I Really Still Do Blog About Footcer, I Swear
Oh cripes. I've been so neglective over here that I didn't even post my two reaction posts from LiveJournal on the World Cup draw. Even though it's been about week since the draw, here they are. This is part of my trying to catch up everywhere day:
DECEMBER 9
Looks like the comment that I made to kat_chan in the entry, "The Reward For Hard Work Means Nothing" (December 6, 2005) has proved to be the understatement of the newest footcer century.
Seriously, when I watched the draw this afternoon on espn.com, I got sick to my stomach.
Actually I'm not even kidding though my flu-like symptoms had very little to do with the draw, I didn't even make it halfway home before having to get off the train for an emergency bathroom break at the Clark and Lake stop. For anyone who's looking for the most disgusting toilet in all of Chicago, the second floor men's room at the Thompson Center would be a great place to start!
But back to the heartbreak in Leipzig.
I almost called it in the same entry referenced about when I said to americanrefugee in the same comment section, "The Czech Republic scare me to death. They're an impossibly hard team. They're my sleeper pick to make the semi-finals. People see them coming but it really doesn't matter. Except for Romania, no one's been able to beat them and that Romania game was a fluke as the cokehead's first game back."
With how much I've been hyping the Czechs since the end of Euro 2004 as the best team in the world outside South America (and now their #2 FIFA ranking really helps out that uphill battle that I've been fighting) it was inevitable that the United States would draw them in the World Cup.
And I stand by my earlier words. The United States is seriously fucked! We might as well start planning for 2010 now and hopefully another horrible performance won't be held against the United States by the fans who show up every four years.
That being said, I don't think the World Cup next summer is a complete loss. We can advance out of Group E. The problem is that I think we'll end up coming is second to the Czechs if we advance. Yeah, I know, Italy. But, see that's the match that I think we can sneak a nice 1-0 upset in.
The Czech Republic/United States group opener is going to be pretty rough because it's two of the best five goaltenders in the world in Petr Cech and Casey Keller. Cech has shown himself a little bit vulnerable in recent play for Chelsea. Sure Chelsea's only lost once but the days of the clean sheet run to start their season seems like a distant memory.
Now, having said the United States can advance to the round of 16, we are still fucked!
Group F should be a cakewalk for Brazil and they would be the second round opponents for the United States barring a group trip-up of epic proportions putting them in second. So, the goal now is just to avoid embarrassment and lose to Brazil in the round of 16 like so many other teams have in the past who were a lot bigger names coming in.
Short of getting out of our group the United States should have two goals, or should I say two teams they need to finish ahead of: Japan and Australia. Basically, those are two teams in the same boat as us domestically so it would be nice to beat them place-wise in the World Cup internationally.
And for fate's sake, please no 32nd like in 1998! At least come away with 2 points!
All that I'm really pissed off about is Mexico's easy draw but it does mean one CONCACAF team should make some noise.
They have a fading Portugal team, a weak Angola side and Iran. It's pretty odd that CONCACAF's "top" team (at least according to the seedings) is in an almost identical group to the one that the United States was in back in 2002. The only team missing is Poland.
I like the chances of my fourth favorite team being in Group A with Germany, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. The CONMEBOL and CONCACAF representatives are jokes. So all they need to do is pull an upset of the home side and they can win the group.
And my third favorite team, Ukraine, has a pretty favorable group in the weakest one in the tournament Group H with Spain, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia. The winner of this group gets second place in Group G in the round of 16 and that should be Switzerland. Ukraine could go really deep.
This is exciting!!! There's a possibility of a Czech Republic/Ukraine quarterfinal. Holy crap!
