The World Cup started Today

So how about today's game vs. UK! That goal was ridiculous, and will probably haunt their goalie for the rest of his life. Damn colonists are always causing trouble!

USA got pretty lucky. I am still waiting to see a team that looks like they can win it all.

I wish there was a way to filter all World Cup- no, all Soccer-related stuff from my life. I'd never see another South American TV commercial again for one thing.

alfadriver wrote: Two things: 1) If you hate Futbol/soccer, no need to express that in a World Cup thread- and no need to try to convince futbol fans that the game sucks. 2) If you love Futbol/soccer, there's also no need to reply to the haters. If they are bothering to post here, they are stubborn and trying to be "cool" and will not change their minds. Unless, of course, you all want this thread to be Soccer Sucks Futbol RULZ. back and forth.... Just say'n

Well that sounds more like trolling. That isn't cool. But it doesn't mean no one should express anything negative about soccer. It's a thread; it'd be pretty boring around here if all everyone did was agree with each other. I just tire of all the contempt directed at people who don't like soccer (and Americans in general because of it).

Personally, I can't watch it either. But I can dig how excited people get about it. I'm the same way around Playoffs time. Hockey, baseball and American football get my attention, in that order, if you're talking about non-motorized sports. But racing beats all. I could be watching the World Cup right now, or the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and you can bet what's on my TV.

Here is my hierarchy of sports watching (on television):

Florida Gators > WRC > Tour de France > World Cup > Olympics > the rest

Of course, watching sports in the flesh trumps anything on television.

I watched 3 hours of soccer. I almost saw goal.

Soccer is cool.

When I lived in charleston, I used to go to the Battery games. I think they're one league down from MLS but it was so much fun. $7 a ticket and you get 2-3 hours of hanging out with friends.

autoxrs wrote:

Kia_racer wrote: "There are only three true sports in the world. Bull fighting, Mountain climbing and Auto racing. Everything else is just a game." Ernest Hemingway

A quote that Hemmingway never said, somewhere along the way it became his. Mostly because Hemmingway considered bull fighting not a sport but a tragedy. (See his book Death in the afternoon and the 1923 article Bullfighting a tragedy.) The quote is supposed to be from Barnaby Conrad, but hey who the heck would know Barnaby Conrad. I am a vast expanse of completely useless knowledge.

Thanks for the proper info. I will look it up. I am always willing to change when I am proven wrong.

any sport where you have no idea whats going on is going to look like watching paint dry.

My biggest gripe with soccer is there are too many tie games and the clock goes the wrong direction. Besides that just about every game has a number of moments where your out of your chair if you have some emotional investment in either of the teams.

Germany is the best looking team I have seen so far. Of coarse, Brazil, the Ivory Coast, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have no played yet. The Germans need to work on their acting though.

mtn wrote: Can't stand watching soccer. Boring. And I've watched quite a bit of it. Now, watching the Mexicans at work watch soccer... That is a lot of fun. I was about 100 yards away, and outside, and Mexico scored. You could hear the roar like I was in the room, 40 Mexicans packed into a room about 20'X20'. That was fun.

I don't mean to point fingers but you are looking for trouble when you make fun of a very specific race of people in such a manner. Watch your words next time, dude!

a bit of a rant... no offense to anyone :) and what do I know right...

i just don't get the fascination with watching sports in general... especially fat people who played the sport at one point 20 or so years ago at the HS level getting so into a game that they today couldn't go out and play 10 min of without falling over because their knee went out AGAIN (due to them playing the sport back in the day) or had a heart attack... but it does give them an excuse to stuff themselves full of greasy food and beer I suppose...

(sorry my in-laws are super into whatever season it is at that moment ball games... to the point of setting 3 or 4 tvs up in a room to see as many games at a time as possible)

I can enjoy the athletic ability of the players... and the time they put into getting to such a point but really... and do enjoy watching a short bit of them on tv from time to time... but does it need to be such a center focal point of your life that everything revolves around it? I can give a pass to those who played for whatever college or even maybe just attended the school... but the level some people take it is a little crazy

then again... the world cup is more akin to the Olympics in that it's for a Countries honor and only every 4 years... so I suppose it gets a bit of a pass lol...

I guess I just don't get professional sports or the zombies who pay tons of money to see someone else play a game...

oh well :) rant off mark

I would not have figured that this would have been such a point of debate on the GRM boards.

donalson wrote: the world cup is more akin to the Olympics in that it's for a Countries honor and only every 4 years... so I suppose it gets a bit of a pass lol...

Sports outside the US sports is all about national honor, over here its just collegiate and state/city based sports. I dare any one of you to go to Australia this winter and walk into a pub wearing a England jersey and yell "Poms are gonna win." You won't make it out alive. A fellow GRMer was in NZ earlier this year during the Chappell-Hadlee series and said something along the lines of "Gosh I'd be scared if I were an Aussie fan in NZ right about now." Or walk up to any Indian and tell them you think the Pakistanis will beat them.

There are a handful of sports I watch on tv, and I play all of them on a regular basis. The FIFA World Cup isn't as important to me as I seldom played football, but around my office its a big deal as most of us are foreigners or ex-pats who hold regular football matches each week. I've watched American Football games, that's a bloody snoozefest. Guy runs, play stops, music, guy runs, play stops, music and somewhere after what seems like 300 hours everyone goes home. I've watched hockey, wow talk about a violent breed. Try that in any other sport and you'll be perma-banned for life. But, I understand that the subculture here is deeply rooted in American Football, hockey, baseball, basketball and other sports.

JeepinMatt wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Two things: 1) If you hate Futbol/soccer, no need to express that in a World Cup thread- and no need to try to convince futbol fans that the game sucks. 2) If you love Futbol/soccer, there's also no need to reply to the haters. If they are bothering to post here, they are stubborn and trying to be "cool" and will not change their minds. Unless, of course, you all want this thread to be Soccer Sucks Futbol RULZ. back and forth.... Just say'n

Well that sounds more like trolling. That isn't cool. But it doesn't mean no one should express anything negative about soccer. It's a thread; it'd be pretty boring around here if all everyone did was agree with each other. I just tire of all the contempt directed at people who don't like soccer (and Americans in general because of it).

So what you are saying is that you enjoy reading threads where it's endless:

X Rocks X Sucks X Rocks X Sucks

Really? Do we need more of those?

Trolling? Are you kidding me?

I'd much rather see people who don't like Futball to just ignore this thread in general, much like they will the World Cup.

Ok.

It just sucks that my two favorite sports to watch (other then racing) are impossible to find on TV without channels that you have to pay extra for and I don't get in the dorms. Those sports being hockey and football (the kind that requires using your feet).

Not the best video quality but it is pretty funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1oihKfZG3w

alfadriver wrote: So what you are saying is that you enjoy reading threads where it's endless: X Rocks X Sucks X Rocks X Sucks Really? Do we need more of those? Trolling? Are you kidding me? I'd much rather see people who don't like Futball to just ignore this thread in general, much like they will the World Cup. Ok.

Not you trolling; what you were describing others doing sounded like you were describing trollers.

But yes, I don't really see this thread as full of people who posted for the sole purpose to look cool and start an argument, so I can stand the differing viewpoints of people who get and don't get soccer.

So having seen Italy and Netherlands today neither of them looked very good. Italy got pretty lucky not to lose.