come on Marcus! Moral victories don't mean squat! so you tied with the eventual champion... you still didn't make it past the first round. Not making it out of the first round is bad no matter how you look at it. In 2002 when Argentina lost in the first round it was because we played like , no two ways around that.
Eh, the assertion was that the US didn't play with any nuts in last year's World Cup and that match showed anything but.
I see, so you tied one game and lost the other 3, that's playing with nuts? Personally I thought the US was good enough to make it out of that group.
I'm just talking about the magnitude of the upset. Argentina was on top of the world led by Maradona. The world gave Cameroon a 0% chance to win and they pulled off the upset with a Oman Biyik header that will be the shining moment in Cameroon's history.You do know Argentina went on the finals in that World Cup don't you? so really, I wouldn't mind another scenario like that
Just think about it. Argetina has world class player in Messi/Tevez. Argetina is bringing their A+ team. USA is sending out their C team in Venezuela with players no one has heard off. It's the same scenario. If USA wins with a similar result like Cameroon had in 1990, USA will officially be on the map as a soccer power. They will get respect all over the world. They sure as didn't get none from Mexico.
US was in the group with the eventual winners, for a mexico fan to even talk about a team that has dominated your countries team for the last 7 years is as almost as idiotic to believe your crap team would have made it out of the group.
You should keep your mouth shut when talking world cup history, 002 the only time us and mexico met up We sent your asses home...
Are you serious??you think one game will give you respect of the whole world and put you on the map?? Now if you end up going past the group round and Argentina doesn't BECAUSE of that loss, then yeah, I would have to agree. Still, its all hypothetical, you're not going to win, not with the team you've fielded.
my prediction for the Group C matches are as follows
Paraguay 2 - 1 Colombia
Argentina 4 - 1 USA
USA 1 - 2 Paraguay
Argentina 2 - 0 Colombia
Colombia 1 - 0 USA
Argentina 2 - 1 Paraguay
No offense to the US, but it doesn't seem as though they're interested in winning this tournament, so they might as well get sent home early. Still I could see one game going the US' way, just not the one against us
Ill admit I wish they were fielding thier WC squad, but US won thier region and will be invited to the confederations cup of 09 and bet your arse the WC squad will be ready to whoop some ass then
Dude. Wake up. Did you even watch the 1990 World Cup? That game literally put Cameroon on the map. ONE GAME. They became known as the "Indomitable Lions." I know this because I was there in Cameroon when it happened. Schools cancelled, shops closed, bars packed....the whole country in euphoria. Of course this isn't the world cup and the US could give less of a about soccer, but the US loves a winner. The chances are so little for the US to win that more people will actually start to pay attention if the US wins.Are you serious??
If US wins, they will be on the map.
Believe that.
You're too y. Anything can happen, specially in football. You can shoot 30 times on target, hit the post, the opposition goalie have the game of his life, miss easy chances, and get hit in the only counter attack the opposition had and lose 1-0. Football isn't a logical-statswise game like Basketball.
And I will say this before the tournament starts. I don't like Basile, I don't like the way he makes his team play, his style of coaching, his handling of the squad and some of the names in the list.
Goalies:
Roberto Abbondanzieri
Juan Pablo Carrizo
Agustín Orión
Defenders:
Javier Zanetti
Roberto Ayala
Gabriel Heinze
Gabriel Milito
Daniel Díaz
Hugo Ibarra
Nicolás Burdisso
Midfielders:
Luis González
Juan Román Riquelme
Javier Mascherano
Esteban Cambiasso
Fernando Gago
Juan Sebastián Verón
Pablo Aimar
Forwards:
Lionel Messi
Hernán Crespo
Diego Milito
Carlos Tevez
Rodrigo Palacio
Specially I don't like those 4 that I highlighted.
Diaz is just crap for real international compe ion. Basile overrates the local league and the Libertadores. I hope he is out of the squad as soon as the World Cup qualifiers start.
Veron...what else can I say? A ty team mate, big-mouthed, prima donna who believes himself to be much better than he really is. He won't make it to the next World Cup (too old), so there isn't much of a point in taking him.
Riquelme is a nice guy, and a great player....but only for Boca. He hasn't proven yet to be a team player, he always needs a team that plays for him, rather than him playing for the team. And his failure when playing against European teams (with Barcelona, Villareal or Argentina), makes me think that he could have a great Copa America and World Cup Qualifiers. But I wouldn't take him to South Africa, unless he can prove that he can play for the team and against fast paced European compe ion.
Palacio just doesn't seem to have it right now. He is missing too many chances, and he has Messi and Tevez there in front of him. I would have taken Pavone, a player that in my point of view is the the best candidate for the long lost Batistuta-esque striker.
Actually Cameroon became known before that. In the 1982 World Cup they held Poland, Peru and Italy to draws in the group stage. And after that victory against Argentina in 1990 they made it into the quarter finals. What I mean is that group stages upsets are meaningless for reputation if you don't advance into the knockout stages.Dude. Wake up. Did you even watch the 1990 World Cup? That game literally put Cameroon on the map. ONE GAME. They became known as the "Indomitable Lions." I know this because I was there in Cameroon when it happened. Schools cancelled, shops closed, bars packed....the whole country in euphoria. Of course this isn't the world cup and the US could give less of a about soccer, but the US loves a winner. The chances are so little for the US to win that more people will actually start to pay attention if the US wins.
