Esco! said:Bye Bye , Portugal!!!!!!!!![]()
Let me guess your a WOP?
Believe me if it was Portugal & Italy
Portugal would win.
and the world cup final should be Germany and Portugal.
Most people could care less about this years world cup final
Esco! said:Bye Bye , Portugal!!!!!!!!![]()
Mr. Lucky said:Let me guess your a WOP?
Believe me if it was Portugal & Italy Portugal would win.
and the world cup final should be Germany and Portugal.
Most people could care less about this years world cup final
Not even close, I'm EnglishMr. Lucky said:Let me guess your a WOP?
Maybe if the Ref fell for all your divesMr. Lucky said:Believe me if it was Portugal & Italy
Portugal would win.
Should have, could have, might have, ought to haveMr. Lucky said:and the world cup final should be Germany and Portugal.
I think 1 Billion people will prove you wrong sundayMr. Lucky said:Most people could care less about this years world cup final
Mr. Lucky said:Let me guess your a WOP?
Believe me if it was Portugal & Italy
Portugal would win.
and the world cup final should be Germany and Portugal.
Most people could care less about this years world cup final
slowandeasy said:No one should be knocking the Portugese keeper Ricardo... the guy was brilliant in this tournament....
......
franky66 said:and that is often alot. Happens alot in South America. Peter used to do it alot for ManU. Alot is relative
the_big_E said:So you are allowed to trip players in the box? Carvalho tripped Henry, he embelished it, but it would have still been called regardless, Henry isn't going to flop if he can stay on his feet and put that ball in...I dont know if you watched that youtube clip or not, but I entirely agree with that panel, Portuguese club teams are dive-tastic. Case in point, Porto vs Lazio and Celtic the year they won the UEFA Cup, that was a dive fest.
bottom line...
It may not be the sort of thing that players will want to frame and give to their Mums, but Paraguay has been judged to have been the champions of an alternative to FIFA’s Fair Play: the Unfair Play Award.
The news comes from software company British office of Information Builders (IBI), the verdict being reached through a series of weighted indicators that included the following variables beloved by amoral players: dives, feigned injuries, referee intimidation, tantrums and inability or lack of desire to sing national anthems.
With all thirty-two squads having been followed, the champions of each category are;
Dives: Italy (32)
Tantrums: France (28)
Feigned Injury: Paraguay (12)
Anthem Silence: Serbia and Montenegro (31).
There was stiff competition for the referee bullying award; Croatia, France, Italy and Portugal all having shunted various officials back with extreme invasions of personal space five times apiece, although Croatia are strictly winners as they managed all five incidents in only three matches
Information Builders have baptised their ratings as the ‘IBI Foul Play Index’ and Paraguay can hold their heads high/low leaving Germany with an index of 45, closely followed by finalists Italy (40) with Holland, the Ivory Coast and Portugal all with 37.
Trinidad and Tobago get a pat on the back for being the best behaved team in the tournament, with a mere 14; a paltry four dives, three tantrums, two faked injuries and only three players not booming out the national anthem. Brazil, Costa Rica and Sweden were all good boys with 15.
On the nationalistic lungful side, Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Spain all scored perfect marks with each and every player – regardless of how cat-matingly off-key the voices were – giving their larynxes a workout for the homeland.
Going on statistical extrapolation from what’s been recorded so far, Sunday’s final between France and Italy should see the Azzurri on flying form and Les Bleus providing the obstreperous Gallic fits to go along.
Mr. Lucky said:Most people could care less about this years world cup final
luckyjackson said:Sorry for not commenting yesterday, but I was in no mood to post, or eat, or breathe.
Congrats to France, they were the better team yesterday. Though he needed no confirmation, Zidane proved once and for all that he is one of the greatest players of all time. We entered knowing we needed to shut him down, and succeeded for maybe the first 15-20 minutes, after that he asserted control. And it was Deco who was shut down.
The goal killed the game, because lord help us, but with Pauleta, we need to create 100 chances in order to get a goal, and the boys only seemed able to come up with 99. Thank god he won't see another major tournament. Now if only we could clone Eusebio.
Ronaldo played an excellent game.
I can't say I'm surprised to see that in all this talk about diving, no one has mentioned the most effective dive of the game. Henry's. Not that I blame the Frenchman, anyone would've done it, he was just better at it than our players.
I don't deny that Portuguese, and in fact southern European players, dive more than their northern counterparts. I'd like to see it lessened myself, but I understand why it happens. The answer is not to penalize only diving, but to also penalize the kind of impeding fouls that get in the way of a flowing skill-based game. It's analagous to the "if Gretzky were playing today" argument.
Diving is not only an attempt to gain obvious direct advantage through free kicks etc, it's also an attempt set the tone of the game. Players know that if they have a ref who is fooled by dives, there's a good chance their opponent will back off from rough contact. But that kind of game is not in the interest of teams like England or Germany - because their skills suck.
Those of you who are so quick to lambaste Portugal for diving should consider that Figo has been the most consistently fouled player wherever he goes. Same is mostly true for Ronaldo and Deco. You either believe these guys have consistently fooled a variety of refs over the course of their careers, or you admit that they are indeed fouled because opponents know their too dangerous to be allowed to play. It's the other side of the coin.
English hypocrisy, or to be fair English media's hypocrisy has been incredible this week. Desperate to divert attention from the real reasons for England's trip home, they've made absolute asses of themselves with an open and unrestrained show of bigotry towards Portugal. I admit I'm secretly pleased that they're hurting so bad after their successive defeats that they're reduced to this. We'll be sure to send 'em home again soon to compound their repressed self-loathing. Fair play and sportsmanship indeed.
As I said in some other thread, I couldn't be prouder of how we performed in this tournament. We came within a hair's breadth of being in the final.
Forca Portugal.