My second favorite team, Ireland, is, as everyone who followed the qualifiers knows, watching it from home. :)
So, without further Adu (yeah, it's cheesy that I said that but an interesting fact is he was born in Ghana and, therefore, still won't be playing for the United States this summer) here are my really, really, really, preliminary World Cup predictions:
GROUP A: 1) Germany (2-0-1), 2) Poland (1-0-2), 3) Costa Rica (1-1-1), 4) Ecuador (0-3-0)
GROUP B: 1) England (2-1-0), 2) Sweden (1-1-1), 3) Paraguay (1-1-1), 4) Trinidad & Tobago (0-3-0)
GROUP C: 1) Argentina (2-0-1), 2) Netherlands (1-0-2), 3) Ivory Coast (0-1-2), 4) Serbia (0-2-1)
GROUP D: 1) Mexico (3-0-0), 2) Portugal (2-1-0), 3) Iran (1-2-0), 4) Angola (0-3-0)
GROUP E: 1) Czech Republic (2-0-1), 2) United States (1-1-1), 3) Italy (1-1-1), 4) Ghana (0-2-1)
GROUP F: 1) Brazil (3-0-0), 2) Croatia (2-1-0), 3) Japan (0-2-1), 4) Australia (0-2-1)
GROUP G: 1) France (1-0-2), 2) South Korea (0-0-3), 3) Switzerland (0-1-2), 4) Togo (0-2-1)
GROUP H: 1) Spain (2-0-1), 2) Ukraine (1-1-1), 3) Tunisia (0-2-1), 4) Saudi Arabia (0-2-1)
The all important 32nd spot that someone has to get goes to the Soca Warriors. :)
And then the knockout phases...
Round of 16:
A1 v. B2 - Germany 2, Sweden 1
A2 v. B1 - England 2, Poland 1 (AET)
C1 v. D2 - Argentina 3, Portugal 1
C2 v. D1 - Netherlands 1, Mexico 1 (Holland on PKs)
E1 v. F2 - Czech Republic 1, Croatia 0
E2 v. F1 - Brazil 3, United States 0
G1 v. H2 - Ukraine 1, France 0
G2 v. H1 - South Korea 1, Spain 0 (AET)
Quarterfinals:
Q1: Argentina 1, Germany 0
Q2: Czech Republic 2, Ukraine 0
Q3: Netherlands 3, England 2
Q4: Brazil 5, South Korea 1 (yes, I am dead serious)
Semifinals:
S1: Argentina 1, Czech Republic 1 (Argentina on PKs)
S2: Brazil 2, Netherlands 1
3rd Place:
Netherlands 3, Czech Republic 2
Championship:
Argentina 2, Brazil 1
Of course there's always one or two sleepers who pull upsets. My dark horses to actually go against my own predictions are Croatia and Mexico.
Let the debate rage for the next six months. Just for the record, I finished in the 96th percentile of pick-'em in 2002 so I've got a resume to defend. ;)
---
DECEMBER 10
The reason that I no longer hang out on bigsoccer.com is because I got so sick of constantly having the same arguments about things like the world rankings and Euro-bias that I figured I didn't need the stress in my life. Not that the arguments aren't still in me as obvious by the fact that I got into a nice little war over on the community world_cup_2006.
You know I think every amateur footcer pundit is entitled to their own opinion but some push the edge of insanity. This one girl, _cereza pushed the bounds of sanity by making the following statement:
"I agree that C is harder,mainly because I consider Serbia a tougher team than Ghana or the USA. :/"
Now, it's fair to say a lot of teams are better than the United States, but Serbia is not one of them! The United States has proven that it can beat the second tier European teams at home (and tie them away) and Serbia would be no exception. Naturally I took this person's opinion down to European bias and told and fun ensued, mostly in the form of a Scot saying the following to me:
"If someone happens to think Serbia are better than USA, fair enough. You'll just have to deal with it. Easy group my ass. They did play against Belgium don't forget who had until this year qualified for 6 world cups in a row. Oh yes, they must be crap. By contrast, the CONCACAF is by a country mile the easiest qualifying zone. If the USA played in UEAFA, they would never qualify for a major tournament."
Just lovely. Here I thought we could shut them up by tying them with our C team (a 1-0 win for the United States' 2 starters and 9 subs could have done that). Obviously that's not true. But what I pretty much told this guy (and the complete response can be viewed in the link) is that past records really don't mean much and that regardless of how many times Belgium has qualified in a row this was a down year for them. I added that the problem with European amateur footcer pundits is they rely a lot on history and really don't bother looking at present form and player makeup.
