Isn't this an obligatory thread? I might as well open it.

Sweden vs. Germany. 1 - 0 at half time. Is Germany going home?

America is the world.

I suppose you wish you hadn't now.

Eng-er-land coming up at 13:00. More disappointment predicted.

We weren't disappointed at all, though have instead chosen to be embarrassingly optimistic over our thrashing of poor Panama.

That said, I have little sympathy given the number of tantrums they threw inside the box. Clearly it's just too tempting to grab Harry Kane...

I was never exposed to the World Cup until I was positioned in a company with a lot of people from other countries (particularly, in South America and South North America). It's huge in other countries. Probably bigger than hockey in Canada. Bigger than American football in America. And it's really cool. It's also really pathetic how players fake physical contact to try get bad calls made. We've been seeing that in Ontario hockey and I think it's just disgraceful. Get up you little pansy.

Anyway, what I love about football is that it takes real skill to be good, and it's inexpensive for kids to play. At least, amateur league or just friends or whatever. You don't need to spend $100 on protective gear. Pretty much you only need a ball, which can be $5 or $50, but that's it. If you want to have more you can.

I fondly remember playing "soccer" in the middle of our school grounds where there were still trees that hadn't been cleared for a field. We just picked a set of trees for each goal, and the boundaries of trees for the bounds. It was loads of fun. That was in the lower grades.

By the time we were in the senior grades we owned the school of course and could use the real "soccer" field. But honestly that was a long way to run.. We never had enough people to make that enjoyable, even during gym class.

I don't expect any "Western" nations to do well. Certainly not Canada or the USA. It's completely overlooked by the population. I doubt there's a fraction of the funding available for the athletes that there is in Europe, South America, or Asia. Hell, maybe even in parts of Africa they'd be better funded (or at least relative to their surroundings).

They've just introduced video refereeing to the World Cup, which makes diving a lot more difficult. The players seem to keep forgetting this though, which means we've already seen tons of bookings where they've been caught faking. Very satisfying

Haha! Germany is out, Sweden continues.

I was expecting Germany to at least make the semifinals but will now cheer for Sweden on account of my IP address being there. The upcoming match against Switzerland may lead to some confusion among my fellow Americans, as many of us do not seem to realize they are, in fact, two separate nations.

In Russian it says(left to right):

"Akinfeev" "The Russian Team"
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You could say the same thing about Japan (RIP) and that one player whose name I already forgot. Also, congrats, Sweden. Next, give those English football hooligans something to riot about.

Our performance was poor vs Columbia (even given their poor sportsmanship). Penalties are a crappy way to decide a game!

People here were celebrating like they'd won the entire thing.

I was surprised that match wasn't a blowout, actually. Colombia is a force to be reckoned with, but England has a better team than the final score shows. If England goes into their next match hungrier because of this, my server-providing Swedish friends will have little room for mistakes.

As an Englishman born and bread, I for one am waiting for England to lose! This is making me quite unpopular with "the lads", but then I prefer golf.

I thought Englishmen were born and crumpets.

Haha, what a crumpet I am! Born and bread....

How dare you.

France plays in the final. And the French learned that it really is worth delaying the game. The player who did it got a yellow card, but practically no time were added to the game for that.