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England choked ****
Thats what the papers here are saying. I dont know if they could have beaten brazil but I believe they did not give their best shot.
The side simply stopped running.

I wonder why belgium have been silent over their disallowed goal?
I wonder why so many teams have had bad offside decisions and stayed quiet?

I wonder if spain will end up like Italy over their diasallowed goal?

I wonder why Italy think they are so special? Even after playing bad agaibst Croation,ecuador and mexico they had there chance!!
I would hate to have an Asian restraunt in Italy.

Whats good about the WC is that it brings the whole world together like 1 big happy family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by at99
Whats good about the WC is that it brings the whole world together like 1 big happy family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What happens when big families get together?


Old wounds are reopened and new wounds are started.

I have to agree with Littiz. Other than being a big Italy fan, not even Italian anyway, , the callings against them have been ridiculous. Italy has been screwed over waaay too many times. South Korea is definetely getting some assistance from the refs.

The other new teams that did well this year, US, Sengal, both won alot of big games. They did well, but they had their limits. They were simply outplayed by better teams. Now they didn't have any assistance, and now are out of WC. They played well but reached their limit. Now South Korea isn't that much better, and they seem to be getting lucky in all their games.

And the worst has been on Italy. I'm still in shock over the loss to Croatia with 2 completely legitimate goals, not being called by the same linesman! And they've been getting screwed over since then.

This is ridiculous. The hosts are being handed the game by the refs. I won't be suprised if they beat Brazil in the finals. All their games SK gets to PKs and pulls it off. The refs keep them alive the rest of the game, punishing the opposition till they are weary, and SK manages to narrowly win.

conspiracy ? cmon do you know how hard it would be to pull this off...I think people have seen too many movies...

A LOT of teams have had bad decisions...the refs are not part of FIFA by the way. The US had a handball that went against mexico..anyone remeber?

Bad decisions have not ruined teams but bad play. If the sides who went out had played better they could have overcome the bad decisions ...

are the complaining teams aware of how they are viewed by the rest of the world?

German VS US
Germans have ran out of fuel as I predicted. Voeller should thank Kahn for such a great play. If Kahn doesn't have that great performance the US might score at least 3 goals. Ballack is lucky to put the ball on the net. Even Beckenbauer "The Kaizer" critisise the Germans performance.

Spain VS Korea
Despite the controversy, it clearly shows that Spain stamina are really bad. The Koreans are like Energizer bunnies. You can see how they can cut the Spain passes, move up and down continuously. Spain lack of stamina really shows on extra time, especially the 2nd how 9 players are on defend, only one strike in the front and their long ball tactics. The strategy shown here is clear how Spain plan to bet everything on penalty shoot out. Great performance by Korean goalie when he's not tricked and manage to block the penalty shot.

Upcoming Event
German - Korea
Tough time for Voeller and his squad. With such a horrible performance against US now they must face "The Energizer Bunnies" Korea. With yellow cards cumulations on Germany side this battle is a real headache for Voeller. I think Korean will get this one if they still on top of their stamina and not provoked by Germans.

Brazil - Turkey
Tough luck for Brazil since they gotta bench Ronaldinho due the redcard. They got only one good stiker left, Ronaldo. Yet Ronaldo performance is unpredictable. I remember last WC final where Ronaldo plays like a newbie. And when last time Brazil met Turkey it was the Turks who lead one goal first. A real tough battle if the Turks haven't ran out of fuel like Senegal

I think the idea of Korea VS Trukey is a real nice idea

i completely agree with you littiz... i ain't italian, it might've been a sum of many mistakes, but seriously, 4 disallowed goals... sounds rather conspicious...

@at99: "Bad decisions have not ruined teams but bad play" how exactly you can say that??? think about it for a second will you? how can a team win if their goals are disallowed for christs sake! it doesn't matter if it's rest of the world against the vatican the rest of the world team is still going to lose no matter how good they play if their goals are disallowed, and the vatican is favoured by the refs...

the spains goal that was disallowed against south Korea,(the one that was passed from the end-line,) the linesman flagged it as an offside/out of the field, well it can't be offside since it was passed backwards, and it clearly wasn't out side the field so ups... once again little help for the koreans... all i hope is that they put collina in the final, too bad they can't clone him in to linesmen also, so it would be fair game.

i don't care even if every major country is dropped when they play badly, but when they are dropped because of referees/linesmen that's not right, that ain't the real way to solve football matches...

Originally posted by KidD01
[<snip>
I remember last WC final where Ronaldo plays like a newbie. <snip>

Well he was sick at the time, and even stated himself that he shouldn't had played, but did so to help his team(heh) - much like Zidane at his match this WC.