Hence why they all just love to underestimate Ukraine (or for that matter the United States) and overestimate a team like Belgium.
I am just so sick of Europeans, who don't even - for the most part - get to view North American (or for that matter African) qualifiers think their continent is somehow better from top-to-bottom.
On a final footcer point, check out's entry on why the media is overblowing the fact that the United States is in a group of death in her entry, "Entitlement trolls, USA soccer edition" (December 10, 2005). She brings up a great point that part of the reason Group E is considered so hard is the overestimation of the Italy team.
---
DECEMBER 12
Anyway, what's really pissing me off is two conversations I'm having about the World Cup draw. The one with the Scot I've already mentioned and that's just degenerated into his saying that Kasey Keller would be the sixth best goalkeeper or lower in Serie A.
But, whatever. He does have a point that none of the bigger clubs have snatched him up. But I'm not pulling calling him one of the top five international goalies in the world out of my ass. I've seriously heard it said by at least five other sources. ESPN the Magazine named him the #1 goalkeeper in the world (at international, not club) which is just insane and was an attempt to get one American on the World XI they presented. But, seriously, England would kill for Keller over Robinson (and especially over James). And, frankly Scotland would too.
The other one is with this Canadian member of eastofprague (who knew all of my headaches could be traced back to that community). Anyway, this guy jumped in defending the idiot who said Serbia was a better team than the United States.
I don't even remember where this little war has gone to but I remember wanting to sing "Oh, Canada" to him. If there's one thing worse than an American footcer Eurosnob, it's a Canadian footcer Eurosnob.
And, yet in the whole thing, trying to stay neutral, I'm getting accused of being a provincial American.
For fuck's sake. It's like I can't win. From one side I get that I'm an American hating commie bastard and from the other side I get that I'm George fucking Bush or something. And, if there's one thing that I hate more than anything else it's having to defend my bonehead countrypeople who give us a bad reputation since they're indefensible.
Oh, this is a real winner comment from that second conversation though. had the following pearl of wisdom:
"I don't know, but I would like to state for the record that not ALL Americans are assholes, and in fact some of us don't care whether the U.S. does well in the World Cup or not; we just want to watch some good football."
Yeah, that makes you a good person. For cripes sakes, love your country's home team or root against them if you want to (I pull against USA Basketball for those who didn't know) but being indifferent to them is just obnoxious.
DECEMBER 9
Looks like the comment that I made to kat_chan in the entry, "The Reward For Hard Work Means Nothing" (December 6, 2005) has proved to be the understatement of the newest footcer century.
Seriously, when I watched the draw this afternoon on espn.com, I got sick to my stomach.
Actually I'm not even kidding though my flu-like symptoms had very little to do with the draw, I didn't even make it halfway home before having to get off the train for an emergency bathroom break at the Clark and Lake stop. For anyone who's looking for the most disgusting toilet in all of Chicago, the second floor men's room at the Thompson Center would be a great place to start!
But back to the heartbreak in Leipzig.
I almost called it in the same entry referenced about when I said to americanrefugee in the same comment section, "The Czech Republic scare me to death. They're an impossibly hard team. They're my sleeper pick to make the semi-finals. People see them coming but it really doesn't matter. Except for Romania, no one's been able to beat them and that Romania game was a fluke as the cokehead's first game back."
With how much I've been hyping the Czechs since the end of Euro 2004 as the best team in the world outside South America (and now their #2 FIFA ranking really helps out that uphill battle that I've been fighting) it was inevitable that the United States would draw them in the World Cup.
And I stand by my earlier words. The United States is seriously fucked! We might as well start planning for 2010 now and hopefully another horrible performance won't be held against the United States by the fans who show up every four years.
That being said, I don't think the World Cup next summer is a complete loss. We can advance out of Group E. The problem is that I think we'll end up coming is second to the Czechs if we advance. Yeah, I know, Italy. But, see that's the match that I think we can sneak a nice 1-0 upset in.
The Czech Republic/United States group opener is going to be pretty rough because it's two of the best five goaltenders in the world in Petr Cech and Casey Keller. Cech has shown himself a little bit vulnerable in recent play for Chelsea. Sure Chelsea's only lost once but the days of the clean sheet run to start their season seems like a distant memory.
