OK, thanks. I’m going to state very nearly what I stated for the recent almost-perfect game in baseball.
The play was certainly offside. Given the failure to make that call, a red card on the goalkeeper was absolutely the correct call.
I guess that’s right. But the “dive” element was there, too (I hate to see that rewarded).
Wow, that looked like a horrible call to me.
The replay clearly shows Suarez embellishing the contact, which is annoying. If FIFA started handing out 2-game bans for diving, it seems like they’d stamp it out pretty quickly.
Yet, why didn’t the linesman call it? The offside.
http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
This is pretty cool - World Cup Calendar
It’s a close call but I thought that the player wasn’t offside. For what it’s worth, the broadcast I saw had one of those still shots with the offside line marked and the Uruguayan player was in a legal position, which I confirmed to my satisfaction with the youtube video.
I was sad to see South Africa go. I realize they never really had a chance, but still…
On the broadcast of this match the commentators mentioned that all the stadia used in this WC have pitches that are of the smallest size allowed for by FIFA. That at least helps to explain why we are seeing so few goals.
They still have a chance, however remote:
- Mexico draws with France
- South Africa beats France
- Uruguay beats Mexico
Uruguay 2-0-1 7
South Africa 1-1-1 4
France 0-1-2 2
Mexico 0-1-2 2
Having discovered that the Ivory Coast’s team is called Les Elephants, I’m adopting them as my team. Elephant Power!
It was always required that a person playing for Ireland had Irish citizenship. It’s just that Irish citizenship rules are a little more generous than for most countries, in that it’s available to anyone with an Irish-born grandparent (or in very limited circumstances, a great-grandparent). And there are a lot of English footballers with Irish grannies, so often if they can’t make the England squad they’ll look to Ireland for the chance to play international football. There was a time when the bulk of the Irish squad was made up of such players but that hasn’t been the case for a while now.
Where things get complicated is with players from the North of Ireland. They’re entitled to both Irish and British citizenship and a number of them, for either political or football reasons, have opted to play for the Republic of Ireland. The Republic’s football association is quite happy with this (at least for the better players) but obviously the Northern association isn’t, and has asked FIFA to intervene, which so far it’s refused to do. It’s an ongoing issue.
Thanks Park!
Tough break for the feisty Koreans, but it’s good luck for Argentina.
TEVEZ is GOD.
gooooool 2-0 
Looks like ESPN has done a better job of filtering out the vuvuzeula noise today.
Thanks Argentina for making this 4 am wake up worthwhile!
Argh, can we never be relaxed in an Argentina Game?, horrible mistake by Demichelis, 2-1
Maybe they’re just not as exuberant there after the loss yesterday. I did see an article on Slate.com about a German who came up with a way to filter out the frequencies for the horns on home audio or computer equipment which made me wonder why the network hasn’t been doing this all along.
Nice come back goal by the Koreans to keep it interesting.
Yes but he couldn’t hear the warnings of his team mates because of those instruments of evil.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!
3-1
breath in - breath out
Uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!! :d
Offside 
Great stuff. Messi is a nightmare for the other team.