Slaughter Posted July 1, 2006 Report Share Posted July 1, 2006 I like penalties as they separate the men and mice. I'm always surprised at how many good players can't take the pressure of a penalty. A truly good player should be able to keep his calm. My compliments to Ricardo for tackling the English team. Guess you're celebrating now Thorondor? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted July 1, 2006 Report Share Posted July 1, 2006 Balls... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted July 1, 2006 Report Share Posted July 1, 2006 Wayne Rooney sent off for sticking the boot in and England losing on penalties to a team that likes to cheat its way to victory. I won't say that portuguese players don't exaggerate on propose to get fouls but saying that we like to cheat our way to victory sounds a bit excessive...plus Rooney is long known for having a temper, too bad for him that the referee was right next to him. Although the 120 minutes weren't very exciting to watch, England played better than Portugal. And the penalties are a lottery...it can go either way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted July 1, 2006 Report Share Posted July 1, 2006 We lost. Why do I botherwatching these matches? I know what's going to happen before it happens! So do we reckon Rooney's going to be on the front page of all the paper's and England's most hated football player now since he's done a bit of a Beckham? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FullAuto Posted July 1, 2006 Report Share Posted July 1, 2006 I dunno that the offence was that bad, whichever of the two he was sent off for. He obviously didn't stamp on the bloke's (Petit?) bollocks, as if he had, there was no way Petit could have carried on playing. As for pushing Ronaldo, that's not a red card offense, and Ronaldo should have better sportsmanship than to storm up to the ref demanding things anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted July 1, 2006 Report Share Posted July 1, 2006 I dunno that the offence was that bad, whichever of the two he was sent off for. He obviously didn't stamp on the bloke's (Petit?) bollocks, as if he had, there was no way Petit could have carried on playing. As for pushing Ronaldo, that's not a red card offense, and Ronaldo should have better sportsmanship than to storm up to the ref demanding things anyway. It was Ricardo Carvalho (the defender covering him) and when the referee pulled out the red card I couldn't understand why it happened until I saw the replay. If Rooney wanted to hurt Carvalho badly he would have done so, the question there was that Rooney looks down and decides to give the defender something to remember. Too bad for him, the referee was close.As for Ronaldo he shouldn't have stormed the referee because it was unnecessary since the referee should had already decided to give Rooney a card. Most likely it wasn't a red one but when Rooney pushed Ronaldo he realized things were starting to get out of control and decided to end it that minute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Veteran Posted July 2, 2006 Report Share Posted July 2, 2006 To be fair, Rooney is young and reckless. He also has a multi-million dollar contract though so let's be honest he probably doesn't care! I don't like him, he's full of himself and he's going to get himself in a lot of trouble before his career is over. He's foul mouthed and aggressive. If he hadn't done anything wrong then why start pushing?! He knew where that would lead and I'm kind of glad it did... Maybe next time he plays a world cup he'll appreciate that him being there is a priveledge not a right... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted July 2, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2006 I won't say that portuguese players don't exaggerate on propose to get fouls but saying that we like to cheat our way to victory sounds a bit excessive...plus Rooney is long known for having a temper, too bad for him that the referee was right next to him. Although the 120 minutes weren't very exciting to watch, England played better than Portugal. And the penalties are a lottery...it can go either way.The penalties really are a lottery for England - the chances of winning our national lottery are hundreds of millions to one: about the same as the odds against England winning a penalty shoot-out Hopefully Wayne Rooney will learn from what he did - David Beckham made exactly the same mistake in 1998 when England were knocked out by Argentina, but he learned to control his temper. If Rooney doesn't learn, then one of his more experienced teammates is probably going to have to watch him and distract the referee when it looks like Rooney is about to give someone a good kicking. Unfortunatly, there is a fashion among the British press for building up a player and then knocking him. It happened to Paul Gasgoine, and he ended up destroying his career through drink, it happened to David Beckham (several times), and now I think it will happen to Wayne Rooney. I think the next season is going to be terrible for Rooney as he is going to be getting abused by both the press and the fans. The game between Portugal and Holland in the last round is a good example of two teams that both believe in cheating their way to victory. Both sides were up for playacting and diving across the pitch, which makes me wonder what their training sessions must be like: "Okay lads, we're going to spend the afternoon feigning injury to get an opponent sent off, and I want to hear some really convincing agonised screams or we'll be here all night". Figo's decision to headbutt an opponent was worse than Rooney's actions in my view. Wayne Rooney is a young hothead, but I would have expected far better behaviour from a 33 year old team captain. The fact that the Dutch player thought about things for a few seconds before holding his face and collapsing shows that he was playing the game in the same spirit On the 89th minute, with Portugal desperatly holding onto their lead, two of their players mysteriously collapsed, had to be stretchered off the pitch and then made a