Perdón. I’m not really all that bright.
Then again, how’s we open a thread that can comment on live matches as much of the world gets them*?
*Yep. Bit of a knock on American footy interests. Awesome market. Incompetent marketers beyond little kids.
Be glad they haven’t thrown Chinaglia at us. He’s even worse than Smyth.
We get 'em live.
Hup Holland!
You appear to have neglected to read the crucial word “for” in my post. I said Panucci should have been considered for offside purposes, and thus van Nistelrooy should have been ruled onside. Which he was.
Where you get the sour grapes bollocks is completely beyond me. I’m neither Dutch nor Italian and have no stake in the outcome whatsoever other than having enjoyed the match on its merits.
Come on the Dutch!
Watching Italy get spanked was almost as much fun as watching John Terry cry. I always had high hopes of them getting out of that group if they could avoid self-destructing. So far, so good.
As someone in the pub pointed out, when that second goal went in you could almost see the look of horror on the Italian’s collective faces when they realised they were actually gonna have to play football to come out of the game with anything, and not just rely on falling down a lot. 
The cry (after the first goal) of
“Who the fuck are you and what have you done with the real Dirk Kuyt?!”
From some random Liverpool fan at the back also made me chuckle.
I drew Romania in the sweepstake, which has a prize for worst-performing team in the tournament. In a group containing Holland, France, and Italy, this looked good for me - until the French forgot how to play the game. Grr.
By the way, I didn’t actually watch the match, so this post does not necessarily bear any resemblance to reality :).
I’ll be supporting that great team of “Anyone But Ronaldo,” but with a hope it is either the Dutchmen or the Spaniards who knock them out.
I don’t want Portugal to lose to early, mind you, because that will limit the opportunity of other players to kick seven shades of shite out of him.
We get them live too. We can’t watch them live, though - at least not those of us with 9-5ish jobs 
I only said that since this thread is supposed to be inviting Americans to offer their opinions; obviously if it’s a regular Euro thread I don’t think you need to spoiler it.
Anyway, now that I’ve seen it myself, here are my thoughts on Holland - Italy:
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Van Nistelroy was correctly ruled onside. The defender who was off the pitch was bundled off by his own keeper, not by a Dutchman; the linesman therefore made the correct ruling based on the spirit of the offside rule, if not the actual wording - and that’s good enough for me.
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That could so very easily have finished 2-all or even 2-1, Italy. If Giovanni Van Bronckhorst hadn’t played, I’d say the Italians would almost certainly have won. He was the provider for the first goal, did most of the work in scoring the second, and was the architect and scorer of the third! Not to mention the fact that it was his clearance off the line that kept Holland from conceding an own goal. And obviously if not for Van der Sar’s spectacular save, Pirro’s free kick would have gone in and the third goal could never have happened.
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I got the impression that the ref was a little bit generous to Italy. There was one maybe-penalty and at least two certain free kicks from the edge of the box that Toni was unlucky not to win.
Gotcha.
I was just putting that forth as the only explanation as for why somebody would think Ruud was offside. Nothing in your post suggested that you were upset with it, other than my misreading of your post.
I think, based on the letter of the rule, you can make a very convincing argument for him having been offside, and he certainly thought he was- check out his astonished look at the linesman when he wheels away and then checks for the flag.
As I said before, though, I think justice was done in the end.
Fair enough. Misunderstandings all round, then. L’chaim!
Having thought long and hard about this, and read the LOTG several times over, I think you can make a decent argument either way, but neither conclusively. Interesting to see UEFA’s official stance on it, which you can read here. I thought this:
was spectacularly lame; what use after all is a rule that the wider football public can’t refer to? Who made this interpretation in the first place? Furthermore, this:
is just silly, since the official rules have an explicit case to deal with players who deliberately step off the pitch, which wasn’t the case here. But in the end, it’s hard to argue with this:
Sounds reasonable to me, even if the rules don’t explicitly say it.
That’s one of the differences between sport in America and sport elsewhere - you can apply common sense as a referee in the rest of the world, whereas if a referee used his brain in a manner not specifically allowed in the rules during an American sporting event the fans, players and coaches would be up in arms.
See “playing advantage”, etc.
Why would any player who spent that long at Old Trafford be astonished at being allowed to score from what he thought was an offside position?
Finally I understand your user name
I’m as astonished that he was astonished as he was astonished, if you will - he’s always been a goalhanger.
Ah, playing advantage. I’d love to see much more of that in football, actually. In rugby, an advantage can last for some time while the ref waits to see if the fouled team actually gain one, so you can be pulled back for an offence that sometimes occurred a minute ago or more. In football, “playing advantage” is a split-second judgment that usually comes down to “is the break on?” This frequently leads to a) fouled teams actually losing out due to poor advantage calls, and b) players who have committed serious fouls escaping cautions. I think playing advantage should involve an actual advantage to the team fouled, not a possible one. I love it when you see a ref go back for a caution having played advantage, but it’s all too rare.
Not so sure about that; it’s harder to tell if an advantage has been gained in rugby. In footy, once you see one guy on the ground and a bunch of defenders standing around trying to hack the ball away you can pretty quickly ascertain that no advantage is coming.
The distinction for me is that in rugby, the decision is deferred until an advantage has been gained or not, whereas in football at present it’s simply whether an advantage might be forthcoming. Just coming away with the ball shouldn’t constitute an advantage to my mind - if a player rides a foul tackle and makes it a few yards further but then loses the ball, they should go back, but all too rarely do. If anything it’s easier to call in rugby, since a simple territorial gain is a definite advantage. By contrast, in football the positional situation is much trickier to read, making it all the more important to wait and see if a genuine advantage occurred.
On the other hand, penalties in rugby confer a much greater (or at least, a much more definite) advantage than free kicks do in football, so perhaps it’s just appropriate that more care is taken over skipping them.
One match is little to crow about – besides I saw things in our defending that left me a bit nervous.
Having said that, with Xavi, Cesc, Iniesta, Silva, Senna and Alonso, I doubt there’s a better or deeper midfield out there. With an in form, demonic Villa and Torres’ speed up front (and Spain’s top goal scorer in La Liga, Guiza, on the bench to boot), won’t be easy to stop us from scoring – I certainly don’t see many/any teams that’ll be able to keep a clean sheet against us.
Later Russia. Next up, Swedish Meatballs! Yummm.
Aupa España!
sigh
You did it again. :mad: :smack: 
Well, this is a live event, after all. I obsessively refresh the BBC while the matches are on; I don’t mind knowing the result before watching the match. Besides, that lets me know which matches to fast-forward through. 
I really don’t see how you can come into a thread specifically for discussing the Euro, and be annoying that people are discussing the Euro. If you want to avoid spoilers, stay out of the thread!