The 20th FIFA World Cup Thread

[AndyF1069]

We won plenty without him and we still have Sturridge who is an excellent player in his own right. Torres leaving was more devastating than the idea of Suarez leaving. He's too much of a liability and brings down the name and reputation of our club.

We'll survive without him. In Brendan we trust.

[GooberBM]

Colombia played with their hearts on their sleeves and I'm proud of them going out honest. The problem was the ref didn't have much interest in controlling the match, Brazil had no problem taking advantage of that, and Colombia was terrible on set pieces.

If Brazil is going to get this much latitude, nobody's beating them

[Robmayn]

To be fair, Brazil could had made A LOT more out of this ref situation and Colombia was forgiven a lot of cards. The issue was they (Colombia) reacted until the last minutes in a game that had a very early goal. If they got you on two set attacks there is a problem on your Defense.

[GooberBM]

Oh, they lost the match on the set pieces, no doubt. But that ref easily should have given out a half dozen yellows for really late, useless challenges (including 2 on James Rodriguez, which were message sending fouls), to cut that crap out early on. Brazil took advantage of ALL of the leeway, while Colombia struggled to find their way. The first 50 minutes was all Brazil mugging Colombia until they packed it in for the last 40 minutes of the match where they just roughed them up from there on. Colombia didn't really get into the really cynical fouls until they were down 2-0

[Legend_Killer]

We won plenty without him and we still have Sturridge who is an excellent player in his own right. Torres leaving was more devastating than the idea of Suarez leaving. He's too much of a liability and brings down the name and reputation of our club.

We'll survive without him. In Brendan we trust.

I know Liverpoll will survive will still be a good side. But the fact is Suarez scored 31 goals for us last year. I know Suarez is a liability to the reputation of the club but on the pitch the guy is a genius that is basically unmatched in world football (There are only a small handful of guys better than him)

Basically on-field only the guy is a gigantic loss and nearly irreplaceable for the time being. I hope we luck out and land another top shelf striker because I don't know if Sturridge can do it by himself.

[GooberBM]

Good job Mr. Ref guy. You were so busy trying to avoid a Brazilian riot that you couldn't possibly have failed to do your job and keep control of the game.

Then you let it get so out of hand that Neymar ended up with a broken back.

Way to not avoid the thing you didn't do your job to avoid

[Greg_McNeish]

Goob can attest that I was and am thoroughly disgusted by the officiating of the Colombia/Brazil match. Absolutely inexcusable to let the physicality get so completely out of hand. Credit to Brazil for adapting to the way the referee was calling the match, to completely shut down Colombia, who crumbled under the same conditions. They lost by futily appealing to the ref (to do his damn job), not reading the situation until it was far too late, by which time their endless protestations earned them less margin for error than Brazil enjoyed.

The officiating wasn't unfair; it was just terrible. Brazil read that perfectly, and dictated the entire flow of the game because of it. On the flip side, Neymar's injury was a direct result of the way the ref called it. One of the top stars of the tournament being stretchered out is ENTIRELY on him.

[Legend_Killer]

Man Neymar is going to be a HUGE loss for Brazil for the rest of the cup. It will be interesting to see how they function without him against Germany.

[Robmayn]

That match looked like a Steet Match. LOTS of Yellow Cards and Red Cards were not called. Let's get conspiratory here and say he didn't called the cards because most of the brazilian stars were carrying a yellow card from the last match and they were protecting them. That's the ONLY reason I can see for him not doing it. Who really wants that kind of match to happen? Hulk got lucky he did not got an injury on his knee as well.

[TheLyontamer]

Diving, and players who constantly use it as a means of cheating, disgust me to the same degree that poor refereeing does to Greg and Goob. Let me preface what I am about to say by stressing that I gained no satisfaction whatsoever from seeing Neymar get injured and do not revel in seeing any footballers hurt themselves. His quality will undoubtedly be missed in the upcoming games.

