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The World Cup 2006
Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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It starts tomorrow and everyone's getting pretty excited here in England. The good weather here and our good form has put a lot of people into a good mood. :)

Can't wait for it to start now!

How is every other football fan doing? :)

HoHo
Member #4,534
April 2004
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Quote:

How is every other football fan doing? :)

Couple of my colleagues have took their vacation during that time. I personally couldn't care less about it :)

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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Fair enough. How are other football fans doing?

gnolam
Member #2,030
March 2002
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I'm packing my bag right now. In a couple of hours I leave for Stockholm, and tomorrow I'm off to Germany! :D

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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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gnolam
Member #2,030
March 2002
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I sure do!
At least for Sweden-Trinidad/Tobago... I'm not entirely sure we managed to get tickets for the other matches this weekend. But if we didn't, that means more time to drink beer and eat German sausages. :)

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axilmar
Member #1,204
April 2001

It will be a very interesting competition, because no team can be clearly cast as the favorite for winning the cup.

Brazil is considered the most propable winner, but I have my reservations, due to most Brazilians being old and having played quite a lot of big matches this year in Champions League.

England has limited chance, since the moment Rooney got injured. They have some of the best middlefield players (Lampart - Gerard), but they have no good strikers.

Germany is the host and therefore the refs will play them at over 50%, but they do not have the quality players (except Ballack, but he is injured as well) to get to the finals.

Italy is in a state of shock, due to the Mozzi scandal. I would like to remind that something similar happened in 1982 when they won the cup.

Argentina is curiously not being given as a favorite. Nobody speaks about them. That's good for them, but there is only one player (Mesi) that can make the difference.

Spain does not have good chemistry between its players.

Holland is a big question mark.

France is old.

So due to all the above it would really be an interesting competition.

Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Sounds great! I envy you.. :)
I hope we both win our first two games so the England v Sweden game is not critical. ;)

Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
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On TV last night was a '100' best world cup goals programme as calculated by a computer program using the same (ish) mathematical model as used by FIFA.

Anyway what made me really laugh was they showed clips of World Cup 1994 in USA and they were asking the well-informed locals what they thought of Maradonna. The replies were things like,

"who?"
"never heard of him"
"I don't like the music much"

Here we have possibly the worlds greatest sportman....

anyway, although it hasn't started yet, I'm sure you'll all join me in wishing the winners, England, all the best, with or without Rooney's foot.

Neil.
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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Quote:

Brazil is considered the most propable winner, but I have my reservations, due to most Brazilians being old and having played quite a lot of big matches this year in Champions League.

England has limited chance, since the moment Rooney got injured. They have some of the best middlefield players (Lampart - Gerard), but they have no good strikers.

Germany is the host and therefore the refs will play them at over 50%, but they do not have the quality players (except Ballack, but he is injured as well) to get to the finals.

Italy is in a state of shock, due to the Mozzi scandal. I would like to remind that something similar happened in 1982 when they won the cup.

Argentina is curiously not being given as a favorite. Nobody speaks about them. That's good for them, but there is only one player (Mesi) that can make the difference.

Spain does not have good chemistry between its players.

Holland is a big question mark.

France is old.

I'll disagree here:
Brazil: Only there attacking full-backs are really old, but their defenders aren't the best.

England: Rooney is not yet fit, and Owen is not completely back on form. However, by the third game Owen should be sharp and is a world class striker. Rooney should be able to come back soon after if we get through.

France: Saw them play against China. They have good players, but Zidane is past his best and they don't play as a good team.

ReyBrujo
Moderator
January 2001
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We trust we will do a good cup. It seems we will begin with Saviola-Crespo as forwards, although Palacios and Tevez have done great in the trainments. The only doubt we have is Heinze. It looks like we will play with three defenses only.

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FMC
Member #4,431
March 2004
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Quote:

Italy is in a state of shock, due to the Mozzi scandal. I would like to remind that something similar happened in 1982 when they won the cup.

Moggi actually ;)
Other problem is that Totti still ins't in perfect shape after the ugly injury he had and other 3 important players very recently injured...

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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Quote:

Maradonna

Nope, never heard of him.

Steve++
Member #1,816
January 2002

It will be interesting to see how badly Australia goes down in the first round :(

Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Well, they drew 2-2 with Holland. I think they will do better than people expect. :)

Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
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there is a nice applet here http://www.worldcupchart.com/applet.htm

Mine (attached) has england 2-1 portugal in the final :)

Neil.
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ReyBrujo
Moderator
January 2001
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This just appeared (and as quickly disappeared ;)) at the home page of the most popular newspaper in Argentina: FireFox ya tiene un programa gratuito para seguir el Mundial (Firefox already has a free program to follow the World Cup up). It gives a link to FootieFox, a plugin that shows updated WC results. I downloaded a similar one (maybe this same one) before, but since it didn't have support for the argentinian tournament, I uninstalled it.

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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Thanks for that Neil!

If Brazil come first in their group and we come first we could face them in the semi-final. If we come second we would face them in the final, but have to play stronger times before we faced them (Germany, Argentina, Italy)..

That's assuming we get that far, which is still an unknown!

Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
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In order to win the final you have to beat the best anyway. But I know where you're coming from though, Germany always win on penalties and Argentina always cheat their way in.

Neil.
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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Since we seem to start off slow and get better as we go on I think it would be better to play Brazil in the final. Still, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves here, there is a long way to go till the final for all the teams. :)

miran
Member #2,407
June 2002

Quote:

Really?? Have you got tickets? :D

My sister has tickets for the final game. Best seats even. :'(

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Goalie Ca
Member #2,579
July 2002
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Living in canada i don't know who to vote for. Probably england and france with brazil as a third... not because they are favorites but because brazil has some hot chicks and seems like a cool place.

How come no mention of the czechs.. supposedly they are ranked number 2.

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Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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You could support your American neighbours. :)

miran
Member #2,407
June 2002

Quote:

How come no mention of the czechs.. supposedly they are ranked number 2.

The Czechs became a serious power in football again in 1996 (after a long time of being average) when they finished second in Euro '96 which was a big surprise. Since then they've always had a good team and they always did well in qualifying. In Euro '04 they were one of the top favourites alongside Portugal. They got to the semi finals and lost 0:1 to Greece who then beat Portugal 1:0 in the final (Greece didn't make it to the World Cup).

In my opinion Czechs are again one of the top favourites, together with Portugal and Brazil and maybe Argentina. Some other teams that could do well are Germany, England, Italy, Spain, France and Netherlands. Less likely to get very far but still with a good chance are Ukraine (qualified first in Europe), Croatia (nooooooo), Mexico, Ivory Coast (i.e. France #2), Sweden and that's probably about it (unless I forgot a country I really shouldn't forget).

Also USA is ranked #5 in the world, but the formula they use to calculate standings is not very accurate because USA plays very few official games with European and South American teams, so that's not their real position. They'll be lucky to get out of the group stage.

Oh, and you should never forget about Iran!

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FrankyR
Member #243
April 2000
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I'm Canadian and not a football/soccer fan, but I'll be cheering for England (my mum's from there).



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