Lucky Hand of Glory on 17/6/2006 at 17:15

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Ghana's looking bloody good in this game - :thumb:

Shevers on 17/6/2006 at 17:58

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Yup, Ghana were real good - Cech was on form in the Czech goal and they still got 2 past him. Towards the end, the Czech defence was completely laughable.

I also loved the guy who thought he'd scored and was wondering why his teammates weren't helping him celebrate, then noticed the linesman's offside flag. :cheeky:

Shakey-Lo on 17/6/2006 at 19:01

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It was such a stupid offside play as well...

Paz on 17/6/2006 at 19:57

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Ahh, this is the Italy I know and love.

Why not make things MASSIVELY COMPLICATED for yourselves for no good reason, eh? It's just not the same without sweating on goal difference and the result from another game during match three!

{edit} Post match frustration; I shall now be using some CAPITAL LETTERS {/edit}

1). FUCKING STAY ONSIDE YOU USELESS FUCKING WANKERS, IF YOU WANT TO GIVE THE LINESMAN A WORKOUT THEN BRING INZAGHI ON AND DO IT PROPERLY

2). DEAR DEL PIERO - ANY TIME YOU WANT TO ACTUALLY SHOW UP FOR A MAJOR TOURNAMENT, JUST LET US KNOW. WHERE THE FUCK IS BAGGIO? I DON'T CARE IF HE'S FORTY.

3). IF PERROTTA CAN HARDLY RUN, STOP GIVING HIM THE FUCKING BALL

4). ARGGGHHHH

5). LIPPI, YOU STILL LOOK LIKE PAUL O'GRADY

BEAR on 17/6/2006 at 21:16

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Great game from a spectators viewpoint. I was impressed with the US teams control of the ball (for the first half at least). The US pretty much dominated while it was still 11v11. Italy has some great strikers though (I don't know any names since I don't watch that much soccer), which I've noticed about alot of the European teams as opposed to the US team. The US team plays more like my high school team, less nice offensive plays just long balls and luck.

The ref (in my opinion) was complete crap. The first red card on the Italy player seemed like a good call, almost defiantly intentional. I'm always surprised in international play how many dives are taken, 3 Italians were taken away on stretchers only to get right back up afterwards, go figure. And what is this about laying on the ground after every single play, when an American went down he got right back up and kept on playing unless a foul was called, really takes away from the game. There were several instances when a guy who hardly even got touched stopped the game because he just laid there and had to be gotten with a stretcher. America was doing way too much from the back slide tackles but almost all of them at least got the ball. Near the end he wasnt calling anything, which was half ok for us since there were a few close moments when a PK would have sucked majorly.

The two red cards against the US were pretty much ridiculous, the first especially. It was a bad slide tackle and a millisecond late but FAR from a first offense red card. The second red was stupid but less so, he already had a yellow but it still wasn't even worthy of a yellow card. I'm sure plenty of you will probably disagree with that.

There was almost no play where any physical collisions happened where at least one Italian player stayed on the ground, not sure which part of the body to grab since they didn't even get hit.

Overall, I was impressed with the US team, 9 on 10 I think they did a good job, I think with 1 or 2 more people we would have been able to win that game. That 2nd score was nice, too bad we had someone standing in the wrong place. I'm looking forward to the Ghana game.

On a rules note, its been a while since I played but used to we couldnt score on a PK outside the box unless someone else touched it, is that not the case in World Cup, or is that just a US rule? Hopefully so since I never liked it anyways.