World Cup chit chat

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Um, all you over there across the pond don’t have to put up with such gems as, “Mine eyes have seen the glory!” or “The land of the free, the home of the brave is in the final 8!” Not to mention every time there are two people anywhere near a ball the words “fifty-fifty” being used. And this is from our top announcer in football of the association kind. :rolleyes:

I live close to Canada, and love it when I get to watch on CBC, because they use the BBC feed. Commentators that don’t feel a need to say something everytime a foot touches the ball. What a relief!

22

Which reminds me of my favorite football commentary moment, when watching the Premiership some years back (every once in a while, some American cable company actually manages to let us see real football free). One of the players had just been hacked down in a particularly nasty fashion, and indeed had broken a leg, and was being stretchered off, upon which the commentator noted that he was “in a spot of bother.” Gotta love it. :slight_smile:

23

Did anybody give a look to the referee on the Japan-Turkey game? I thought “death” from the “seventh seal” movie was giving away the yellow cards! :slight_smile:

I have a quick question: if Germany wins the world cup, that will mean that both the host nation and the world cup champion will be the same in Germany 2006. Which continent gets the open spot for the qualifying phase next time?

[sub]If we go to penalties my money is in team USA :D[/sub]

24

I don’t think the World Cup champion will be getting automatic qualification to the finals anymore, Gb.

Some other annoying commentary I forgot to mention:

I’ve posted before about how irritated I get when Irish and British commentators insist on referring to the Spanish champions as “Valenthia”. It bothers me because (a) they never attempt to pronounce any other Spanish names “correctly” and (b) it isn’t correct anyway, as the Spanish V is pronounced like a B.

Well, in the Mexico-Croatia game they went one further when a Mexican player by the name of Palencia was introduced and sure enough they were calling him “Palenthia”.

HE’S MEXICAN FOR FUCK’S SAKE. Mexicans don’t pronounce their C’s like TH’s.

I probably get much more worked up about these things than I should, but it really drove me up the wall!!

25

Ugly Footballers

GIGObuster:

Pierluigi Collina of Italy, widely considered to be the world’s best referee.

After 2002, the defending champion will no longer have an automatic berth.

26

I’m sure you’re right ruadh. One thing that redeemed the BBC for me was a half time studio discussion on how to pronounce ‘Uruguay’. Soft first ‘U’ or hard. Lineker of all people came up with the answer because of his time in Spain: One moment of light in an otherwise linguistically darkened studio.
I quite enjoyed David ‘curb crawler’ Pleat yesterday in his role as second-string summariser on ITV (at least I think it was Pleat. I sometimes get him and Graeme Taylor confused. Unlike the police - boom boom). He couldn’t seem to get past the idea that this actually wasn’t the best performance by ‘Korea’ since the 1966 World Cup.

“That was North Korea, David”
“But it’s still their best performance since 1966”
“Yes, but that was North Korea…”
“But…”

I suppose you have to give them a little latitude

Presumably because Okocha hasn’t visited the town. I imagine big Stan showed him some photo’s of the South of France and slipped a thick brown envelope under the table.

I’m still getting over Anelka going to Man City for £12 million…and as for the possibility of Rivaldo going to Newcastle, it’s just a little too odd for me…

BTW, I like the ever-so-brief look of whoever it is Spurs have got. Two great feet, great skill, bags of energy…just wish I knew his name…
Collina – Yep, he looks to me like something melted over a couple of car headlights. Outstanding referee though.

27

L_C: don’t you just know, in your heart of hearts, that whoever Spurs sign will either turn into Tim Sherwood/Steffen Freund, or get a permanent injury?

And that is a fantastic description of Collina.

28

I’m not surprised that Lineker was the one who knew how to pronounce ‘Uruguay’ - compared to the rest of the Beeb’s panel, he’s an intellectual colossus e.g. yesterday’s exchange re. two Korean players (paraphrasing):

A Pundit: What are their names again?
Gary: Ahn Jung Wan and Kim Ho Bun. They are so popular now they’ve probably got bridges named after them.
Lawrenson: (attempting to mock Lineker for his command of those funny foreign names) Oh yeah? Do we know what the bridges are called?

:rolleyes:

PS that Bulgarian bloke, Ivanov: it’s Robert Mitchum, surely?

29

It’s Motty every time for me. I’m not saying the ITV team don’t have their plus points, but I have a strong preference for the one, the only, the inimitable Mr. Motson and his effortless delivery of the best stand-up routine in soccer, delivered sitting down, behind a mic., and usually under the loudest tannoy speaker in the stadium. Motson offers a seamless tapestry of either genius or absurdist Izzardian nonsense, and I’m never quite sure which but it’s unmissable all the same.

True quote from the France - Senegal game, but I can’t remember who said it, “France, the team who have everything. And more besides”. (Possibly Ron Atkinson.)

The shiny dazzling thing about the Brazil game is that we really, actually, truly can win it. It won’t be easy, but we can do it. But will we? The wait is almost unbearable.

