# Brasil 2014 **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [May 6, 2014, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840 "2014-05-06T21:19:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 176
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3501 "2014-07-17T13:45:36Z")
Slightly off topic: I dismissed Messi for a long time because I had heard all the same stuff about Ariel Ortega and figured people were just desperate to find “the next Maradona”. Maybe I was right. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3502 "2014-07-17T14:17:30Z")
Well, you know aside from his club level performance 😉 > **[Lionel Messi Is Impossible](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/)** > > In their Group F World Cup match late last month, Argentina and Iran were still deadlocked after 90 minutes. With the game in stoppage time and the score tied a… ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3503 "2014-07-17T14:39:27Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Slightly off topic: I dismissed Messi for a long time because I had heard all the same stuff about Ariel Ortega and figured people were just desperate to find “the next Maradona”. Maybe I was right. 😉 You weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3504 "2014-07-17T15:18:32Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Well, you know aside from his club level performance 😉 > > [Lionel Messi Is Impossible | FiveThirtyEight](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/) I have made a point of not reading Silver’s World Cup stuff because soccer just isn’t a US-style bundle of statistics… but that’s pretty fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3505 "2014-07-17T18:06:48Z")
[Referee: Kramer forgot it was Final](http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/67/world-cup-2014/2014/07/17/4965448/kramer-forgot-it-was-the-world-cup-final-reveals-referee?ICID=HP_BN_7) Apparently he went up to Rizzoli and asked him if it was the World Cup final. Rizzoli thought he was joking, but then Kramer asked him again, so he said “Yes.” Kramer then said, “Thanks, that’s important to know.” Rizzoli then alerted Bastian Schweinsteiger that something was seriously wrong and Germany substituted him. Scary stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Erdosain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/erdosain/32/7284_2.png) [@Erdosain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erdosain)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3506 "2014-07-17T18:21:35Z")
> [@chizzuk](#): > > [Referee: Kramer forgot it was Final](http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/67/world-cup-2014/2014/07/17/4965448/kramer-forgot-it-was-the-world-cup-final-reveals-referee?ICID=HP_BN_7) > > Apparently he went up to Rizzoli and asked him if it was the World Cup final. Rizzoli thought he was joking, but then Kramer asked him again, so he said “Yes.” Kramer then said, “Thanks, that’s important to know.” Rizzoli then alerted Bastian Schweinsteiger that something was seriously wrong and Germany substituted him. Scary stuff. Kramer’s expression when he was being led off the field was frightening. He looked like he was at the end of a particularly grueling pub crawl. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3507 "2014-07-17T18:23:16Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I have made a point of not reading Silver’s World Cup stuff because soccer just isn’t a US-style bundle of statistics… but that’s pretty fascinating. This post is kind of interesting to me, because, you’re right. Soccer isn’t US style statistics. But then I thought, wait, there is no such thing as US-style statistics. Sure, there are fantasy baseball and football leagues, and who wins and loses in those fantasy games is determined by the statistics of the various players. But… there’s fantasy leagues for [soccer](http://fantasy.premierleague.com/rules/) too! ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3508 "2014-07-17T18:41:07Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I think the lad is allowed to feel grumpy. > > I have a lot of time for Messi, he is a great player but he knows that he hasn’t done enough in any of his world cups to cement his position alongside the likes of Pele and his batshit crazy stumpy, druggie cheat compatriot. That has got to be tough to take. His team are not good enough to allow him to flourish and he is not Maradona enough to single-handedly take them to glory. > > He may get another shot in four years time but he is at his peak now so he has to be thinking “is that the chance gone?” People are unfair on poor Lionel. Fact is, this Argentine team (like Germany in 2002) overachieved, through a combination of relatively easy second round path and some brilliant play by Messi. If it had been anyone else in the same position, you would have said “of course give him the Golden Ball, he got them this far on his own”. But, with Messi we (and the Argentine squad) expect him to win games on his own. Maradona had other players to support him, he was marked out of both finals by the Germans, but the had other players too. They would not have gotten as far as they did without Messi. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3509 "2014-07-18T09:19:12Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > If I’m going to get a Coventry City shirt, it would have to be this one: > > [This season's worst football kits | The Independent | The Independent](http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/this-seasons-worst-football-kits-1715247.html?action=gallery&ino=15) I have one! They started selling them again a few years ago. No idea if they still do. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3510 "2014-07-18T09:30:41Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Well, you know aside from his club level performance 😉 > > [Lionel Messi Is Impossible | FiveThirtyEight](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/) > [@](#): > > As of this writing, FiveThirtyEight gives Messi and his compatriots a 16 percent chance of winning the tournament — second only to host nation Brazil. Whoops. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3511 "2014-07-18T12:45:28Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > People are unfair on poor Lionel. Fact is, this Argentine team (like Germany in 2002) overachieved, through a combination of relatively easy second round path and some brilliant play by Messi. If it had been anyone else in the same position, you would have said “of course give him the Golden Ball, he got them this far on his own”. But, with Messi we (and the Argentine squad) expect him to win games on his own. Maradona had other players to support him, he was marked out of both finals by the Germans, but the had other players too. > > They would not have gotten as far as they did without Messi. It’s almost certainly true that they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did – he’s Lionel Messi, I certainly hope he made a contribution – but this is Argentina he’s playing for, not Costa Rica. If you took a poll before the World Cup they’d probably have been the consensus #2 or #3 team in the world. That’s not a one man team. They weren’t trotting out a bunch garbage next to him, unless Barcelona, Real Madrid and Man City have all been suckered. They also didn’t allow a single goal in the knockout stages until Gotze’s. And Messi didn’t score any. So it’s an overreaction to put Messi’s legacy into question just because he ran out of gas and had nothing to give them in the second half of the final, but it’s also a super-overreaction to the overreaction to suggest that he dragged them through the group stages on his back. He just didn’t do that. He was OK, and they defended like motherfuckers against four really good teams. ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3512 "2014-07-18T16:06:20Z")
Bombshell coming out of Germany this morning: Philipp Lahm has retired from international football. Didn’t see that coming at all. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3513 "2014-07-18T16:31:05Z")
Wow. He’s only 30. Sorry to see him go; he’s been a credit to German and World football in every way. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840/3514 "2014-07-18T17:00:42Z")
> [@chizzuk](#): > > Bombshell coming out of Germany this morning: Philipp Lahm has retired from international football. > > Didn’t see that coming at all. Damn!, the vodoo doll worked too slow. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brasil-2014/687840.md?page=175)