Congratulations for making it to the eight finals

[Yang]

Couldn´t watch the afternoon matches because i had to get a fresh set of bandages. Only heard the commentaries remark that the referee was the best man in the England-Slovenia match which says a lot considering some of the fabolous referee failures that were allowed to participate in the World Cup. So Wolfgang Stark did a good job there.

Now its our turn to advance this evening. Personally im quite excited about the prospect of facing England in the eight finals. I guess they will receive a mighty fine thrashing considering their sub-optimal performance so far. :smoke:

 

[kawaiku]

Haha what a match up in the second round! Germany vs England should be a cracking game...so without further ado... Common Deutschland!!! I do wish however that Australia put away Serbia so we wouldn't have to face the ever so tough Ghanans but oh well...
And to commemorate the US', England's, and Germany's advancements... I shall post the World Cup's theme song

[video=youtube;YPN4Fpcoh-E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPN4Fpcoh-E&feature=related[/video]

 

[Scott Tortorice]

I watched today's loss to Ghana. Darn, I was really hoping for a victory. Soccer in America is on the cusp of going mainstream. I believe a big victory for America will do for soccer what Fischer's win over Spassky did for American Chess.

BTW: just learned why we call it soccer:

Why Do We Call It Soccer?

It's an abbreviation of association football. Both soccer and American football come from the same set of precursor sports, which became popular in upper-class English schools in the early 19th century and spread across the Atlantic. All these games involved advancing a ball through an opponent's territory and scoring at the far end, but the rules varied from place to place. Ultimately, the version adopted as standard in the United Kingdom came to be known as association football, while another set of rules won out in the United States. Thus the Americans took to calling their gridiron variety football, and referred to the British sport by the slang term soccer, derived from the soc in association.

Never knew that.

 

[kawaiku]

Neither did I really... and I played the damned sport for 15 years lol!! I however wasn't surprised by our loss, in fact I would have been very surprised if we won that game with the group of players that we had. However, through my experience I have learned that soccer is a very finicky sport and even teams such as New Zealand can cause "big teams" to sweat, I know I've done it teams much better than mine. I think some of the players used in this cup should not have been on the team (Altidore for example should have had Brian Ching in his place instead), and Bradley should not have switched his line-up around... that always spells disaster.

But tomorrow's match-up between England and Germany should be a great game if both teams are up to standard. I think Germany's Klose should be back from his earlier red card during that pathetically reffed game against Serbia so Germany's dangerous meter should rise several notches. However if England actually plays like it is expected... then we could very well see a World Cup winning team, though I don't have my hopes up for that..... mainly because I want Deutschland to win!