30

In case folks aren’t aware, there’s a change to the BBC1 schedule tonight: 10.35pm England vs. Brazil, Mexico 1970 – it looks to be the whole damn beautiful match.

Quite possibly the best ever England team versus quite possibly the best ever Brazilian team. IMHO.

31

Yep, we can. And yep, it is. The tension is becoming palpable. Thirty four hours to go.

32

Just watched BBC’s repeat of the Brazil - England match from 1970, and I feel disillusioned. We’ve always been told that this was the best match of the best World Cup, and that this was best English team ever, but this is the first time I’ve seen the full 90 minutes. It was rubbish! The whole thing was played at a snail’s pace, England just pumped speculative balls into the box (when they weren’t misplacing passes - plus ca change), and Brazil weren’t that great either. Some horrific tackles, too. England in Mexico '86 were much better than that. Admittedly Pele, Tostao, Rivelino et al looked pretty good, but not much better than the 1982 Socrates/Eder/Zico team. Seems to me that Brazil weren’t up against much in 1970. They played genius football, to be sure, but the other teams simply let them play.

33

Football’s a lot quicker now. Still, I can’t watch the 1974 world cup final without ending up suicidal.

34

Nor can I, and I’m not even Dutch. They were robbed, I remember being 9 years old and trying to convey the cosmic injustice of it to my non-football-loving friend. And let’s not talk about Rensenbrink (almost certainly spelt wrong) hitting the post against Argentina on, what was it, 92 minutes? Still having nightmares about that one.

35

Spelling is spot on, as is the rest of your memory.

Mario Kempes, you were a great striker, but I confess: I hated you for a long time.

I was 5 at the time. :slight_smile:

36

Usram - I don’t know what you expected to see. The context of this match was the World Champions playing in an utterly hostile environment (the entire crowd, the thin air at 5,000ft above sea level, the 100+ f midday heat, no water available during each half, etc) against the soon-to-be World Champions.

Add to that the (then) dietary inadequacies of unhealthy eating and the post-match boozing culture, the heavy ball, poor pitch…it was a very different game back then.

Given all of that, how do you then go about doing what England tried to do, which was ‘a job’ on Brazil ?

Alf Ramsey’s solution: You put your best midfield marker on the worlds best footballer (Mullery on Pelé), you hope your flank players can deal with the Brazilian wing-backs (they didn’t), you hope the midfield can run all day between covering Brazilian runs into dangerous areas and also supporting the two forwards (Charlton ran out of steam, Alan Ball and Peters paced themselves and coped, Mullery did ‘a job’ reasonably well on Pelé, Colin Bell’s fresh pair of legs helped a lot), you hope the central defenders stand up to the job (Labone did, Moore was outstanding for the most part) and you hope the forwards make a nuisance of themselves and take their chances (Hurst was a nuisance but ultimately ineffectual, Lee was – for the most part – superb, Astle came on late, wrecked havoc and missed his chances). And Ramsey’s plan almost worked.

This was two genuinely great sides doing their best to cancel out the opposition. Take a look again at just the Brazilian front line: Jairzinho, Tostao, Pelé and Rivelino and, if you can, take a look at how they destroyed Italy in the Final. In fact, read a non-English view of it all:

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/en/pf/h/pwc/1970.html
BTW, I loved the hoarding which read ‘John Stevens Carnaby Street’…excellent. And the absence of dugouts – both managers and subs sitting on a wall beside the pitch ! Thems were the days…

37

That match last night… twas incredible.

today’s midfielders and defenders should be made sit down and watch Bobby Moore and Carlos Alberto in that game. Alberto was incredible.

I particularly liked Frannie Lee kicking Felix in the head, that it being called a “50-50” ball :wink:

38

For some reason, three new cable channels have appeared on Telewest at the moment. They seem to be playing non-stop replays of classic (and some not-so-classic) World Cup matches - e.g. last night I found myself watching Argentina vs Romania. There’s no adverts, no channel ident and the picture is wonky (stretched vertically). Strange, but engrossing.

39

Twisty - aye.
What’s changed is that these days they’d say “Look at that foul on the keeper! Absolutely disgraceful. Ah, but he was going for the ball. Ah, but there’s no way he could have got to the ball, I think you have to say send him off”. And in those days “Well, he had to go for it, it was a 50-50 ball”

Also, the summariser was an actual summariser - coming in ever 5 or ten minutes to give analysis, instead of coming in every thirty seconds to repeat what the commentator had just said, for the benefit of the blind and stupid. Except that the blind would have heard the commentator say it the first time, so just for the benefit of the stupid.

40

The main summariser for the game was Don Revie – manager of Leeds and future England manager (for a while), deputy summariser (didn’t speak much) was Joe Mercer, Man City manager. Very BBC/Chomlesney-Warner stiff.
From the Michael not-many-people-know-that Caine department:

The Nike advert for the World Cup (with Cantona, Elvis, etc) was apparently directed by Terry Gilliam. Howaboutthat …