Now, having said the United States can advance to the round of 16, we are still fucked!
Group F should be a cakewalk for Brazil and they would be the second round opponents for the United States barring a group trip-up of epic proportions putting them in second. So, the goal now is just to avoid embarrassment and lose to Brazil in the round of 16 like so many other teams have in the past who were a lot bigger names coming in.
Short of getting out of our group the United States should have two goals, or should I say two teams they need to finish ahead of: Japan and Australia. Basically, those are two teams in the same boat as us domestically so it would be nice to beat them place-wise in the World Cup internationally.
And for fate's sake, please no 32nd like in 1998! At least come away with 2 points!
All that I'm really pissed off about is Mexico's easy draw but it does mean one CONCACAF team should make some noise.
They have a fading Portugal team, a weak Angola side and Iran. It's pretty odd that CONCACAF's "top" team (at least according to the seedings) is in an almost identical group to the one that the United States was in back in 2002. The only team missing is Poland.
I like the chances of my fourth favorite team being in Group A with Germany, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. The CONMEBOL and CONCACAF representatives are jokes. So all they need to do is pull an upset of the home side and they can win the group.
And my third favorite team, Ukraine, has a pretty favorable group in the weakest one in the tournament Group H with Spain, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia. The winner of this group gets second place in Group G in the round of 16 and that should be Switzerland. Ukraine could go really deep.
This is exciting!!! There's a possibility of a Czech Republic/Ukraine quarterfinal. Holy crap!
My second favorite team, Ireland, is, as everyone who followed the qualifiers knows, watching it from home. :)
So, without further Adu (yeah, it's cheesy that I said that but an interesting fact is he was born in Ghana and, therefore, still won't be playing for the United States this summer) here are my really, really, really, preliminary World Cup predictions:
GROUP A: 1) Germany (2-0-1), 2) Poland (1-0-2), 3) Costa Rica (1-1-1), 4) Ecuador (0-3-0)
GROUP B: 1) England (2-1-0), 2) Sweden (1-1-1), 3) Paraguay (1-1-1), 4) Trinidad & Tobago (0-3-0)
GROUP C: 1) Argentina (2-0-1), 2) Netherlands (1-0-2), 3) Ivory Coast (0-1-2), 4) Serbia (0-2-1)
GROUP D: 1) Mexico (3-0-0), 2) Portugal (2-1-0), 3) Iran (1-2-0), 4) Angola (0-3-0)
GROUP E: 1) Czech Republic (2-0-1), 2) United States (1-1-1), 3) Italy (1-1-1), 4) Ghana (0-2-1)
GROUP F: 1) Brazil (3-0-0), 2) Croatia (2-1-0), 3) Japan (0-2-1), 4) Australia (0-2-1)
GROUP G: 1) France (1-0-2), 2) South Korea (0-0-3), 3) Switzerland (0-1-2), 4) Togo (0-2-1)
GROUP H: 1) Spain (2-0-1), 2) Ukraine (1-1-1), 3) Tunisia (0-2-1), 4) Saudi Arabia (0-2-1)
The all important 32nd spot that someone has to get goes to the Soca Warriors. :)
And then the knockout phases...
Round of 16:
A1 v. B2 - Germany 2, Sweden 1
A2 v. B1 - England 2, Poland 1 (AET)
C1 v. D2 - Argentina 3, Portugal 1
C2 v. D1 - Netherlands 1, Mexico 1 (Holland on PKs)
E1 v. F2 - Czech Republic 1, Croatia 0
E2 v. F1 - Brazil 3, United States 0
G1 v. H2 - Ukraine 1, France 0
G2 v. H1 - South Korea 1, Spain 0 (AET)
Quarterfinals:
Q1: Argentina 1, Germany 0
Q2: Czech Republic 2, Ukraine 0
Q3: Netherlands 3, England 2
Q4: Brazil 5, South Korea 1 (yes, I am dead serious)
Semifinals:
S1: Argentina 1, Czech Republic 1 (Argentina on PKs)
S2: Brazil 2, Netherlands 1
3rd Place:
Netherlands 3, Czech Republic 2
Championship:
Argentina 2, Brazil 1
Of course there's always one or two sleepers who pull upsets. My dark horses to actually go against my own predictions are Croatia and Mexico.