I must say I am also appalled at the referees at this WC, never once seen so many goals dissallowed.
(Still don't buy into the conspiracy-theroy - but lets see if Germany gets goals dissallowed, then new fuel to feed the fire of that theroy )

And BTW - people relax, allthough "your" team went out and it is unfair - no need to get all winded up about. It is sports.

Originally posted by Locke Da'averan
i completely agree with you littiz... i ain't italian, it might've been a sum of many mistakes, but seriously, 4 disallowed goals... sounds rather conspicious...

@at99: "Bad decisions have not ruined teams but bad play" how exactly you can say that??? think about it for a second will you? how can a team win if their goals are disallowed for christs sake! it doesn't matter if it's rest of the world against the vatican the rest of the world team is still going to lose no matter how good they play if their goals are disallowed, and the vatican is favoured by the refs...

the spains goal that was disallowed against south Korea,(the one that was passed from the end-line,) the linesman flagged it as an offside/out of the field, well it can't be offside since it was passed backwards, and it clearly wasn't out side the field so ups... once again little help for the koreans... all i hope is that they put collina in the final, too bad they can't clone him in to linesmen also, so it would be fair game.

i don't care even if every major country is dropped when they play badly, but when they are dropped because of referees/linesmen that's not right, that ain't the real way to solve football matches...

Hang on here. I dont remember 4 goals not going Italys way. The spain goal was ruled out after the linesman flagged not before.
The lineman did not see a goal being scored when he put up his flag.

I think you need to calm down and think about this. Italy have made too much noise over this compared to other countries.
They had there chance to win ...open goal in fact by veira..remember.
Is it a coincidence that the sides who lost did not play that well?

Uhm...this is all rather interesting and it seems that this World Cup has indeed become a controversial one at that for the big upsets and bad refereeing. However, I think it's pointless to say that the whole competition is corrupt or the opposite - the naive view that bad refereeing decisions have been totally arbitrary.

IMO, there has been a 'helping hand' in quite a number of matches in this World Cup - however, even if
some referees or linesmen have been bought by FIFA or large money bettin'-people, they can't really decide a match. If anyone knows more about football corruption than us, it's the teams that are in the World Cup - so that they should be prepared for any 'bad' refereeing decisions and not let it affect 'em. Also, truly bad decisions have occurred in past World Cups, so there is nothing new here necessarily...the difference today may be that referees have become more strict in their ruling and more of a part of football, so that their human mistakes, if so, have become more evident.

If you look at the teams that were in the quarter-finals, many of them were there because they played well (as strange a concept as that may be).
Brasil, Turkey and Germany haven't really been helped by refereeing decisions to get to the semi-finals (Ronaldinho received an injust red card against England which could have lost 'em their game...Turkey had an unfair penalty against 'em in group stage...Germany was the first team to receive a red card in the match against Cameroon).

OK, Korea may have been biasedly helped, but give 'em credit for being a fit side with a good coach, Guus Hiddink who's coached good sides such as Real Madrid & Netherland team. In the end, FIFA (or other) can't blatantly make one team win or lose...Italy could have beaten Korea if not for Vieiri's miss and at least half of their disallowed goals weren't really goals because game had already stopped. Same goes for Spain, who with Raul on the bench, did not look impressive enough. and in the end, the Koreans showed how good they were through the quality of their penalties (awesome!).
In conclusion, we can't take credit away from the supposedly weak teams who've improved massively in the last years (eg:Senegal, Turkey, USA, Korea).

PS: For me, the worst about this Cup has been the ticketing problems - jus' about every match has had thousands of seats unfilled. Shameful!

I'm growing a little tired of the referee discussion.

My favorite team was Italy and they probably would have won their group if all their goals had been treated correctly and things would have been different in the later games. Spain may would have scored against Korea if the referee wouldn't have raised the flag for no reason.

BUT I've expected far more from Spain and Italy (as well as I did from the group stage losers France, Portugal and Argentina) than losing overtime games against Korea. It's simply not enough to score a goal in the first twenty minutes and to defend the score for another 70 minutes, a strategy that especially Italy and Spain lived by and and lost with.

The only "strong" team that fulfilled my expectations so far is Brazil and their success has a simple reason: They've always scored at least two goals. This way they've also managed to survive a referee mistake against England, when the match-winning Ronaldinho was sent off for a foul which could be considered worth a yellow, but not a red card. I admit there were referee errors in the group stage game Brazil:Turkey that made me quite angry (I was watching the game in a Turk restaurant and hoped for the Turks to win), but Brazil would have gone to next round anyway.

