¡¡¡GOOOOOOOOL DE VILLA!!!
Off 2 posts, on the rebound off a post!
¡Vamos España!
Phew! Viva Espana! That was great. I love to see the Spanish style, there’s such good humour in their play.
I just booked a next-weekend getaway to DC, with a trip to a great Spanish restaurant involved. Could be helping them celebrate Spain’s first trip to the Final.
Sorry, but what game were you watching? Yes, it could have been level at half time, but that would have been an incredibly flattering scoreline for us. Germany had 5 clear chances in the first half, I’ve never seen us defend so badly, and we’ve never been beaten so badly at a major competition, ever.
Germany’s performance tonight was considerably better than the one against England. The defence was tighter, and they were more clinical in front of goal. They beat us 4-1 without playing to their full potential, which is a good indication of how woeful we were.
The funny thing is that the encroachment during Cardozo’s penalty for Paraguay was even more obvious, but it was not called. I do think the better team won at the end.
I can’t wait for the semifinals now and I would love to see a Germany - Netherlands final.
Was it? I must admit to not having noticed at the time (and the replays pretty much concentrated on events at the other end). I’d be interested to see, no doubt youtube will supply at some point.
Encroachment at penalties is a pretty common thing though, but only by small margins. The officials are usually looking elsewhere. Come to think of it, the incidence of retakes for keepers coming off the line seems to have gone down a lot.
I second this. The best team won. See you all in Brazil.
Several leagues used the ball last season. The F.A. were offered it, but declined due to contractual issues with anothe ball manufacturer.
Doesn’t change my point, though… When have you heard complaints about the ball in the Champions League or the European Championships?
Congrats to the Germans and the Spannish (Red Fury is probably still in the pub :D). I hope Spain give the German a bit more of a game than the English and Argentines; they are really starting to scare me now.
I’m really interested to see what will happen if we’ll have to play the Germans in the final (provided we beat Uruguay), as I’ve been losing the extreme will and desire for them to loose. If you’d asked me 6 years ago, there would have been two things I cared about: the dutch to win and Germany to lose. From 2006 onwards this feeling has begun to deterioate…but it’ll probablt all come back if we have to play each other (which we haven’t done in a serious match since 92). It’ll also give us a chance to get back for 1974, but this time with the Germans playing the surprising good football and us grinding out the results, as long as the end result is the same as well 
Luckily, I could watch Argentina v Germany between flights.
First of all, thank you to Argentina for playing fairly when the match was lost; no one was trying to hurt one of our players out of frustration and all players showed mutual respect afterwards!
And thank you to our Argentinian posters here for their good wishes. At least, Frodo doesn’t need to reconsider his sound rating of Maradona as a coach – he could have made it difficult for us but did the opposite.
Argentina played far beneath its capacity because he opted for the wrong tactical shape, not the best formation and didn’t react to the apparent deficits his side had against our midfield, not even at half time.
I am glad that he stuck with a 4-4-2; this allowed us to overload, as I was hoping, Argentina’s wings, sometimes in rapid succession or with passes from one wing to the other to confuse and split up their shape; Otamendi was even worse than I had hoped for (de verdad, no lo dije con mala intención) and though Mascherano did a fine job of restricting Özil’s freedom, Maradona hadn’t tasked anyone to do the same with Schweinsteiger; he had so much space that even he looked surprised at times.
And though our offence worked well again, I was far more delighted by the defence organization and the commitment of every player to share the workload. Even Podolski took this task seriously and I am almost tempted to take back my earlier remark about his learning disability in this respect.
Well, … not yet.
But as one of the guys who didn’t spare with criticism when Löw did something … strange, I’ll gladly concede the point that he has done a superb job a second time in a row. Sure, the main points of attack were so obvious that we all could see them but his well-balanced defence plan was perfectly suited for both teams on the field.
A word about the referees (not to be taken 100% seriously): Again? :smack: Do you guys have some contractual obligation to take away one of our key players when we are heading into the late stage of the Cup? Ballack 2002, Frings 2006 and now Thomas Müller. Argh. Oh well, nothing to be done about it.
And it’s Spain now. Del Bosque won’t do us the favour and deploy his world-class talents ineffectively to help us out a bit. Bummer.
footballisplayedwithyourfeet, the same end result? 2:1 for Germany then. I can live with that. 
worth a watch …
It definitely was encroachment, blatantly. It’s poor refereeing to call one team on it and not the other. Most referees let it go or don’t bother to pay attention to it but if the referee is going to enforce the rule he needs to do it in all cases, not just when he feels like it.
As for the Uruguay handball I think James Richardson summed it up nicely on the WCD podcast:
It was the right thing to do, if someone did it against a team I was supporting I would pissed off like you wouldn’t believe but looking at it from a neutral standpoint he did the right thing and the majority of footballers would have done exactly the same thing in his position. He did the crime and he was caught bang to rights and is now suffering his punishment, and i’m sure he is happy to do so!
