FIFA have been canny with this. It isn’t as long as many want but they’ll be able to point to the fact that in total he misses more matches than he did for the previous offences and also that they’ve extended the sanction to cover all footballing activity (in which case how will he finish his panini album?) and I don’t think they’ve done that before.
I’m glad he misses the rest of the World Cup, he doesn’t deserve to get any glory from this at all.
The really interesting thing will be…what do Liverpool do? Appeal to the CAS? how will that look.
Do they cut him loose? I think so. They know this or something like it will happen again and they are better to consider a cut-price £50 million for him now (there are still mugs out there with no sense of propriety) then £30 million for a two-years older multi-repeat offender.
Agree this is probably the most interesting aspect of all this. Don’t know what I’d do if I were Liverpool. Not withstanding your last point, I think I would be inclined to rinse and repeat last season - it gives them 3 months to investigate what the options are for playing without Suarez. They are much better with him, so if/when he comes back he can be used to boost them up the table and get them back in the CL. If he makes the right contrite noises and plays well, his value will be boosted a little bit. Then you sell him and know what Plan B is because you’ve already had it match tested.
On the other hand, I don’t think I would blame them for cutting their losses either and reinvesting the money in a long term plan. The problem being though that the man is a shit but he’s a talent that is actually irreplaceable, there are literally only 2 or 3 footballers in the world who can do what he can do, none of him will be signing with Liverpool. If I am Brendan Rodgers, I would be working out what I want to do without him right now and building a plan so as they can retain their CL spot next year and be worrying a little less about whether and when to sell him or not until I’ve worked that out - they may after all need to sell him to finance the plan (last year they did OK without him at the start of the year from within the squad - can they do that again?).
It really seems like just about anything is possible in the group G games today. Germany and the US both have incentive to just draw, but maybe both will attack, and the US in particular need goals. Plus there’s this rainstorm. In the other game, Ghana and Portugal both seem to be in some level of disarray, so that game could be a poorly played draw or a blowout in either direction.
I wasn’t happy to see that second Portugal goal against the US, but it’s sure added intrigue to today’s games.
But yeah, I’m pretty disappointed in Ghana’s antics of the last few days. Stay classy, Accra.
Why is pre-World Cup FIFA rank not a possible tie-breaker. World Cup results should be based only on World Cup performance, but once you get through every other reasonable tie-breaker, this seems a better option than a coin toss.
Which team would you have win the tiebreaker? The higher-ranked team, because they’re better, or the lower-ranked team, because they produced the same performance against higher-ranked opposition?
Another approach that might be fun is a variation on the idea that knockout games should have the penalty shootouts before the main game, rather than after. You could do the same thing for the group - have a sort of opening ceremony for each group, which includes some format of shootout between all the teams, and the shootout results are the final group tiebreaker.
Because the FIFA rankings are total bollocks and no-one takes them seriously. I’d go down the disciplinary road, reds, yellows then foul count. Or even corners earned and shots on target. There are plenty of better stats out there for determining who “deserves” to go through.
I ended up in a cast, not in surgery, fortunately. The orthopedist I went to looked at the original x-rays and thought I would need surgery, but took x-rays from different angles (I vividly remember that - ouch!) and decided it was safe to try me in a cast for a week and see how it was going. Thankfully, all was good at the end of that week, so I was able to get by with just a couple of casts.
Then, as I was about to get the cast off, I went to a local physical therapy office to make an appointment so I could start PT as soon as possible. As soon as I walked in, all the people who worked there started shaking their heads in disbelief as they get a look at the cast. I had just finished PT on both my ankles about 2 weeks before I broke my arm. I sprained them both, one for each season prior to breaking the arm, and just kept playing on them.
The game I broke my arm was my last one. I’m willing to take all the abuse (and the migraine headaches after each and every game), but I can’t afford the medical bills. I played from ages 5-41 and miss it so much.
One of the most absurd elements of the FIFA rankings is the way it can actually hurt your ranking to win friendlies. England found this out the hard way - the English FA, ever keen to raise money to pay for the new Wembley stadium, have arranged many friendlies over recent years. Due to the match-importance weightings FIFA use, these actually bring your rating average down even if you win! Switzerland played fewer friendlies and ended up getting seeded, ranked six in the world.
I don’t want to get political but it is a great shame that expensive healthcare stops you playing.
I’m very lucky that in the UK the treatment and physio for me was covered by the NHS so I didn’t pay a penny. My wife might say that’s a bad thing as a financial penalty might make me more careful.
I know that it varies between sports, with some sports it having a HUGE impact (American football, basketball) whereas some other sports it doesn’t seem to have as much of an impact (baseball), how much does it work for soccer?
It seems to me that the US has done well, and that a lot of it is attributed to Klinsy, but is it just better talent? or timing? or is it really coaching
This is true. It was strange watching the Germans against Ghana. A welcome sight to see them being ripped open so easily. Im not overly impressed about the individual talent in this US side. But I think they could teach our respective national teams on the importance of commitment and hard work. They seem to have a club mentality about them that both our respective national teams could learn a lesson from.
I completely agree. I was lucky to have some decent insurance when both of these things happened, but still had to cover a pretty high deductible (the amount I have to pay before the insurance starts to take over paying). My insurance isn’t quite as good now (although it is somehow even more expensive…), so I just don’t feel like I can take the chance. I still get out and kick the ball around a bit, but no league play for me anymore.
I want to know what kind of asshole is lashing the ball at bone-shattering speeds in a casual game where you aren’t even keeping score! Sorry, sideshowkar. That sucks.
On to the Suarez topic, I’m Facebook friends with a couple Uruguayans and they’re sharing conspiracy theories about how Chiellini already had a perfect Suarez bite-mark scar in 2012. Suarez bite truthers. What a world we live in.