I agree 100% that a World Cup should have better referees than those we saw so far, but I don't think that it's correct to blame only the referees for the lost games of the so called "strong" teams. If Vieri misses the goal even from a 4m distance during overtime and if Korea scores all five penalties against Iker "hands of god" Casillas, well then there's not much say about it except that the star players from Europe and Argentina may would have needed two more weeks to regenerate before the start of the World Cup.

I think we'll remember this World Cup as one strange tournament where hungry unknown teams won over tired big teams, where the referees were a little too exotic and where Africa and Asia played a stronger role than we have anticipated - which I think is positive because this time it was a real World Cup and not only a Europe / South America championship.

I didn't want to comment the referring in this WC but i can't help it.
There are 2 facts that we have to consider.

1) It is the first time in WC that the teams knew from the begging with who there were to play and with who they were not. There can some pre-games "work" here.

2)It is like a tradition in WC the hosts always pass the first round.

No harm so far. I also knew the vice-president of FIFA was a South Korean whom happens to be also the organiser of the WC games. With all these said i somehow knew that the host teams were to be "helped" a little. My point is how powerful the national football committee is. Korea seems to have a lot of power directly from FIFA itself. It does not necessarily mean that there are "orders" so that Korea wins, but putting a not known referee and some linesman from Uganda of something, under 50 thousand Korea funs, what will you expect? I have to admit though that in some cases the refs seemed to be following orders.
Take Turkey for example, there were unjustified when they played with Brazil, so what do we see in the next match of Turkey? Collina is the referee and the match is played 50/50, the Turk committee is strong and choose a great ref so that none of the team was to be favoured. So IMO is not the referring that is bad but is the "way" the referees get chosen in the games.

As for the Italians, Perugia actaully fired Ahn for scoring against Italy and their state sports channel is pressing charges against FIFA. The whole nation is upset and maybe something is wrong.

The good thing from the WC however is that we are going to see chances at least in Europe and the number of games the teams and players play its year. So far Engand is planning to make some chances at their championship and are going to suggest fewer games in Champions League as well.

Originally posted by Phantom Lord
I'm growing a little tired of the referee discussion.

Very well spoken. I completely agree on all accounts.

I used to love conspiracy theories when I was younger - sort of like a relaxing hobby thinking up and discussing secret agendas and organisations with my friends. Today, when I look at the way people react to all kinds of situations, I realize that it isn't at all funny, since all the speculative articles in the media and the movies from Hollywood have made people paranoid and to actually believe that there is some dark, secret conspiracy that runs the world. Sure, "follow the money" is a method as good as any to find corruption, but "two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead" is another stupid saying that also holds true. The one I like best is "Don't account to malice what is adequately explained by human stupidity".

<stops hurdling clichés>

Originally posted by Silur

Don't account to malice what is adequately explained by human stupidity

Rofl, i've never heard that, but its a good one.

I would hate to have an Asian restraunt in Italy.

@at99:
Once again, I see how italians are misjudged. You're misdirected
by the fact that we yell a lot.
What do you think?
There is plenty of asian restaurants, here!
There's also a South Korean community, and they watched the match
with us, at job places, or within italian homes!
We are perfectly aware that this is a game, only it is OUR most loved game!!!!
And it's always the biggest matter of discussion, especially
during a world cup.
One opinionist said "Touch anything, but NOT football!!!"
On a side note, since you question, we've had not 4, but FIVE goals cancelled,
only one (Montella's) was slightly irregular, so I say four.
Ironically, Montella's one was the most beautyful....

@lost one:
What are you talking about? almost every disallowed goal comes with
game right stopped! So let's just stop the game, and everything is right!
Take Spain's goal: the cross was simply PERFECT on the head of the
attacker. Who DID the goal.

@Silur:
paranoid? Maybe. But consider all in your judgement.
Mr. CHUNG, president of South-Korean football, VICE-PRESIDENT of
FIFA, owner of HYUNDAI.......
Promised before the Cup that South Korea would have reached
the semifinals. Done, indeed.
Maybe they'll want the next matches regular after all!
Now elections there are near... it seems he's candidate as president
of Korea.... someone is able to verify this??

