The unofficial World Cup Thread,

[Knight of Ne]

I thought it was a good decision; Heskey had an off day. He was trying very hard, but nothing worked.

Kudos to Algeria, they played well.

Yeh Algeria deserved more than a point. However although Heskey didn't do much up front (no surprise) he was constantly winning the ball back in Englands half and trying set something up. It would of been nice to see him play alongside Defoe.

On another note, it would be a shame if Slovenia don't make it out of the group.

Ne

[Crazed Rabbit]

So apparently the ref won't say what foul the US committed.

He needs to be yanked from the Cup and thrown into the under-10 leagues.

At least we can advance if we beat Algeria.

CR

[naut]

Hahahah. Typical England, Capello... I told you your squad selection was rubbish. That's why Theo Walchart should be in the squad... to make direct runs at tired defenders and create trouble.

[Knight of Ne]

Hahahah. Typical England, Capello... I told you your squad selection was rubbish. That's why Theo Walchart should be in the squad... to make direct runs at tired defenders and create trouble.

Walcott wasn't picked becasue Lennon and Wright-phillips can and do do that but can also produce a good end result which Walcott is not good at.

So apparently the ref won't say what foul the US committed.

He needs to be yanked from the Cup and thrown into the under-10 leagues.

At least we can advance if we beat Algeria.

CR

I hear theres a spot open in the Arctic premier league for a ref.

Ne

[Andres]

So apparently the ref won't say what foul the US committed.

He needs to be yanked from the Cup and thrown into the under-10 leagues.

I can feel your pain.

Belgium-Germany 1994; Josip Weber got tripped in the penalty area, but the Swiss referee, Kurt Röthlisberger, may he burn for eternity, did not give us the penalty

16 years later and it still hurts.

[gaelic cowboy]

What 100 years an I still wont be able to eat a french baguette

[Louis VI the Fat]

What 100 years an I still wont be able to eat a french baguette

Eat this instead:

The same Irish team, the same qualification campaign, shamefully robbing a smaller football nation of their victory.




What matters is not the ref making a bad call. No, the problem here is the Irish captain reflexively raising his hand to call for a penalty. He knows very well it isn't anywhere near a handsball. There was every opportunity to admit he tricked the referee. He didn't, no apology was issued afterwards, no campaign for a replay. The points were happily collected, and with collective amnesia the greens all cried murder when three months later karma got its sweet revenge with the Hand of Gaul.

[gaelic cowboy]

Eat this instead:

The same Irish team, the same qualification campaign, shamefully robbing a smaller football nation of their victory.




What matters is not the ref making a bad call. No, the problem here is the Irish captain reflexively raising his hand to call for a penalty. He knows very well it isn't anywhere near a handsball. There was every opportunity to admit he tricked the referee. He didn't, no apology was issued afterwards, no campaign for a replay. The points were happily collected, and with collective amnesia the greens all cried murder when three months later karma got its sweet revenge with the Hand of Gaul.

Yet interstingly Georgia did not lose out on qualification because of Ireland they did that themselves coming last an Bulgaria still would not have made the qualifiers.



By the way Louis dont feel too sorry for Georgia they fully deserved to be cheated out of the game after this incident in a previous game.

Clickable1 Clickable2The game was bad tempered and hostile a thing that would never never be seen in Dublin against the same side

Now to show there is no bitterness I give you this
Clickable Hurrah for Henry -- he has spared us a double dose of southern hemisphere humiliation

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hurrah for Henry -- he has spared us a double dose of southern hemisphere humiliation
By Kevin Myers
Thursday June 17 2010
YES, indeed, the Irish rugby tour in the Southern Hemisphere is going rather like Paraguay's armed attack on Texas. But only the visionary generosity of Thierry Henry's hand has prevented a far worse catastrophe: of our having to endure, alternately, both rugby and soccer news from the southern hemisphere, as the shallows of our sporting talent were ruthlessly plumbed -- by the Maoris one day, the Uruguayans the next, the Mexicans on another day, and one-legged Aborigines the day afterwards.

