Thought I'd make a thread where we football fans could conduct our traditional post-match anaylisis:D

Wow, France 0 -1 Senegal!!!!

Pretty good game, France hitting the woodwork twice and all that.
Have to say I did have a sneaky feeling senegal might score first, but I never thought they'd win it!

I was very impressed with Diouf, I'd seen him in the african nations where he played ok, my only complaint was that he was caught offside a little too often for my liking. definetly my man of the match.

So any thoughts on this game anyone?
And as the results come in, post 'em here:goodjob:

Originally posted by Comrade Davo
Pretty good game, France hitting the woodwork twice and all that.
Have to say I did have a sneaky feeling senegal might score first, but I never thought they'd win it!

I was very impressed with Diouf, I'd seen him in the african nations where he played ok, my only complaint was that he was caught offside a little too often for my liking. definetly my man of the match.

I agree with all you said. I just want to mention that Senegal hit the woodwork once, too. I had hoped a little for this because of the way they played in the Africa Cup, but I didn't expect it to come true. :)

P.S.: Now that there's this new Sports forum (THANKS TF! :love: ) I think we can afford new threads for other big results. Good idea anyway, I'm going to post a thread for the discussion about upcoming games.

Yeah, it was a good match.
Now I am scared, I hope that we will be luckier with Nigeria than France with Senegal.:scan:


Something that surpreised me is the lack of jokes about France surrendering.:D

Sure Diouf was offside all game long. They only played two strikers, and the midfield wasn't pushing up very much. Boot the ball - if he gets it offside, o well; if he is onside, he'll surely get a shot! Good odds for an underdog, imho.

i got one sentence:FRANCE NEEDS ZIDANE!
look now....they lost:(

I can't beleive it!!!...France are slow starters but man...what a great day for Senegal.Its only a first round game but still...

Personally, i´d love to see african teams reaching the final instances of the cup. Anyway, they won´t be able to beat us. We have world class players like Ortega (:confused:), Burgos ( :crazyeye: ) and Kili Gonzales (:eek: )
Hey Bielsa!!! mmm... what about Riquelme, Saviola or Solari perhaps???

Ireland have had several chances in the second half and now its 1 - 1 between them and Cameroon. It looked in the first half that Cameroon were going to win easily but Ilreland have come back with a cracking goal by Matt Holland :)

Ar-gen-tina!
Ar-gen-tina!
Ar-gen-tina!

The best part is when they win, all of Toronto's hot argentine women come out with the flag, take over a corner at Dupont and wiggle back and forth to that chant.

Makes it worth rooting for them.

R.III

I was hoping it would stay 1 - 1 as now I have only gained 1 point when I could have gained 5 for the competition...

another great match, this will be a fantastic wc. the first two goals were wonderful.

Germany 8 - 0 Saudi Arabia

Not much to say really, Saudi Arabia played very poorley, were terriable with dealing with crosses.

well i think that saudi arabia players will be executed by beheading them on the center of the city:D
and can you believe they would get a mercedes coupe if they won?i guess they dont like mercedes....

I would just like to say Ireland for the World Cup (if England get knocked out that is). Great comeback against Cameroon. In the first half they looked they couldn't cope with the pace of the Cameroon attack. However in the second-half they totally dominated and should have won in it (Keane against the post). Also Saudi Arabia are an embaressement to the World Cup.

Could have won by more and it would have been nice if the score had been 2-0 for the competitions...:)

dowload 'tyskarna från lund - global fussball ok'
the best world cup song :D

Paraguay 2 Saudi Arabia 2

and

England 1 Sweden 1

England were very poor, I have been saying ever since I saw the squad listings that our midfiled is very weak and it showed today, the front men had almost nothing to feed off of. I am still wondering why sven did not include Mcmanningham in the squad.

I was glad to see Svensson (the squad number 8 one!) come on for Sweeden, he plays Southampton, the team I support:D

Spain 3 - 1 Slovenia

I was impressed with spain, first time they have won the opening game in 40 years or something ridiculu, they are my tip to win the whole thing and they had a good start today. usually it takes them a while to get going but it was good to see them get off to a winning start,Ii am a big fan of spainish football.

Originally posted by Dell19
Could have won by more and it would have been nice if the score had been 2-0 for the competitions...:)

I caught the first half and then promptly fell asleep (it was 3:00am here). VERY impressed with the Nigerian defense: much better teamwork than Argentina showed, and a willingness to surround and cover two or three players with four or five when Argentina's defence was obsessed with a "duel" approach and 1:1 cover.

The tragedy, of course, was that Nigeria failed to build on this because they were hopeless at keeping the ball on the other side of the field. An honorable defeat.

My Argentine boys will have to work on their long range passing, I think.