@others:
Back to "real play" considerations: it's true that Italy sometimes
played not at its best, but not at the point of deserving elimination
IMHO (speaking about game value, not disallowed goals!)
Yes, South Korea, all agree (ME TOO), played well against us, yet we produced
at least 8 goal-shots in that match, South-Korea 3.
Vieri missed a goal? He did 5 in 4 matches. (One disallowed)
How much can we blame him???
Or against Croatia, for instance, we played the first 20 minutes as
a STORM!!
Then came the second disallowed goal, and Croatia did their goal at the
very first shot (a GREAT goal) , and our players lost spirit and order.
Things are always complex in football...
Spain, hit even the wood!
The two goals disallowed, the wood, the last off-side, while Korea
had just ONE occasion in the whole match!
Spain deserved to win under every aspect!
Hey, Korea was surprising, but actually, Korea has been eliminated
TWICE, with two GOLDEN goals disallowed.....
Against Korea again, I point how at the end, the players, as we spectators,
had the feeling that all efforts were in vain..
Our most representative player espelled in the most critic moment, with
no reason, by a referee 50 meters afar...
The golden goal disallowed.. They weren't playing with a normal
state of mind for the whole match, I won't blame them for their mistakes.
But I agree that we COULD do more than this.

Originally posted by Littiz

@Silur:
paranoid? Maybe. But consider all in your judgement.
Mr. CHUNG, president of South-Korean football, VICE-PRESIDENT of
FIFA, owner of HYUNDAI.......
Promised before the Cup that South Korea would have reached
the semifinals. Done, indeed.
Maybe they'll want the next matches regular after all!
Now elections there are near... it seems he's candidate as president
of Korea.... someone is able to verify this??

I did take all those into account. Now, if it became known that the referee Moreno has a new house in the south of France and a brand new Ferrari (just to spite the Italians) THEN I would start to believe that at least he is guilty of something. Everything presented so far is circumstantial and does not prove anything. When it comes to predictions, a lot of people from a number of countries stated their team would be so-and-so good - most of them were in error. The fact that Mr Chung's prediction came through can be explained by (at least) three theories, one: he is an Asian mysticist and therefore psychic, two: he is the head of a football conspiracy aimed at getting South Korea to the semifinals or three: (this is my personal favourite) He was bragging like everyone else!

Originally posted by Silur
<snip>The fact that Mr Chung's prediction came through can be explained by (at least) three theories, one: he is an Asian mysticist and therefore psychic, two: he is the head of a football conspiracy aimed at getting South Korea to the semifinals or three: (this is my personal favourite) He was bragging like everyone else!

I'll take door number 1 - and ask for the lotteri numbers while we are at it

(sorry couldn't help myself)

Of course it is annoying and scandelous to have "good" goals dissallowed - but grasphing after halmstraws in a storm to find a reason instead of looking at own playing style also is imo pointless.
So Italy played good in the first 20min. of some game - there is still 70 min. left to mess things up in.

At least it has (to our knowlegde) been kinda doping free - unless it would be a conspericy if doping was found on a team other then the South Koreans.

Yes - I take this more lightly and joke with it but......
This is still - eventhough the favorite one of many - spots, and sports are ment to be fun, otherwise we might as well just go to war and have it over with.

Originally posted by Littiz
@lost one:
What are you talking about? almost every disallowed goal comes with
game right stopped! So let's just stop the game, and everything is right!
Take Spain's goal: the cross was simply PERFECT on the head of the
attacker. Who DID the goal.

Littiz, what I was tryin' say was that the reason why many goals occurred as they did was due to the whistle blow - which effectively stops the enemy's defense. I remember well that a few of the Italian 'disallowed goals' weren't really goals in the first place, because play had been halted but the Italian striker would carry on and score, even though the opposition defense & goalie had stopped carin'. Yes, the Spain goal may have seemed PERFECT, but the flag had been raised before the ball touched the striker's head, not after - meanin' that in these circumstances, it doesn't matter what a striker does with the ball, game has been stopped and full stop - you should only criticize a disallowed goal if the call came after the goal, IMO. Otherwise, it's also the players' fault for continuin' the game.
Anyway, there's Turkey v Brasil & Germany v Korea to look forward to. It must be strange for Brasil to play Turkey again in the Cup - however, this time they'll be without the two Ronaldos, I think. Uhm...
I'm not sure who'll win between Germany v Korea - let's just hope refereeing calls don't mess up this game!

Gosh Littiz, you are fanatic about Italy losing. As someone else pointed out before, Italy is a soccer power but not special, meaning you don't have the God-given right to win every game or otherwise whine all the time and cry injustice. Losing a game isn't a big deal, what's it gonna do to your life?

By the way: you are right about Chung being Hyundai founder's son and everything. You are also right about his running for the presidency.

@Andy Strawn, please try to post with common sense in future, the comments i edited were unnecessaray and would only have led to ill feelings.