i can haz own goal

[inmyriadbits]

You know, I'm almost shocked that a fistfight didn't break out in the Netherlands-Brazil match that just finished. Goddamn but they were all playing dirty and petty. And then bitching to the ref about it. (That man definitely earned his paycheck today!)

Honestly, though, I'm vindictively pleased that Brazil lost. I hate their attitude so much; arrogance and entitlement piss me off more than anything in this game, and the way the Brazilian players seem to spend more energy whining to the ref than actually playing is just nauseating. *waves Dutch flag*

Comments

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

Bits! You're just who I've been looking for! I want to get involved in this exciting World Cup action that's going on, but I don't know what team(s) to root for. Fill me in?

[inmyriadbits.livejournal.com]

Hah, well, I'm no expert, but I can at least offer some info. I'm not really attached to any of the teams left, either, so. There's that.

We're halfway through the quarterfinals right now. Here, have a pretty picture of the brackets. Ghana was just ROBBED (*cough* see recent post), so we know that one of the semis will be Uruguay v. the Netherlands. The other semifinal teams will be determined after the Argentina-Germany and Spain-Paraguay games tomorrow.

Honestly, I haven't figured out who I'll be rooting for. It'll probably be on a game-by-game basis; I often develop a preference as I'm watching, based on how I like the playing and whether one team is acting like bigger entitled jerks or not (*coughBRAZILcough*). I really want the Dutch to crush Uruguay because I'm pissed off after the Ghana game, but that's about the extent of my investment.

As for the other half...I don't know much about the teams. Spain was really highly ranked heading into the World Cup, but they hardly did more than squeak by to advance out of group play. A lot of the big-name nations have this problem; they're full of star players who play for international club teams most of the time, so when they try to play for their national team, they totally are not playing as a team. I didn't watch Spain's Round of 16 game, so I can't comment on that. Paraguay is the underdog there, though, so I'll probably root for them purely on that basis. :D And I have very little emotional investment in the Germany-Argentina match; should be a good game (Germany beat Argentina in the 2006 World Cup, so there's some baggage there), but I honestly just don't care who wins.

So it looks like I might be rooting for the Netherlands. They beat Brazil for me; that's a good start in my books. But we'll see.

Or, you can ignore all that, and pick solely on the basis of how good-looking they are. :D

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

Hi hi hi! I saw a game today! It was Netherlands vs. Spain. It took them about two hours to score one goal? The fuck? Anyway I couldn't remember what you had told me about the Dutch, so I was watching blank, pretty much. I ended up rooting for the Spanish team and I'm not sure why, I suspect because the Dutch seemed a little more competent, and one tends to bond with the underdog. Both sides seemed to have better defense than offense (by which I mean: they were better at stopping the other team from scoring than they were at, well, scoring) and both seemed to be cheating (I don't know enough about soccer to know if they were really cheating, but there was certainly a lot of armed grappling on both sides that I would have thought was inappropriate for soccer) so that didn't help, and the camera kept zooming in on this one Dutch player (name like... Bonden? Bonner?) who looked like he was plotting his revenge and would have his minions make the world pay, which was kind of funny.

So basically I stood for an hour on the sidewalk with a bunch of strangers watching nothing happen, but it was riveting.

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

Oh, there was a bit where a Dutch player kind of semi-tripped a Spanish player and he made a pained face and fell over, and the crowd had a mixed reaction, in which some people seemed to feel this was a deliberate fraud on the Spanish player's part ("Not even any contact!") What's your take on that, if you have one?

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

who looked like he was plotting his revenge and would have his minions make the world pay, which was kind of funny.

Ah, Robben, is the guy.

[inmyriadbits.livejournal.com]

That was the final! I was actually kind of annoyed with both teams, because, as you rightly observed, they were playing like thugs instead of really trying to play a good game. The referee was really calling them on everything, too; this was good, because they really were playing brutally, but it also meant that the game was stopping and starting instead of flowing. Did you notice how many cards the ref gave out? It totalled fourteen yellow cards (the previous World Cup final record was six), and one red (the result of a second yellow for the player). It was kind of a boring game, honestly, and not pretty soccer. I was disappointed.

The name you're looking for there is "Robben," who is a fast little motherfucker. We actually thought he looked a bit like Captain Picard. :)

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

p.s. that "how good-looking they are" post was kind of riveting, ne? I was surprised how many of them reminded me of actors. The link in that post to another post of Germans-only was impressive, too.