitude. Hence the amount of poor free kicks heading straight into the wall or skied over the cross bar. Think this will really start to impact on the tournament in later stages.
Maybe they should squirt a bit of water into them, pre-match? :)
And apparently they introduced the ball into the Bundesliga in December so that the German players could get used to using it. Anyone know how that worked out?