remarkable recovery a moment later. Has God blessed the medical workers with healing hands, or was this a cynical attemt to waste time? What was going on with Figo's attempted substitution? He took his time walking off the pitch, 'remembered' his armband, strolled back on to give the captain's armband to a teammate, starts wandering back off the pitch and then one of the most successful managers in international football decides not to subsitute Figo after all. Another cynical timewasting ploy perhaps? Mind you, the Dutch have apparently abandoned their "Total Football" approach in favour of a strategy based around beating up their opponents if they go a goal down. Doubtless they would have been up for a little timewasting if they had been 1-0 up in the closing stages. Frankly, England is never going to emulate 1966 until we learn to cheat with the best of them. English players can't even manage a little simple timewasting without getting booked! This poses the question: since the World Cup can only be won by succesful cheating these days, is it a prize worth having? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted July 2, 2006 Report Share Posted July 2, 2006 Not to put a dampener on football fans, but Rugby is still the more gentlemanly sport, not because you kisk several shades of crap out of the opponents every match as part of the game, but bcecause it doesn't fall to stupid referees to make the decisions. Any doubt in the ref's mind? The video ref is only a headset away. Make the game fair. Stop lame cheating. Bring their wages down to no more than £20,000 a year or so and they'll all (whoever's left playing anyway ) play a damn sight better and harder because of it. Football takes the mick. It's not been "the beautiful game" for decades. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gimli Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 That was the shittiest reaction of a player I have seen in a long while. I don't know what Materazzi did, maybe he deserved a red card too for provoking, but turning around and hitting him with the head like that deserves severe punishment. I don't even want to begin how bad are the teams in the final, compared to many others that didn't make it. And the refereeing in the entire WC was horrible. Frankly, this WC deserves an F. Too bad for Germans, though, it'll put a shadow over it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted July 10, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2006 I've no doubt that Zidane was provoked and his opponent seemed to go down with remarkable ease, but for such an experienced player to behave like that is just insane. What an ugly way to end the World Cup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FullAuto Posted July 10, 2006 Report Share Posted July 10, 2006 The French can't do anything right. You're supposed to headbutt people in the face. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted July 11, 2006 Report Share Posted July 11, 2006 You are completely right about a player having to be carried in a stretcher only to recover the minute he is set down on the side of the field and diving to get fouls being questionable tactics. They can kill a game but Portugal was hardly the inventor of those tactics, plus there are other ones as questionable like tough tackling and pushing that sometimes are punished, the other times are not. And some defend them by saying that they were a "manly attitude" when they can result in serious injuries. Football rules say that both should be punished but that doesn't happen all the time. And teams that rely on them too much don't go too far. On a final note, Portugal was elected yesterday by FIFA with having the team with the most attractive football on this World Cup. This surprised me a bit considering how the English and the French press called us a team of 'cheaters' before our respective matches with them. Too bad luck hasn't on our side in the games with France but that's how the game is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FullAuto Posted July 11, 2006 Report Share Posted July 11, 2006 Football is a contact sport, but attitudes seem to be changing. Take Rooney getting sent off. He was standing up to some hard tackling, when a lot of players simply would have dived and got a nice free kick. This is pretty much the normal attitude of English players. A lot of other countries don't share this attitude, and think of diving and faking injury as clever football. Ultimately, it's neither side who is at fault, but the referees. They need to get a grip, and they need to show people who dive and pretend to be hurt yellows and reds just as they show them to players who foul. Appealing to a sense of sportsmanship won't work, no one gives a toss any more, there's far too much money involved. Conning the officials, fine, everyone does it. If I'd have been in Rooney's situation, I wouldn't hasve stamped on Carvalho. But I would have punched Ronaldo in the face if I saw him winking at the bench. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted July 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 11, 2006 I think FIFA should forget the quaint notion of having amateur referees officiating professional players. Even top referees in international tournaments have to juggle refereeing with a day job. If you have professional referees who are paid something like £100,000 per year or more, they can spend more time on courses to help them spot things like diving and provoking an opponent into retaliation and take appropriate action. Of course, most club and international managers would hate having professional referees. All managers know that over the course of the season, the number of times your side loses out to a poor refereeing decision is balanced out by the number of times it benefits from a poor refereeing decision. If the quality of refereeing decisions increases, it will be hard for the likes of Alex Ferguson to blame a bad result on the referee as opposed to his own ineptitude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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