World Cup 2014 - The Draw

UPDATE: Ok so it is about a 50/50 split between a bunch of football fans that i know and myself on the quality of this years World Cup. I didn’t get a black eye, but my pint was jostled a few times. Apparently i was being too hard on Messi, he was often well marked (which is true), but most agreed that many of the top players (from Ronaldo to nearly ALL the Spanish team and most of the better Brazilian players (Hulk etc)) were poor this WC.

The younger guys seemed to like it more (the DRAMA etc - i blame reality TV for that, and the New Star Wars!) than some of the more gritty previous world cups i had mentioned up thread. Now whatever all that is worth, considering that this is a bunch of British (not all were English) people talking about football, and we haven’t produced a good national football team (of any of our collective nations) that can compete at the top level since the 60’s, well take it with a pinch of salt maybe? We can talk a good game (part of our cultural DNA probably), but really what do we know about football these days!

Thanks for the great response Ineffablebob. I was thinking it was just people had their fill of footie for 4 years :) . So Seattle the team to beat and therefore to cheer against yes? and Portland tree cutters (seriously guys get a more environmentally friendly name)* the lovable and not quite there yet but never give up small team? bah, gotta stop trying to get a Hollywood vibe out of it and just man up and watch as many game as I can before I settle on a favorite.

  • Actually I don’t know that their name has anything to do with cutting down trees, it just sounded to me like that for some reason, I’m drawing a blank trying to remember what Timbers means and google translate seems to think “timbers” in english means “timbers” in spanish.

Would you like to try an MLS team with a little Latin American flavor? The Columbus Crew has a Venezuelan (who scored two goals last night), an Argentinian playmaker (whose younger brother played on the national team), and three Costa Ricans (two of the defenders from the national team). Throw in a Spanish supporters group (La Turbina Amarilla) and you’ve got a little taste of Central and South America in the middle of Ohio.

Seattle’s good this season, no question, but I dunno that anyone other than us Portland fans really hate them all that much. The LA and NY sides probably are the least liked outside of their own areas just because they’re LA and NY. As for the Timbers name, as I understand it, it was inherited from a NASL team back in the 70s when talking about logging was more common. I bet any Portland supporter you care to name is willing to defend cutting timber as environmentally friendly, renewable tree farming. :)

Bah double post.

Solid copy on that!:

  1. Hate LA and NY teams. Even for a non-US dude, that should be easy.
  2. Timbers are unrepentant about their tree cutting ways. Hate on them too.
  3. Eye Seattle with suspicion and a bit of resentment because they are good this year, damn them!
  4. Think I’ve got my bases covered here :)

Ohhhh that sounds perfect. Plus, “Columbus crew” has this “we are just gonna go hit that bank over there and then meet at Mac’s to divvy up the loot” sound to it that I kinda dig. Long as I don’t have to become a Buckeye fan.

For reasons lost in the vast, dark confines of space, I’m a Bulls, Cubs and Bears fan. This means I am a. Used to suffering enough that I don’t even ask for anesthetics at the dentist clinic anymore and b. willing to give a futbol team a go even if they don’t achieve much in the next years.

Thanks ddtibbs, I’ll know get to finding out how to watch their games.
ineffablebob: I guess I’ll be seeing your team on the pitch then, when they play my dear Columbus Crew turbina amarilla futbol machine!

Edit:
Rumors are James Rodriguez is heading for Real Madrid-. I’m a bit torn about this. On the one hand, it can give him the exposure he probably deserves as a world star. On the other, clubs like Real or Barca can make or really break players. And I’m not sure where he fits, unless they get rid of maybe Isco and Khedira (both very good players). If he can do for Ronaldo what Di Maria does, however, it should be quite an espectáculo to see this team play.

There’s the Chicago Fire, too, if you wanted to continue the Chicago theme. Both Eastern Conference, though, so you wouldn’t really be able to pick both them and Columbus.

Ah…ok i think i see the americanisms coming into the clash over if this was a good WC or not! ;)

hahaha!
I was looking at the Chicago Fire too, first I didn’t have a team to pull for, now I can pick and choose!

I think that, depends on what you want from the game, it’s fair that some people didn’t think it was a great cup. Maybe just a great spectacle. Myself, I liked the futbol part too.

