Really? I'm sure not 'everyone' said it. Regardless I'm sure Italy benefitted by also fielding some ringers. Ever heard of the Italian Luke McLean from Townsville Australia, Matias Aguero from Argentina, Martin Castrogiovanni from Argentina, Robert Barbieri from Canada, Joshua Furno from Australia, Sergio Parisse from Argentina, Manoa Vosawai from Fiji, Tobias Botes from South Africa, Alberto Di Bernado from Argentina, Luciano Orquera from Argentina, Gonzalo Canale from Argentina, Gonzalo Garcia from Argentina. I'm sure the fact that over a third of their squad recently named for a tournament in South Africa weren't Italian has probably aided their improvement slightly
Cavani has been ****. Maybe this sort of performance is why rumours of a move to England have cooled down. I expected better from a man who I rated higher than Neymar.
Suarez is coming off for Coates. Surprising, I would've taken off Cavani if I was replacing a striker with a defender. first thing he does on the pitch is get booked.
FT 2-1 Uruguay Well, I predicted the scoreline and the winning scorer right. Too bad the match itself was ****ing ****e. Ref wasn't great and didn't help the game either. Uruguay look favorites to join Spain, Brazil and Italy in the semis now.
Well, it appears that the Confed Cup is now having a day off for Friday. The Cup is back on on Saturday for the final games of group A: Italy vs. Brazil and Japan vs. Mexico Considering there is the matter of avoiding Spain still to play for in the Italy Brazil match, it should be a cracker.
But that's ridiculous, clearly they qualify. Ok then, how about Christian Vieri and Mauro Camorenasi? I don't recall many people complaining about them, or many of the other countless 'non Italians', playing for Italy at football. Argentina and Austrlia have HUGE populations of Italian descent and have done so for generations hence Italian nation sports teams will ALWAYS be littered with national from that country. Do the names Graeme Hick, Kevin Pietersen and Allan Lamb also ring a bell? You've taken the argument away from what was the point and that was lesser teams playing against better teams will improve.
What about the players that qualify without ancestory, without Italy as a birth place simply by playing in Italy for a period of 3 years? This was actively encouraged to improve the Italian national side. So your example doesn't really work for football, which is my point.
Not really - it wasn't an ugly game in that sense. Uruguay did have 7 or 8 players behind the ball all second half and Nigeria were a bit Naive in their efforts to break them down. Not what you would call compulsive viewing!
The Best action so far has been on the streets of Brazil. To say its all end to end...... Looking forward to the Brazil v. Spain final though.
Yes, ****witt, as this particular competition is for the winners of each region's tournament. FIFA recognise the lack of quality in Oceania, and that's why they only get half a qualification place for the World Cup (a play-off against the 5th-placed South American side), but do you really think they're going to turn around and say, "you know what, this lot will never be any good, so let's just stop inviting them to compete in a tournament they have every right to enter" Also, look at Turkey - twenty years ago they were getting raped by even average European sides like England, yet they finished third in the 2002 World Cup. If you'd had your way they'd have been told to **** off and stop bothering.
I actually miss the fact that you rarely get teams in the World Cup nowadays who are dump-bump mechanism. It makes it a duller affair in my opinion. Tahiti had all the qualities of one of these sort of teams and I appreciated their will to attack and open themselves to be shat upon. However, I do think in European qualifying the **** teams (who are defensive minded) should be made to pre-qualify and this in turn could raise their standards. As a kid, qualifying groups would be four or five teams rather than 6 or 7 and this made it much better.