Neymar is one of the most relentless divers in the world. Some of the stuff he gets away with is criminal. In a sport where most players dive nowadays, he still manages to stand out as one of the worst, in the same way that Robben does. Diving bothers me primarily because it's a disgusting cheating tactic that makes me wonder why I bother watching football. Another reason it gets on my nerves is that I feel going down without being touched and feigning an injury is massively disrespectful to people who do get genuine injuries. It's making a complete mockery of the pain and anguish that they experience. Think back to a time when you've been hurt, then imagine somebody sneakily pretending to have the same injury in order to steal an advantage.

Most of Neymar's injuries last about ten seconds, which he spends rolling around in agony before casually getting up after the referee has awarded him a free kick. Last night he got a genuine one, which was unfortunate. I'm most likely living in a dream land, but it would be nice to think that being stretchered out like that and missing the remainder of the World Cup would give him a respect for injuries resulting from fouls that has been lacking until now. It would be nice to think that the next time a defender comes near him and attempts to win the ball, he'll momentarily reflect on how horrible it was to be injured and decide to stay on his feet. Injuries are serious business. Plenty of players would do well to remember that.

[GooberBM]

The diving goes hand in hand with the reffing. In the middle of the second half, maybe 20 or 30 minutes before the foul that injured him, Neymar went barrelling into a Colombian defender and jumped high in the air after gaining contact, trying to exaggerate to draw a yellow for the foul. That's not subtle. With the Robben penalty that was or wasn't a foul, at least you can say that the ref was positioned parallel to that play, where Robben's foot coming through the defender's pointlessly needless challenge could have looked more like a foul than from the 3 different tv angles we got to see of the foul.

Of course players train diving, but referees could train spotting dives on the pitch better, and can call the most egregious forms of simulation and diving as they have the power to do in the rules and laws already. Referees doing their job on the pitch won't solve every problem, but if the precedent was set there, there would be far less incentive for the players to go about the business of trying to deceive the referees so blatantly.

It's not Neymar's job or Robben's or hell Suarez' (if he's been caught biting 3 times, how many times has he tried or succeeded without being caught on camera?) to not take every advantage they're afforded. It's the guy on the pitch whose job it is to keep everyone within the rules of the game...TO KEEP EVERYONE WITHIN THE RULES OF THE GAME

[TheLyontamer]

I should probably have said that I was making the point as an entirely unrelated one to yours. It wasn't a commentary on the shenanigans of last night's game. Just the morals of players.

Poor refereeing isn't something that surprises me. It's not an issue that's just turned up at this tournament. It's one of the many problems of the game. As for the role they play in correcting diving, I do see where you're coming from, but can't agree with you. We've been over it before anyway.

[GooberBM]

I simply say it's one part of fixing the issue, though as I watched the tournament, the most cynical of the simulation definitely came for European clubs and players that play Euro club soccer. It's just so accepted and ingrained in the football culture.

That's why I enjoyed the Colombian team so much. They played such a positive game, on both ends, and wanted to play open without relying on just sitting back. They were fantastic, and it's sad that people didn't want to embrace them.

Oh and Brazil fucked up James Rodriguez' life. That kid deserved to net that penalty. May he win the Golden Boot

[GooberBM]

And I understand what you were doing Lyon. I just used the Brazil/Colombia match as a reference point for what I was saying

[TheLyontamer]

Well, the first half an hour of this match has already been leagues better than either of yesterday's games. If any one man can win the World Cup on his own, it's probably Messi, but it's an almost impossible task. He's played some great passes so far, but it's nice that the rest of the Argentina team has finally decided to show up for the quarter-final. They're finally beginning to resemble a team that could be viewed as potential winners, which pleases me.

What an unbelievable strike that was from Higuaín.

[Greg_McNeish]

With Neymar out, the door will never be more open for Messi to carry his country to victory.

[TheLyontamer]

With all its problems, sometimes I ask myself why I like football so much. Then I watch a game like Netherlands-Costa Rica and fall in love with the sport all over again. This is absolutely epic.

[Greg_McNeish]

It's not the beautiful game for nothin'.

[TheLyontamer]

I knew the fact that Brazil play like a weak European team would lead to their downfall eventually. This is just humiliating.

[Greg_McNeish]

Germany hasn't rolled over a country like that since the '40s.