A good summary as always. I was struck by how much the German strikers pitched in on defense, while the Argentinean front line seemed much less interested in falling back and cutting off Lahm. What we got as a result was a technical display of how to cut apart a defense that isn’t attacking the ball nearly enough.
I hope to see a different result with Spain than we did last time. 
Well kids, just got back from Champions, my favorite sports bar here and I’ll admit I’ve had a Scotch or three with the rather large crowd of La Furia Roja supporters (call me old-fashioned, I don’t like the new nick they are pushing “La Roja” – that’s already Chile’s and even if our football isn’t “racial” anymore (though I vote for Sergio Ramos and Carles Puyol for keeping the gene alive) after the match.
I was one again disappointed with Del Bosque’s stubborn streak – well, what else can you expect from a Salamantino anyway? “Tercos como mulas.” Torres simply has no place on the team right now, never mind the starting 11. He has a bench so deep his second squad would likely start with most other NTs. I mean, those of you that are intimate with footy surely know the value of players such as Silva, Mata, Cesc, Navas, Pedro, Llorente & Javi Martinez just to pick a few – in fact Man City just shelled out 40 million Euros for Silva! Anyway, pardon the bit of rambling but the point’s the same as I made in my comments after the Portugal match: we are better than we’ve shown so far. Sure, I don’t expect to see us thump everyone by three or four goals, but I do want to see our best formation/players on the pitch.
And what do you know? Though not perfect – because I’m still not sold on the double pivot – doing the obvious, Cesc x Torres, intermediately gave me a feeling of confidence about the end result. Hope he sees the “same” obvious as well.
Looking forward to playing the “new Germany,” a stylish team with loads of weapons.
May the best team win.
Now, sing it with me. I know I did till I got hoarse!
Viva España!
It’s nice to know the Irish are still remembered at this World Cup…
You might have sung till you were hoarse… we sang in England but still got donkeys…
It seems like he called it on the second one because it was an offensive player moving into the box.
It is a breach of the same rule regardless of which team is encroaching. If the team that is encroaching ‘loses’ the penalty then nothing will be done, if the team encroaching ‘wins’ the penalty then it should be retaken. In this case the team encroaching ‘won’ the penalty because it was missed. By ‘wins’ and ‘loses’ I simply mean whether the result of the kick was to their benefit or not.
The penalty should have been retaken in both cases, exactly the same law was broken.
We had an Australian in the lounge at the airport, grinning like a shot fox: “I feel much better now.” 
I agree, Spain had a lucky moment there; it would have been far more difficult for them to beat a reinvigorated Paraguay. Otoh, the referee should have given Spain another penalty after the keeper fouled a Spanish player right after the penalty.
For me, Germany/Argentina came down to a single matchup - Angel de Maria v. Jerome Boateng (ie., Argentina attacking up their right, and Boateng playing in the left back slot for Germany).
The Argentina midfield did one thing very well all day - they found de Maria in space on the right side, where he went after Boateng. In fact, I would guess 75% of their attacks came up the right.
Unfortunately, de Maria is apparently totally left-footed (I checked, and he always played on the left for Benfica) to the point where he can’t cross the ball with his right foot. Every single time he got the ball in space, he’d have to use an extra touch to play the ball back inside so he could cross it with his left.
Boateng is more of a center back than a left back, so his tendency was to move to the inside, forcing de Maria to the outside. Now, ordinarily, a winger would be thrilled about that; he can run the ball down to the goal line and then play it back and across the goal with his outside foot. de Maria couldn’t; he’d have to play the ball inside and back to cross it with his left foot, and every time he took the extra touch, Boateng or the supporting midfielder would close down the cross or take the ball away.
You can see an example here at 4’19" - it’s de Maria creating a shot for himself, not crossing the ball - but I think it’s illustrative of the problem of playing a left-footed winger on the right side of the pitch.
[QUOTE=RedFury]
I mean, those of you that are intimate with footy surely know the value of players such as Silva, Mata, Cesc, Navas, Pedro, Llorente & Javi Martinez just to pick a few – in fact Man City just shelled out 40 million Euros for Silva! Anyway, pardon the bit of rambling but the point’s the same as I made in my comments after the Portugal match: we are better than we’ve shown so far. Sure, I don’t expect to see us thump everyone by three or four goals, but I do want to see our best formation/players on the pitch.
[/QUOTE]
I certainly hope you’re better than you’ve shown, because you lost to Switzerland and were extremely lucky to get past Paraguay. That said, I don’t think there was ever a point in the match when I didn’t think, “the Spanish are going to find a goal soon.”
What you don’t know is that wily Del Bosque has got a secret weapon that can immediately make the spaniards play like there’s one more man in the pitch and renders them practically undefeatable.
It’s called “leaving Torres on the bench”.
If he decides to deploy this terrifying plan in the semifinals, the Germans don’t have a prayer.