Let the debate rage for the next six months. Just for the record, I finished in the 96th percentile of pick-'em in 2002 so I've got a resume to defend. ;)
---
DECEMBER 10
The reason that I no longer hang out on bigsoccer.com is because I got so sick of constantly having the same arguments about things like the world rankings and Euro-bias that I figured I didn't need the stress in my life. Not that the arguments aren't still in me as obvious by the fact that I got into a nice little war over on the community world_cup_2006.
You know I think every amateur footcer pundit is entitled to their own opinion but some push the edge of insanity. This one girl, _cereza pushed the bounds of sanity by making the following statement:
"I agree that C is harder,mainly because I consider Serbia a tougher team than Ghana or the USA. :/"
Now, it's fair to say a lot of teams are better than the United States, but Serbia is not one of them! The United States has proven that it can beat the second tier European teams at home (and tie them away) and Serbia would be no exception. Naturally I took this person's opinion down to European bias and told and fun ensued, mostly in the form of a Scot saying the following to me:
"If someone happens to think Serbia are better than USA, fair enough. You'll just have to deal with it. Easy group my ass. They did play against Belgium don't forget who had until this year qualified for 6 world cups in a row. Oh yes, they must be crap. By contrast, the CONCACAF is by a country mile the easiest qualifying zone. If the USA played in UEAFA, they would never qualify for a major tournament."
Just lovely. Here I thought we could shut them up by tying them with our C team (a 1-0 win for the United States' 2 starters and 9 subs could have done that). Obviously that's not true. But what I pretty much told this guy (and the complete response can be viewed in the link) is that past records really don't mean much and that regardless of how many times Belgium has qualified in a row this was a down year for them. I added that the problem with European amateur footcer pundits is they rely a lot on history and really don't bother looking at present form and player makeup.
Hence why they all just love to underestimate Ukraine (or for that matter the United States) and overestimate a team like Belgium.
I am just so sick of Europeans, who don't even - for the most part - get to view North American (or for that matter African) qualifiers think their continent is somehow better from top-to-bottom.
On a final footcer point, check out
---
DECEMBER 12
Anyway, what's really pissing me off is two conversations I'm having about the World Cup draw. The one with the Scot I've already mentioned and that's just degenerated into his saying that Kasey Keller would be the sixth best goalkeeper or lower in Serie A.
But, whatever. He does have a point that none of the bigger clubs have snatched him up. But I'm not pulling calling him one of the top five international goalies in the world out of my ass. I've seriously heard it said by at least five other sources. ESPN the Magazine named him the #1 goalkeeper in the world (at international, not club) which is just insane and was an attempt to get one American on the World XI they presented. But, seriously, England would kill for Keller over Robinson (and especially over James). And, frankly Scotland would too.
The other one is with this Canadian member of eastofprague (who knew all of my headaches could be traced back to that community). Anyway, this guy jumped in defending the idiot who said Serbia was a better team than the United States.
I don't even remember where this little war has gone to but I remember wanting to sing "Oh, Canada" to him. If there's one thing worse than an American footcer Eurosnob, it's a Canadian footcer Eurosnob.
And, yet in the whole thing, trying to stay neutral, I'm getting accused of being a provincial American.
For fuck's sake. It's like I can't win. From one side I get that I'm an American hating commie bastard and from the other side I get that I'm George fucking Bush or something. And, if there's one thing that I hate more than anything else it's having to defend my bonehead countrypeople who give us a bad reputation since they're indefensible.
Oh, this is a real winner comment from that second conversation though.
"I don't know, but I would like to state for the record that not ALL Americans are assholes, and in fact some of us don't care whether the U.S. does well in the World Cup or not; we just want to watch some good football."
Yeah, that makes you a good person. For cripes sakes, love your country's home team or root against them if you want to (I pull against USA Basketball for those who didn't know) but being indifferent to them is just obnoxious.
posted by incendiarymind at 6:54 AM
13 comments