Now, we all know that Ronan O'Gara can't tackle. If you play him at out-half away to teams like France or New Zealand, his selection is more probably for reasons of squad-politics or some strange subconscious renal urges than for a desire to win. When this column criticised his selection after the French debacle, he wrote a letter of complaint to this newspaper. This triggered off an internet storm of the usual infantile vapidity.

Irish soccer has its own Ronan O'Gara, by the name of Robbie Keane: spot-on at the spot-kicks, and quite outstanding in the Sunday morning pub-league. Put Mr Keane up against The Red Lion, Crewe, or The Palsied Bishop, Lincoln, and he will score goals galore, followed by some neat forward-rolls in celebration. But put him up against a well-drilled defence, and he will wander round, baffled, like David Norris at an orgy of Catholic lesbian nuns.

However, at least he's not as woeful as Emile Heskey, the worst striker to play for England since Douglas Bader lined up as centre-forward against French POWs in Stalag Luft Legless in 1944. Indeed, two international goalkeepers, Colombia's Rene Higuita and Paraguay's Jose Luis Chilavert, have actually scored more international goals (and no, not own-goals) than Heskey has.

So actually, Ireland's soccer plight could be far, far worse: Emile Heskey could have had an Irish grandmother, and so too could Robert Green and Peter Crouch, and then where would we be? Where we are at the moment, probably, at home, which is where the Irish rugby team should also be, instead of serially re-enacting Custer at the Little Big Horn across the southern hemisphere.

Yet it could all be far worse. If the Republic were now playing in the soccer World Cup, there might be chaos in Montrose, as Eamon Dunphy and George Hook and Brent Pope and John Giles conducted endless post-mortems on the respective Irish football teams. But what with Georgie being the age he is, and with Eamo being a self-confessed explorer in the world of mind-altering drugs, it would be quite possible for the two of them to wander into the wrong studios, and end up discussing the wrong sport, with the wrong co-expert.

Mr Dunphy would be gazing in speechless horror at Brent Pope, wondering what on earth he had popped the previous night that has turned John Giles into an Antipodean Incredible Hulk. And an hour or so later, Mr Hook's Desperate Dan jaw would sag even more leadenly than normal as he surveys the wizened deep-sea crustacean that is Eamon Dunphy, and tries numbly to work out the nature of the overnight catastrophe that could have reduced poor Brent Pope to this. (What? Chernobyl? Global Warming?)

Moreover, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and France are all competing in this World Cup, just as rugby teams from all four countries are simultaneously playing one another in the southern hemisphere.

Thus Eamon Dunphy might find himself struggling to do soccer studio punditry, as on-screen, the Australians are actually throwing the ball to one another, and the bleeding referee's whistle stays silent. Meanwhile, George's Hook's lower-mandible is resting firmly on his toes, as he sees a New Zealander hoof the strangely round ball upfield to a clearly offside player, who traps it with his feet, and the referee merely waves play on. With 20 minutes gone (and still no sign of a scrum) he erupts at a throw-in: "Oh, for f*%@'s sake, ref, you call that a bloody line-out?"

Be grateful, then, that we are spared such possible confusion, thanks solely to Thierry Henry's blessed hand. Yet there is one team with a green-white-and-orange flag that we might all now support: the Ivory Coast. This is probably the only version of the Tricolour -- though with the orange alongside the flagstaff -- that henceforth will ever again be in the World Cup. It is for the same reason that hapless incompetents like Emile Heskey and Peter Crouch are playing for England, and Scotland have made their last appearance in the World Cup finals.

The Brirish McProletariat has arrived: the total obesification of the Big Mac-eating, working-class young of these islands is now well under way. Meanwhile, West Africa has become the new world home of athletic excellence, and, henceforth, the standard-bearer of green-white-and-gold. Côte d'Ivoire go brath.

kmyers@independent.ie

- Kevin Myers

Irish Independent

[Marshal Murat]

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