If US wins, they will be on the map.
Believe that.
A single match doesn't put a footballing nation on the map. The US is already on the map, it's just that they are in the third-fighiting-to-get-into-second string in the world order.
The US beat England back in 1950. They've already beaten Argentina twice, once in the 1995 Copa America and in a friendly played in Washington D.C. around 1999.
Consistency during decades, sucess at club level, sucess at national team level in senior and youth tournaments, strong local league, players in the top teams of the world. Those kind of things create reputations. Rome wasn't build in a day.
The best American athletes don't play futbol, and didn't grow up playing it. If they did, the US would be a world power.
The US does have some favorable trends when it comes to football. First, a lot of kids play soccer at a young age. Granted, this has been true for some time, but at a minimum it's a requirement if you the US is to improve its performance long-term in the sport. In addition to that, the US has a fast growing Hispanic population and football for that group does not just mean the NFL. Then you have the MLS. I think the only way American athletes and the population at large begins to take football seriously instead of being something you play when you are growing up ala four-square, dodgeball, and tetherball is for a real league who pays real money and is on television to exist.
The best American athetes play American football, of course. If any other country played it, we could compare.
Agreed. That Cameroon victory wouldn't nearly have had the same impact if they didn't reach the quarters. But because they did, that victory is the single most important victory in Cameroon/African football. Senegal then followed Cameroon by being the second African team to reach the quarters in 02. All those matches in 1982 that you mentioned are meaningless because you rightly stated that they didn't advanced past the group stage. Beating Argentina did. Peru/Poland probably weren't half as good as Argentina was in 1990. Cameroon went on to advance past the group stage and in retrospect it put them on the fooball map. Before, African teams were nothing but the JV league in the world of fooball. What I am getting at is no matter how look at it, one victory has a domino effect on everything that follows. Rome wasn't built in a day, but without the rise to the throne of Augutus Rome wouldn't as well known as it is today.
so basically you just agreed with what I said. An early upset in the first round doesn't mean unless you make it to the second round. You're acting as if a win against Argentina will automatically put the US among the elite, and thats bull no matter how much you want to believe it. I will give you this, a loss to the US "B" team, with the team we're carrying now would probably be a big embarassment to us.
Perhaps it is true what Manu'sMagicalLeftHand said. Perhaps I am being too y, perhaps...
It is true that a match could go either way depending on various factors. Still, its not all chance, and we most certainly have a better team than the US, with better individual talent, and that's comparing it to their "A" team, their "B" team in theory, shouldn't give us any trouble.
Personally I wouldn't call it being y, would you not expect Brasil to beat say... Venezuela? its a similar scenario here, except I'm being charitable because I fully believe Venezuela would beat the team the US is bringing on Thursday. The US isn't a bad team, not when they have all their stars, but I'm sorry if I'm not scared of their "B" team.
Having said that, I wish the Americans luck on Thursday! May the best team win
EDIT: P.S. I would also like to reiterate that like Manu'sMagicalLeftHand mentioned earlier, the US has already beaten a good Argentina team in 1995 in what has come to be remembered as a great upset, and yet, the US still has never really been considered a grade A team, has it? In fact if I remember correctly the US even made it to the semifinals that year. It was a great performance by the US squad, which is all the more proof that one upset doesn't change a thing unless you can back it up with continous success. Of course, beating teams like Argentina, Brasil, Italy so on and so forth, is a pretty darn good way of starting up the ladder.
Last edited by MaNuMaNiAc; 06-26-2007 at 02:11 PM.
The US has been a top 20 team for at least a decade.... That much is certain.
Futbol is not only athleticism. If it was, African teams would have been dominating the sport for the last 30 years. There is a lot in the mix, just watch people like Diego from Brazil, french Zidane, Messi or Riquelme from Argentina. They don't look at athletes at all, yet they are tremendously talented and smart.
From what I've seen in the US developing, they have a good trend of mixing the British/European fast paced style with the strength of the African teams. They just need some more Latino blood there to make the team more skilled. The sport is played at youth levels, but not enough. I mean, sport academies, clubs, schools, that's fine. But what Argentina and Brazil have is thousands of kids playing everyday in the streets, beaches and parks, in what would be the equal to a basketball playground.
Copa America is starting right now.
Uruguay vs Peru, then Venezuela vs Bolivia.
I'm saying Uruguay 2 - 0 Peru, and Venezuela 2 - 1 Bolivia
I say Peru 1 - Uruguay 0 and Venezuela 2 - Bolivia 0
...ahem
nice
The commentators on Telefutura suck balls. Pablo Ramirez is very annoying.
GolTV
Ray Hudson is GOD
Holy . What a goal!!!!!!!!1 by Peru
I could talk about this forever but let's let the game speak
Thursday June 27, 2007
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