Hmm, we call it “Escape to Victory”. But you’re right, it is a cinematic masterpiece, perhaps the pinnacle of John Huston’s glittering career. Who would have thought that journeymen Ipswich midfielders such as John Wark and Russell Osman would turn out to be such gifted actors? Kudos too to the editor for managing to cut miles of footage of Sylvester Stallone into something resembling football
Here’s a paragraph from the wiki on the Harvard-Yale football rivalry:
In what is usually considered the best Game, in 1968, the Harvard team made a miraculous last-moment comeback, scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie a highly touted Yale squad. Yale was coming off a 16-game winning streak and its quarterback, Brian Dowling, had only lost one game he started in since the sixth grade. (Dowling was the inspiration for the character BD in Yale graduate Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury.) The tie left both teams 8-0-1 for the season, inspiring the Harvard Crimson to print the headline “Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29”. [2] This headline was later used as the title for a 2008 documentary about this Game directed by Kevin Rafferty. [3] One of Harvard’s offensive tackles was Tommy Lee Jones, later to find fame in Hollywood. As it turned out, this would be the final tie in the series.
I was only able to catch the last half an hour or so. They looked composed and confident and Cameroon seemed at a loss to create something. Kudos to Japan for their first Cup win off of home soil.
Man, I thought that Tommy Lee Jones thing was a joke, perhaps some kind of reference to actual footballers appearing in “Escape to Victory”, as mentioned above. But it seems he really did play for Harvard.
I’m still not quite seeing the parallel with the England - USA game, though.
Go with the moral victory thing. England was big and bad, and expected to clobber us. A tie against them counts as a win, sorta kinda.
A terrible game – both sides can do much better and need to if they don’t want to lose against Holland and Denmark decisively. Japan uncharacteristically lost its order many times, passed poorly and with no eye for the open spaces – but Cameroon was … I don’t have words 
. How so many good players can form such an abysmal team is beyond me. Not even the poor decisions by their coach, Paul Le Guen, (why on earth was Eto’o wasted on the right wing against such an opponent?) explain it.
They made mistakes like players from the eighth division: they ran with the ball across the field to pass it about three metres to the next guy, they ignored any position play to free their players, they reverted to rely on long passes towards the box while praying for a miracle during the last 15 minutes, and then the clownish keeper … a total disappointment.
I hope, they resolve whatever issues they have among each other and show the world their true talents.
Just thought I’d share this classic clip from the days before the '94 World Cup. Of course we know American coverage isn’t really like that… right?
I know this isn’t the dominoes thread, but as an interesting aside, Tommy Lee Jones was Al Gore’s freshman roommate at Harvard and George W. Bush was a DKE fraternity brother of Garry Trudeau at Yale. Sorry for the hijack…gotta go to work.
Re today’s second game, you did yourselves a favour, those of you missed the first half. The second half was more like it, but I don’t think the chap who engraves the winner’s name on the trophy at the end of the tournament is going to have to spend too much time worrying about how best to render "Cameroon"or “Japan” on the base of the cup. Should he use traditional Hiragana, or just “Japan” in Roman script? Mate, it’s not going to be an issue, trust me.
So yeah, Cameroon looked a bit complacent, Japan looked decent enough, and hats off to them for what is a historic win. [/patronising]
If Cameroon played the whole match like they did in the last 10 minutes, they might have done a lot better.
Missed my first two WC matches 
Ready for what I expect to be a very rough Italy/Paraguay match.
ETA: A red card or three wouldn’t surprise me.
Italy must go down.
Only because I’m for France and I’ve not yet forgotten what happened between Materazzi & Zizou in '06.
There’s an ongoing thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=566590&page=9
France have no right even being there. Check my location 
Moving thread by LikkleStoops (including yojimbo’s post) into the thread in The Game Room.
I remembered the Game Room two minutes after I posted. Sowwy.
France has every right to that cup. But they’re not lookin too good sooooo… :rolleyes:
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Paraguay, on a header by Alcaraz coming from a FK.
1-0
Goal for Paraguay!
I must confess this was unexpected for me!
woooot! :D.
I keep opening this thread forgetting that I’m DVR’ing all the games. Oh well. At least I know I can win a bet with my cat when I get home tonight.
Then again I always win bets with my cat.
Because he’s a cat. Fucker owes me 50 grand at this point.