and we wont win on GD assuming we dont win like 6-0 vs ghana lol, so beat ghana, italy must win, like everyone said i really wouldnt be surprised to see a nice 1-1 tie in the italy game just to screw us

6/17/2006 4:56:07 PM

Then why the fuck did they let him ref again. This guy scuked for both teams.

6/17/2006 4:56:34 PM

are you shitting me?
you didn't think US played like shit too?

I have nothing against US.
I just like Italy.

6/17/2006 4:58:14 PM

In order to advance:

1 - We MUST beat Ghana.
2 - If Italy beats Czech, we get 2nd in our group. Italy wins the group.
3 - If Czech beats Italy, we will tie with Italy and go to goal differential. Czech wins the group.
4 - If Italy ties Czech, we will tie with Czech and go to goal differential. Italy wins the group.



current GDs:

USA: -3
CzR: +1
Italy: +2
Ghana: 0


If Italy and Czech tie or if Czech beats Italy, we'll have to make up 4 or 5 goals on GD in order to advance. Pretty unlikely to happen, so we must rely on Italy to beat Czech.

[Edited on June 17, 2006 at 5:00 PM. Reason : ]

6/17/2006 4:59:28 PM

So I guess some of us need to take back comments about hoping Italy's players get injured

6/17/2006 5:01:05 PM

I don't hope they get injured but if they are going to wallow around like they just shot in the kneecap I better see some fucking contact on the replay..

They were the worse diving team I've seen so far this Cup..

6/17/2006 5:02:17 PM

I'm sad neither of the teams had any morale though.
It's like Italy didn't care and US was just straight tired.
Eddie Pope killed it for me.

6/17/2006 5:02:31 PM

The US played like shit against the Czechs. Today they played much better, dominated play through the whole game, and then took their foot off the gas in the last 20 minutes. Why, I have no idea.

6/17/2006 5:02:38 PM

the acting of the italians killed it for me. follow that up with the offical and it was just a shitty game. I will say though as the game whet on the acting seemed to subside for the italians.

6/17/2006 5:04:13 PM

Having 9 men probably didnt help lol, I agree arena should have used that sub to put in some fresh legs on the front line for mcbride or something to give us that last bit of push. The italian defenders looked about ready to die, should have tried to exploit it.

6/17/2006 5:04:13 PM

^ if they pressed toward the end who knows what we would of happened. A goal in the last 5 would of been tragic. I still cant figure out why we didnt see EJ.

6/17/2006 5:05:10 PM

^^^^ I know why. They were a man down for the entire second half... I'm sure they were tired, which is why EJ should've come on for McBride.

I like Bruce Arena, but the subs today really bothered me. He took off our 2 best players today and didn't use a sub that could've brought on our best player from Monday. I understand bringing in a defender to make up for the lack of Pope/Mastro, but taking Convey and Dempsey both off was kind of stupid in my opinion. Gooch looked terrific and I was really scared he wouldn't be disciplined enough to hold off on his 2nd yellow because imagine what our defense would've looked like without him and Pope against Ghana.

[Edited on June 17, 2006 at 5:07 PM. Reason : ^]

6/17/2006 5:06:44 PM

good day tomorrow.

Go Korea!!!

6/17/2006 5:07:05 PM

soccer players are pussies

6/17/2006 5:10:38 PM

^^^ A goal in the last five would've been tragic, but I'd rather give up a tragic goal while pushing to win than give it up because we were sitting back and let the world's second-best ball-flighter swing in crosses.

6/17/2006 5:11:06 PM

but a loss pretty much eliminated us... you have to play for at least a tie there. I could see if we were even 11v11, but a man down... come on

6/17/2006 5:13:42 PM

We had acres of space before we pulled back, and that was without Dempsey and without a fresh frontrunner.

Would've scored if we'd tried, I tell ya.

6/17/2006 5:15:24 PM

that's a bold statement.

6/17/2006 5:15:59 PM

I thought Italy dominated the last 15 minutes.

I'll take the draw. Neither Italy's nor USA's best game. Especially since we were 9-on-10.

Post-game thoughts:

-The Italian red card was deserved.
-Mastroeni should have gotten a yellow, not a red.
-For the love of God Bruce, WHY DID YOU LEAVE POPE IN AT THE HALF?!? Pope was terrible in the first half and allowed the Italian goal and two other clear chances where his man got around him. He was the worst player on the field, and he had a yellow card to boot. Why did you leave him in?
-I lost count on the Italy offsides calls.
-I lost count on the USA fouls.
-For all US media pundits that think soccer should be more structured and have certain calls by the ref always made and less subjective, watch this game again, cause this referee is your dream come true.
-Watched the game with a guy from Turkey originally and a guy from Vietnam originally, and they were hardcore pulling for USA (I'm native).
-Donovan needs to show why the media thinks he's the best USA player still.
-Beasley got a fire lit underneath his ass when he came on as a sub.
-Why didn't we bring in our 3rd substitute at all? Especially since everyone was so tired.
-Good saves from Keller.
-What a fluke own goal. The Italian player's foot was going the other way.
-I loved Lalas' and Chinaglia's banter pre-game.

6/17/2006 5:30:47 PM

i wish i saw that kind of play from the US the first game. Much better, even with those shitty calls well done, get your point and deal with ghana. Lets hope italy wins, good news is they will play hard as shit cause they aren't guarenteed to advance. It will be a crazy ass thursday

6/17/2006 5:39:37 PM

I actually agree with the us taking their foot off the gas at the end. Of course, we were playing to win, as a tie really puts us in need of dire help, but we were a man down. Being down 10-9 is worse than 11-10, and a loss would basically eliminate us from contention. Much better to live to fight another day than to risk it all being down 10-9, pope really fucked up by not toning down his play once he picked up the first yellow.

