Viva México!! Take that, you cheating gallic swine! Congrats to my Mexican brethren, who I officially appoint as the spiritual substitutes for Ireland in the World Cup. Hell the flag is 2/3 the same [grin]

Quote: We're all delighted to be Irish as if we f**kin chose to be Irish! As if we were given a menu of nationalities up in space and we all wanted something that was the least amount of effort and the most amount of craic... and we didn't want anywhere too hot - otherwise we'd be Mexican.
- Tommy Tiernan

If I were the French coach, I would spend this evening on the phone to the travel agent and get my tickets home booked.

What a disaster - people were saying that France had a weak squad this year and weren't destined to be successful, but this is catastrophic. To lurch between the 2006 World Cup final, then a disastrous Euro 2008 campaign followed by this abominable campaign must be really jarring and I'd really love to see what the French sports pages have to say tomorrow, with my guess being that any comment made will be somewhat less than favourable.

France doesn't lack talent, it lacks a coach! Anelka, Malouda, Ribery, Evra and not one goal so far? Au revoir les bleus! Sacrebleu indeed!

As much as I was glad to see Mexico win (Viva Cuauhtemoc Blanco!), they had some great chances in the first half that they missed because their strikers got greedy. Teammates in the box and no cross? Weak!

@phantom, I agree, the US needs to attack more because it's going to come down to goal differentials. Altidore, Buddle, Findlay, Gomez - they have the speed, they need the need. Donovan and Buddle work well together for the LA Galaxy. Maybe they'll get the chance to show their stuff tomorrow.

so why did they play Blanco? I'm not too sure about his past, but currently he is not good at all. The PK was marvelous but on the field he didn't do anything but take up space.

Also, Malouda should have received a red card for kicking the ball at the mexican on the ground, with play stopped (a la Nigerian player)

Spoiler alert (hopefully you know this by now)...




Germany played terrible and the ref probably won it for Serbia. The first half was a complete joke on officiating. The second half was better, and Germany could have won but they just missed every opportunity.




USA GOT SCREWED! There was no offsides and if anything should have been a PK assuming no goal.. poor Edu and usa :( Aside from that one mis-call, this game was MUCH better on officiating. Why is it the "big names" in referees are always the worst?

[Edited by - Crazyfool on June 18, 2010 10:08:25 AM]

We was robbed!

Edu's goal was good. The ref made a totally bogus call. Absent Edu's goal they should have given the PK for the manhandling of Bradley. The officiating in that game was bad. Aside from the overruled goal, they gave Findlay a yellow card for getting hit in the face with the ball and they looked the other way when Altidore was pushed down in the box on a breakaway.

I predict red cards during the England-Slovenia game next week.

As for Blanco, it is funny to see him run. He's slow but he gives El Tri a huge morale boost. He has a great touch and lots of experience. He's great at feeding the ball to other players and he has a tendency to slink in behind defenders without being noticed. He's a star player for the Chicago Fire and Fox Sports En Espanol gave him his own show. Google for more.

I missed the first ten minutes of the second half. I assume that's when the play with Malouda went down?

Lessbread, not sure about the timing of Malouda's play.

The ball hit findleys hand, there is no dispute about it (edit: no dispute in my group of friends who watched with me ;) ). It hit his head then his hand. The only reason I'm giving him a pass is because its a hand ball in the box, and he might have the mentality of giving anyone a yellow who hand balls in the box to prevent more drama. I honestly can live with that and understand thats part of having referees who make judgement calls. The goal was pretty absurd though.

I'm not sure I saw the altidore pushing, but I do remember a US forward (forget who) getting pushed down and the slovenian defender getting a yellow, but that was outside the box and he had no real shot at the ball anyway. It was a dumb move by the slovenian. USA did get screwed :(

And about Blanco - I did notice the crowd go crazy when he went in.

Cuauhtémoc Blanco Apparently he doesn't play for Chicago anymore. "He has been awarded the MVP of the Mexican First League Division five times." He has scored 39 goals in 120 appearances for the Mexican national team. He scored 125 goals in 333 appearances with Club America.

Regarding Findlay, if that had been the only questionable call I wouldn't have mentioned it, but coming with so many others...

The BBC commentary team said something to the effect of "There were loads of fouls there, it all depends on which one you blow the whistle for" just before Edu's disallowed goal. On the replays, you could see they were right; all sorts of dirty pushing, shoving and grabbing onto each other and I'd say there were at least two outright fouls committed.

The referee was very inexperienced and it showed - I wasn't happy with some of the decisions and I wasn't properly supporting either team, more keeping tabs on how the group progresses and how England fare against Algeria this evening (personally, I think they'll win relatively decisively with 2-0 or so). Some of the decisions were dreadful, sentiments echoed by the commentators and some of the yellow cards seemed to be unjustified where a simple free kick would have sufficed.

However, I thought it was a good game all round and definitely the one I've enjoyed the most out of the ones I've watched in this tournament so far. Alan Hansen on the BBC said at half time that it was all over for the US and they couldn't come back from 2-0... we all know what happened next. A truly electrifying performance and a well deserved draw for the US.

First the US wins against England 1:1 and now ties Slovenia 3:2.