R.III

Also Saudi Arabia are an embaressement to the World Cup. [/B]

:mad:

Their performance was a disgrace, an insult to the world cup and they should be ashamed, but the team are capable of a lot better, and did deserve to get to the world cup. I don't think they fully realised the force they were about to play. They got caught up in the whole "worst German team ever" (which is true) and hence didn't give them the respect they deserved.
Any team who plays the way they did deserves to lose 16-0. They got off lightly.

Mexico 1 Croatia 0

It seems Croatia will not do as well as in the last world cup as their players seem to be past their best...

Brazil 2 Turkey 1

Brazil won due to a penalty which should have been a free kick. Two Turks were sent off during the last minutes.
Brazil didn't play good in my opinion, a draw would have been the reward Turkey deserved.

italy - ecuador 2-0 after the first half.
ecuador seems to have problems with vieri and the italian defense.

Italy - Ecuador 2-0 - FINISHED!

Italy played all right in the second half, defended all right, creating a few chances, while Ecuador only had one chance in the 90th minute (large one though)

I don't think Brazil played that well, and neither did Spain. 3-1 against a Slovenian team who did nothing but defend (they even substituted Zahovic, their only good player)

That game should have been a draw! Mr. Young Joo Kim needs to open his eyes before the next match he does b/c if he doesn't, he'll ref a team w/ very unfrendly fans...... Even if the center ref missed that call, I dunno how the Assistant missed it!! That flag shoulda been flying like crazy! Argggg.... makes me angry.

The kicking the ball at Rivado was very unessary, but that lil dork was hit in the thigh and he fell holding his face? What's the bull crap! The soccer players being actors was a HUGE problem w/ France '98 and it makes me sick to see it agian!

Italy won convincingly 2 - 0 against Ecuador and Brazil ended up winning their game with a lucky penalty against Turkey (2-1).

It is true Brazil was saved by the invented penalty but (at 65 min i think), Rivaldo scored a goal which was not considered bucause of an (IMO) inexisting offside "found" by the referee...
(Fifa should choose better their referees.......)

No, he was offside. Not questioning your integrity, but you are absolutly 100% sure you know exactly what the offside rule means?

Originally posted by Baleog
No, he was offside. Not questioning your integrity, but you are absolutly 100% sure you know exactly what the offside rule means? Do you? Not that I want to question yours.
The TV showed they side by side at the time the ball was touched last by a Brazilian player. We have wached this tons of times here with stopped frame and you can see that very clearly. What do you do with the rule that if you are uncertain of something you give the edge to the attacker? I don't complain about that because this rule is never respected and the situation is not very clear withouth the use of technology, something the assistant doesn't have to make decisions.

About the draw thing, I have to desagree. Brazil played horribly, but they were far best than Turkey.

Originally posted by Myartar
Even if the center ref missed that call, I dunno how the Assistant missed it!! That flag shoulda been flying like crazy! Argggg.... makes me angry. That's the real problem. The assistant ran to the endline (i don't know exactly how to call it) of the field indicating it was a penalty, he actually made the main referee be sure about what he was doing.

This will be a terrible problem during the whole competition. I don't know why do we have to have referees from countries that don't have an important participation in the world football scene. They are not good and they will make a lot of mistakes. Turkey was the victim today, but the next one might be Brazil or any other team.
I just want to see if you guys are going to have the same emotional reaction when Brazil is not involved.

BTW, Rivaldo was really stupid doing that scene at the end of the game. Everybody was watching and some referees won't take his words and actions seriously anymore. This might be bad for the Brazilian team in the future.

Edit: Misspelling

BTW, Rivaldo was really stupid doing that scene at the end of the game. Everybody was watching and some referees won't take his words and actions seriously anymore. This might be bad for the Brazilian team in the future.

I agree, it was very stupid of him to do that, there really was no need for it.

Well I only saw the side on replay once, and thought it was offside, if you seen it more maybe your more entitled to comment, and yes weboth know what the offside rule is!

:love:

:beer:

Costa Rica won against China 2 - 0 but it was a poor game really...The Belgium Japan game was very interesting although it was a shame that Japan's last 'goal' was ruled offside.

It was really nice to see S. Korea get it's first WC win.:goodjob: Woulda been nicer if Poland wasn't playing like crap. Anyone know if they're one of the teams who were cursed w/ lack of full team practices b/c of players stuck w/ league obligations? I know most of thier defense was made up of guys who play in Germany, so I imagine the rest of the team have other teams as well.

It's also funny to see how all sports camera operators are men. These wonderful guys get great shots of beautiful women while waiting for action on the field. This was very appearant during halftime of the Korea game when ESPN2 showed us a few of the VERY HOT Korean women.:love: To these cameramen I say, :beer:

The US came out strong and beat the Portugese 3-2!! In Portugal defense, Figo didn't play as well as he could and I can't decide if it was the US defense or his ankle injury. Anyway, I'm super happy!! I'm gonna go be happy watching Germany v. Rep. of Ireland!!