Other than seeming Anti American, WTF does this even mean???

According to Slate, the World Cup did leave plenty (so far) of US fans watching more futbol:

There’s been a post–World Cup spike in Major League Soccer viewership, according to ESPN, and MLS streaming packages are reportedly up 300 percent.

I had two friends buy season tickets to the San Antonio Scorpions (not MLS yet, some other more minor league) after the World Cup, guys that previously had never paid to watch a game in their lives.

I’ve never, ever, ever seen something like that youtube clip at a football match in the uk (or europe even). It is maybe part of what football is about in the usa? Which may explain the disconnect i was getting from most american posters about my thinking it wasn’t a great WC 2014? You have a different idea on it maybe? Maybe based on the general way you ‘do’ sports in the usa (the ‘spectacle’ an as important part of it as the game itself?) etc. So no i was not being anti-american this time, just trying to understand this divide on most american opinion thinking it was a great WC (the USA team did do very well off course, so that is probably a large part of it), when i found the overall quality, especially of the best players, very average or even poor (Spain out early, Brazil in general etc etc) ;)

Surely the best players at the World Cup were the players that played the best at the World Cup? I think people enjoyed the World Cup exactly because it wasn’t just all just the usual powerhouses trampling everyone else down. And that gives the opportunity to the other countries and players to show what they can do.

I think I get what you’re saying, that you think the skill necessary to win this World Cup was less than required in others, and that dampened your enjoyment, but I don’t think everyone will necessarily agree with you on that. And not just because they’re young, or American! I see the same debate in a lot of eSports events too, where you often get upsets where very solid technically skilled players get knocked out of tournaments by more flashy, risky but not necessarily as skillful players. Different people are entertained by different aspects of the game.

I’m English and have been watching world cups long enough, (78), that there’s no new car smell left and I thought that was an excellent world cup.

I think there are two main reasons for people thinking that this was one of the best (or at least, most watchable) World Cups ever:

  1. Goals. There were a ton of goals scored this World Cup. I think I saw that this World Cup had the highest goals per match in the group stage since 1950. Plus it had the most or second-most goals of any tournament. I think this can further be translated as teams actually going out and playing some offensive soccer and not all sitting back like we saw in South Africa. There was some very early scoring, which helps, but there were also some dramatic late winners as well (the Swiss, plus Argentina against the Swiss come to mind). And let’s not forget some sublime finishing: James Rodriguez’s volley, Tim Cahill’s weaker foot volley (my favorite), and Van Persie’s header.

  2. Parity. I think this made a huge difference as well. Sure, some of it was because the “big” teams weren’t nearly as great, but there were also no really weak teams like North Korea in South Africa or something like Tahiti from the Confederations Cup (unless you’re counting Honduras and Cameroon, both of which have some strong players but had poor tournaments). There were still some blowouts, but the victims were mostly not weaker teams: Brazil (1-7 to GER), Portugal (0-4 to GER), Spain (1-5 to NED), the Swiss (2-5 to FRA). In fact, some of the teams that were thought of as weak were the most surprising! Costa Rica, of course, but also Algeria, and even Iran and Australia put in some spectacular performances (against Argentina and the Dutch, respectively).

I do agree with Zak in that the tournament lacked a signature team, like Spain last year or Brazil from some 20 years ago. If there were one, then I think this World Cup would be picked as the best ever by the vast majority. It certainly was one of the best though, even if just in recent memory.

In terms of number of goals, don’t forget that the ball has gone through quite a few changes in recent years (it’s much lighter for example than it used to be), which makes it easier to bend when struck, which does lead to more goals in general (in regular league as well as WC).

But my grumpy old manitus aside, apart from Chainsawing a huge tree, what other pre-match signature stuff do american teams get upto? It must be a ‘local’ specialty thing i guess, which is kind of cool if a little erm…WWE (to my purist beer-and-pie-in-the-freezing-cold-looking-for-a-fight-after-the-match tastes). Does the team from Greenbay eat huge wads of cheese maybe, or is the cheese thing just for the American Football? that kind of thing, my mind is furiously creating vast stateside football spectacles!!! ;)

So this is our general all including footie thread right?
Manchester United just destroyed L. A Galaxy 7-nil on that friendly. Ugh. It looked like Germany-Brasil.

We need one. Point your clicker here.