Are any of the crowd going to be able to afford a ticket to a world cup game?
They’re doing some stuff for the Cup, like adding a separate class of tickets at very affordable prices and you can only enter on that ticket with South African ID. The idea is to get South Africans to the game and not just have them buy low sell high. We’ll see how it plays out in reality.
Actually, not to puncture the enjoyment of the game by those who are fans of the Red Fury, but you will notice that the only goal scored by Spain the second half was the result of a complete miskick (actually, a mismiss! 
) by the NZ defense. And Spain looked dodgy when the Kiwis FINALLY put some high pressure on them, though that may simply be because by then they had fallen half asleep as they owned a 5 goal lead. 
How the hell did Spain manage to avoid any other decent team in its group? That must have been one hell of a managed draw!
Oh, and I agree about the near side assistant. He was atrocious. Hell, in one case the player was onside by a good three yards at the time the ball was played forward. But if you want to really laugh, laugh at the Iraqi players complaining about the South African player in the second half who they claimed was offside on a goal kick.
Kind of feel bad for SA if this was a sign of things to come. I mean what with all that exuberant energy, if the reason for all the empty seats was about the pricing, shame on their Fed for not having the plan ShibbOleth speaks of in place already.
Even if it’s just a dress rehearsal, it’s also a great opportunity to add any number of new fans who (possibly) haven’t been exposed to the game – and certainly not at this level.
Having said that, I read this article on Goal.com with some input/explanations by a South African journo:
Why Is The Stadium Half-Empty For Spain - NZ? Local Experts Explain…
I actually found the ensuing posts by many of the locals more interesting. Including an explanation of the horns ZebraShaSha is so enthralled with. 
DSYoung, guy can’t get excited about his team finally living up to its eternal promise after forty years, might as well give it up…'cause I’m pretty darn sure I don’t have another forty in me. 
And yeah, damn straight we rigged the draw. Gotta tell you, Blatter’s bribe was peanuts compared to what we had to pay Platini – though I suspect the price will rise according to the occasion. Perhaps one of our Brazilian or Italian friends could give us a bit more detail; surely they have much more experience in these kinds of things.
j/k! Don’t want to start WW-III till 2010!
Ok, Brazil doing it in the air off set pieces. I guess there really is nothing that stays the same. :eek:
Egypt look good; the US is going to have their hands full taking them on.
Meanwhile, Brazil look pretty good. They are getting much stronger challenge than NZ gave Spain yesterday, and they still have 3 goals to show for it.
OMG. Egypt rampant here at the start of the second half!!! Brazil looking shell-shocked for a change! :eek:
Hmm, from looking at the Egyptian Line-up, Half the country is named Mohamed, and the other half Ahmed. It’s worse that all the Jenny’s we had in elementary school.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/match?id=266842&cc=5901&league=FIFA.CONFEDERATIONS
Now THAT’s a football game!
Bad luck at the end for the Pharaohs. Had the player stayed on the post where he belonged, he wouldn’t have had to use his arm to stop the shot. But Egypt clearly worked harder, especially in the second half. Brazil had best step their game up over what they showed the second half when they play Italy and Spain.
On another note entirely, why is it that major international competitions always have to have really stupid openings with totally made-up musical themes, computer generated or manipulated images of impressive soccer moves, and swirling multi-colored banner things?? :mad:
Where did this level of play come from? I never expected anything like this from this team right now. Donovan is actually playing up to his reputation. I don’t think he’ll see the kind of space he’s been getting in the second half. The Italians need to watch how the Central Americans beat the crap out of him and render him useless.
USA 1 - Italy 0 at half. PK Donovan.
Gritty performance from a clearly technically inferior US side (what’s up with all the missed passes into the open?), OTOH Italy, more of the same – ratty, theatrical play, milking every foul as if they were shot out of a cannon…as Gutussi did on what should have been a yellow and not a red on Clark’s (?) naive trip on a meaningless midfield play. Meanwhile, their own leg-hunting is rather well “executed.” As you can tell, not exactly a fan of the Azzurri.
Kudos to Landon for calmly putting away the PK. Too bad the US are a man down, for if not, I’d tell them to play possession in as much as Italy is rather always willing to give it in order to do what they like best – the counter. But as opposed to teams past, they don’t have a Baggio, Del Piero or Inzaghi up front to execute their tired strategy. So instead, batten down the hatches and try to give them a dose of their own medicine.
At the very least, here’s hoping for a split, which, all things considered, would be as good as a victory for the Americans.
Vamos USA!
PS-To the OP and others.
I just noticed the spoiler tags some other posters are using. On a personal note, I rather like the running commentary we had in the Euro '08 thread and was hoping we could do the same here. However, if the general consensus is that we shouldn’t, I’ll open one for it.
It’s a little painful seeing Rossi get the equalizer for Italy – I know there was no chance that he would play for the US, but he’s still sort of the “one that got away.”
I thought Rossi fouled to get the ball on the first Italy goal. Second goal was well struck, pity Gooch didn’t just use his left leg to knock it aside. Third Italian goal was beautifully executed - USA was clearly out of gas at that point, but still no excuse for being that lax in defense.
Meh. Logic rules and the better team won. But still, color me underwhelmed by Italy’s “display” for other than the world class finish on that first strike by Rossi – fitting that he is being developed in Spain 
– not much else to praise about their play. Yes, yes, I hasten to add it gets results…but as a “spoiled” footie fan, I want much more than that from the top teams in the world. Give me Brazil, Holland, Germany on form, Argentina, France and, obviously, in my case, Spain, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I’d add England for their determined, straight ahead game, but the overall talent just hasn’t been there for quite some time.
Keep your heads up high US. Well played. Best of luck the rest of the way.
Italy is clearly a much better team, however I think the USA played very well for the first half. Donovan, Bradley, and Altidore had strong first halves. Bradley was out of his league in the second half, but Donovan still was reasonably well.
Second half was relatively poor from the Americans, mostly, I think, because the Americans decided to play turtle hoping to win 1 - 0. All the high pressure from the late first half disappeared, and, of course, eventually, they got what they deserved for it. They also played too tentatively the second half, not wanting to remain in possession, too scared to pass the ball for fear of losing it, which they did anyway. 
Better play in the first half from the US than we saw in the two qualifiers, though, that much is for sure.
Oh, rubbish. England has had at least three of the top 25 players in the world on every World and European Cup squads since 1998. The talent is there; the coaching and the luck aren’t.
Well, so do six other teams.
Name them for last cycle and this cycle.