The Football Thread

[Rowain]

"Hey I hit and killed that pedestrian on the zebra crossing, but I was a bit clumsy, and besides I had my eyes on the CD-player"
"Oh. Well I guess it is okay then. You're free to go"
said no prosecutor, ever.

In football you are compelled to look at the ball while driving a car you are compelled to watch the street.

Yes the attack was done without consideration and would have deserved a yellow card but only the fact that Neymar got seriously hurt causes the uproar from this foul. (there were several far more dangerous attacks during the game).

I'll be a little disappointed if this doesn't have any further consequence.

It won't. The ref did see it and judged it harmless so that becomes a fact. No way FIFA starts overruling its ref after a game. (Suarez' biting was not seen by the ref so it could be prosecuted afterwards).

----------------------------
@darrellj. Costa Rica played like Greek 2.0 and I don't understand the hate vs Oranje either.

With any luck van Persie scores the winning goal in the semifinal and the final just to make Gaspar happy

[DaveV]

Sorry, I don't buy the "looking at the ball" excuse. You're required to maintain some awareness of your surroundings; if all players just focused exclusively on the ball and ran over everyone in their way, it would be a radically different game. In this case, furthermore, the Colombian player apparently had enough awareness of Neymar's presence that he jumped into the air and put out his hands to make contact with him.

[Molach]

I'm hoping it will have some consequences for the Ref, that FIFA will go out and say that this was not a good way to control the match.

But the players know (or should know) what is allowed or not, so it's interesting that after 60 minutes of playing under a weak Ref the players forget what the rules say. Seems like it is in the classroom - the rule is not what is written somewhere, it's what you can get away with.

And to abuse my inappropriate pedestrian crossing-thing, you can fiddle with CD player when driving over a zebra crossing and get away with it. Many times. But when you do hit someone who get hurt you go to jail. Footballers on this level are very aware of where other players are, it's a required skill - who can I pass to, who is on the way to take my ball away. Zuniga knew who he was jumping into, even if he didn't mean to break his back.

[Gaspar]

I dislike the Dutch primarily due to club reasons. I care infinitely more about club football than international football - I'd trade a US world cup win for an Arsenal CL win without hesitation, for example. But the Dutch are pretty tough to like simply because Robben is the most blatant diver in the game, even if you completely ignore the existence of van Judas. Tim Krul's antics were pretty loathsome yesterday as well, where he's getting in the face of these players who just spent 120 minutes for the second game in 4 days absolutely leaving their guts on the floor trying to stay alive in the tournament. He's pulled similarly irritating antics in club football as well, in fact he and the Dutch Skunk got themselves into some fairly memorable handbags before he got his 50 pieces of silver from Ol' Red Nose.

That said, of course they played the better football and deserved to go through, no problem with that.

[darrelljs]

Yeah, Robben will take a dive. I don't know about most blatant, but he certainly is one of the worst.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

ITim Krul's antics were pretty loathsome yesterday as well, where he's getting in the face of these players who just spent 120 minutes for the second game in 4 days absolutely leaving their guts on the floor trying to stay alive in the tournament.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20ww11...kers_sport



Darrell

[darrelljs]

Holy. Shit.

Darrell

[mackoti]

Holy. Shit.

Darrell

oh yes.

[darrelljs]

And AGAIN?!

Darrell

[Ruff_Hi]

Who needs penalty shoot-outs to blow through everyone's total goal targets. Google is showing 5-0 at the moment but their high level summary is only showing 4-0. Seems even google cannot keep up.