And now for something completely differentFollow

South Korea, Uruguay, USA, Ghana.... one of those four will make it to the semi finals.
And it's not unlikely for Holland to meet Brazil in the quarter finals.

True, but the Semis would already be an amazing achievement, 1930s aside.

Very accurate anthropological study of the evolutionary nature of footballistic progress in Latin America, to which I can only add that, at the same time, most European countries were too busy producing anti-semite propaganda material and building them holiday camps to properly focus on football.

I'm trying to downplay the road to the Semi's and focus on beating a Ghanaian team that kicked us while we were down in 2006.

I can't even dream up what I think Bob Bradley is going to put on the field.

Is Gooch really getting benched at Center Back? Seems unlikely but then again unless he was resting him against Algeria Bradley must have seen something on tape that made him pull him. Moving Bocanegra inside with Demerit doesn't bother me nearly as much as bringing in Bornstein. Molassas runs quicker than he does.

Is Benny Felhaber going to start with Mini-Bradley? Torres is done for the tournament unless we get desperate, Clark is good at defending but terrible on the ball, Felhaber is good offensively but sometimes gets lost tracking back, Holden is unlikely as he is the perverbial "last man on the roster." So it's either Edu which has been a little timid on his challenges or Felhaber probably.

Up top we're a mess. Findley proved he isn't good enough yet to play on the national side (and he took a spot from Colorado's own Conner Casey, my second favorite overwight striker in CONCACAF). Hercules looked confident but couldn't link up with anyone other than the touch line. Buddle actually looked ok against Algeria in the air but also couldn't link up with anyone.

So three big questions in the line-up for me. I wonder if we push Dempsey up top and play Felhaber and Edu.



So without seeing Spain play this afternoon, assuming Spain advances, here are my round of 16 rankings.

1) Argentina
2) Brazil
3) Netherlands
4) Spain
5) Portugal
5a) Germany
7)Uruguay
8) Chile
9) US
10) Mexico
11) England
12) Paraguay
13) South Korea
14) Slovakia
15) Japan
16) Ghana

Edited, Jun 25th 2010 11:56am by baelnic

Apparently, after being knocked out of the World Cup, the Nigerian team have now arrived home in south London.

Oh dear. ToUtem's bredren kicking' some U.S. bhatti!

Altidore is a lot better at diving.



Edit: 2-1 ghana now. Nice strike by Gyan.

Edited, Jun 26th 2010 4:29pm by feelz

It was cute how much the commentator wanted the US to win. It was almost like watching an England game.

It's a shame the US went out, but I think Ghana just about deserved it. The US never seemed to get out of second gear. Altidore was just horrendous. I was impressed by Bradley Jr and Feilhaber, eventhough I kept hearing his name as FailHarbour. I've seen Dempsey play much better for Fulham. He's a very good player, but he didn't really seem to turn it on last night. Findely had a great chance and should've scored it. If he had...

Still, better than France!

Jorge Larrionda is Germany's man of the match.

Where's Churchill when you need him?

Germany deserved it and was the better side, but refusing to use goal line technology is beyond retarded. I can't think of a single argument against it.

They didn't have the world cup 100 years ago :D

Nor perfectly machine made balls.