The red to mastreoni (I'm not going to look up how to actually spell his name) was bullshit though


^^and yea, keller played very well, I'm happy with the effort overall

[Edited on June 17, 2006 at 5:43 PM. Reason : saf]

6/17/2006 5:42:23 PM

i thought beasley played like shit, he had a couple good touches but he was walking around with fresh legs.

and why did they not bring in johnson? seriously, you have another sub, use him!

6/17/2006 5:47:18 PM

beasley had the best chance that never turned into a chance. do you remember when he was running full speed, one-on-one and he dribbled right into the player? all he had to do was touch it around him and keep running. i was pissed at that.

the last 15-20 minutes of the game were definitely not that great as we became very tired and were just trying to hang on for the tie. im surprised we never used our 3rd sub, i was hoping for eddie johnson up top in about the 70th minute. i just cant believe some of the calls, the offsides = yeah he was in the play and interferred so thats ok, matroeni red card is unbelievable and then pope's slide tackle was just a tackle...nothing to warrant a yellow. if he didnt already have a yellow then he could have gotten one for that but the fact that they referee knew he already had one and he didnt even warn him or anything, it was just a tackle.

6/17/2006 6:12:05 PM

Quote :

"Italy 2 USA 0"

your team got outplayed 90% of that game. youre just lucky our forwards couldnt finish the ball

6/17/2006 6:35:42 PM

Quote :

"If Italy ties Czech, we will tie with Czech and go to goal differential. Italy wins the group."

Do they still go to Goal Differential or does Czech auto advance over us since they beat us?

6/17/2006 8:07:35 PM

Quote :

"Moments later, Mastroeni was off too. His two-footed, reckless lunge on Pirlo was deserving of a red card and left referee Jorge Larrionda with little option."

What? I thought English people knew a lot about soccer. Possible anti-America bias?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2006/4853182.stm

6/17/2006 8:41:10 PM

gg Ghana & US

[Edited on June 17, 2006 at 8:57 PM. Reason : & ]

6/17/2006 8:57:01 PM

^^It all goes back to the question: "Are you English or retarded?"

6/17/2006 11:44:30 PM

Two-footed my ass.

6/18/2006 1:29:35 AM

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/ref/173372_LARRIONDA_Jorge.html

real man of the match.

6/18/2006 1:45:24 AM

According to the referees' union, he's a construction worker.

6/18/2006 1:52:13 AM

Quote :

"Do they still go to Goal Differential or does Czech auto advance over us since they beat us?"

Goal differential is the first tiebreaker, not head-to-head

6/18/2006 9:41:17 AM

japannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

i hope kawaguchi won't mess things up in the second half..

6/18/2006 9:59:34 AM

Quote :

"What? I thought English people knew a lot about soccer. Possible anti-America bias?"

Possible????? Haha, they HATE American soccer. I read a West Ham board sometimes and they are thinking about boycotting season tickets because they signed Specter.. it's hilarious..

6/18/2006 1:09:06 PM

Soccer would be a lot better if the offsides rules weren't so gay.

Oh, and if they taught the Spanish announcers English.

6/18/2006 2:10:54 PM

Quote :

"thegoodlife3 All American 4136 Posts user info edit post out of the 3 teams in our group, im not afraid to admit that Ghana scares me the most, especially if we're 1-1 going into that game 6/11/2006 10:59:33 PM"

of course i meant 0-1-1

[Edited on June 18, 2006 at 2:30 PM. Reason : ha]

6/18/2006 2:28:32 PM

this is one of the loudest crowds i have heard so far

6/18/2006 3:02:36 PM

and they just said that this is the loudest any crowd has been so far during the world cup, gg me.

6/18/2006 3:18:18 PM

LET'S GO S. KOREA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

[Edited on June 18, 2006 at 4:09 PM. Reason : KILL SOME FRENCHIES]

6/18/2006 4:09:14 PM

And the Staples Center?????? goes wild

6/18/2006 4:39:32 PM

yaaaay korea

6/18/2006 4:41:11 PM

Barthez is garbage!!

6/18/2006 4:46:36 PM

Korea, the superstar team breakers. love em

6/18/2006 4:49:07 PM

^^ You didn't know that before?

6/18/2006 4:50:11 PM

I still agree that France got robbed from that second goal. It wasn't a dramatic, feel good goal, but it was a goal nonetheless.

6/18/2006 4:50:24 PM

i honestly hadnt seen him play much but had heard he was a huge liability in goal. Just didnt know he was this bad

6/18/2006 4:52:15 PM

great game. GOD DAMN did i gain a lot of respect for Korean fans today. not only were they absolutely amazing in the stands, they had the Staples center completely full, 20,000+ fans (so they said during the telecast). i wish that we could fill an arena full of US soccer fans for the games.......

6/18/2006 4:56:13 PM

going back to the Brazil game.. Parreira needs to grow some balls and sit Ronaldo in my opinion and start Robhino.

6/18/2006 4:58:56 PM

koreans are all about national pride. it's ingrained in their/our heads from birth.

[Edited on June 18, 2006 at 5:04 PM. Reason : ]

6/18/2006 5:04:17 PM

^^the way ronaldo conducts himself out there right now he wouldnt even be useful coming off the bench, he must be very out of shape to just sit there and walk around till the ball happens to touch him and then he decides to play...

brazil looks so much better out there when robinho has subbed in...if he doesnt start next game, then i will have to question what parreira is doing there coaching

6/18/2006 8:38:46 PM