When you watch soccer on TV, the crowd noise is squelched down a lot so you can hear the commentary, so you miss out on the 12th man effect. Here’s a highlight film with unfiltered audio of the recent USMNT v El Salvador World Cup qualifier. Amazing.
Entries Tagged ‘World Cup’
Power Outages Threaten 2010 World Cup
The head of South Africa’s Tourism Services Association warned that due to continuing power problems in South Africa, the country may face serious problems hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup:
South Africa’s energy crisis raises serious questions about its ability to successfully host the 2010 World Cup, the head of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association [...]
Try A Walkout Some Time
Here’s a neat idea that we’ve started to use before the championship matches of our league’s end of season tournament. We do a World Cup style ‘walkout’ with both teams. The teams lineup on the bench side of the field at midfield behind the ARs. The center then leads both lines, walking about 2/3rds of [...]
#2 USWNT vs. #1 Germany: 0-0 Draw
As the Women’s World Cup fast approaches, the rivalry of #1 Germany and #2 USA continued with squads of mostly younger players at the Four Nations Tournament resulting in a 0-0 draw. US Soccer and Fox Soccer have in depth coverage. The USWNT face England next at 3AM Sunday Morning (EST).
Trecker: US U-20’s Face Little Competition
Jamie Trecker has a new column up highlighting the recent U20 qualifying rounds for the U20 World Cup and comes to an unsurprising conclusion:
it’s pretty clear there is a big gap between what the Americans can do and what resources they have to work with. The USA racked up two big wins right enough – [...]
Future of US Soccer Very Bright – Got Shades?
Greg Lalas has a new column up about the USMNT’s recent performance against Denmark and how the future of the team looks bright because of the infusion of youth:
there was the United States’ stylish 3-1 win over Denmark on Saturday. In fact, that win was so impressive and got me so jazzed about the U.S. [...]
Penalty Kick Shootouts to be Kicked?
FIFA’s president now feels that World Cup finals should not be decided on penalty kicks. Am I the only person who thinks a PSO is just fine? Sepp Blatter feels it is a tragedy:
‘When it comes to the World Cup final it is passion, and when it [...]
Little Kids Get It…
I swore to myself I wouldn’t post another word about ‘the headbutt’. But these aren’t my words. They’re joe’s:
even though Zidane’s headbutt was absolutely shameful, I am a huge fan of it. Bad for his legacy, great for soccer. Pardon monsieur, don’t apologize to the children. Are you kidding? Little kids love ramming their heads [...]
Help Design The Dave O’Brien Training Program
The World Cup was clearly a success in the US. The final match between France and Italy drew over 17 million viewers (more than Game 6 of the NBA finals) The only downside to this is we’re still likely to be stuck with Dave O’Brien for a LONG time (2014). With John Harkes heading to [...]
How Can Something So Wrong Feel So Right?
I really don’t think FIFA should start handing out suspensions for verbal taunting or provocation. The precedent is spooky. But the little devil on my shoulder let out a big Gilliard like BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH when I read that Materazzi had gotten suspended for 2 matches thanks to his antics in the final. I know, I know, [...]
No, Zidane Didn’t Knock Me Offline
Sorry for disappearing like that after the final! It’s been a hectic couple of weeks with limited computer access, so consider this a catchup post.
Sepp Blatter Is A Reformed Diver
The Guardian has a new article up where Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, admits he used to dive when he played. Granted, most strikers have dived at one time or another I expect and you have to give Sepp credit for trying to cut back on diving in the World Cup. However, there is some [...]
A CONCACAF Nation Will Never Win The World Cup
Luis Bueno has an article up at CNNSI where he talks about the difficulties that CONCACAF nations face on the world soccer stage and also talks about they many common ’solutions’ that have been proposed to lift CONCACAF out of the world’s soccer basement.
Numerous theories abound on how to fix the region’s ails, on how [...]
Feedster Featuring The Soccersphere
I happened to notice a spike in referrals from Feedster, a RSS search engine, the other day and discovered that we were their ‘Feed of the Day’. They have been featuring soccer blogs from across the globe all during the World Cup and are very impressed with the ‘Soccersphere’:
Since the most popular sporting event in [...]
Golden Ball Finalists – Who Will Win?
FIFA announced the Golden Ball shortlist this morning for the tournament’s outstanding player.
The shortlist has been drawn up by the FIFA Technical Study Group (TSG)
and, with only players who reached the last four considered eligible
for selection, representatives of the media will now pick from a field
comprising three Frenchmen, two Germans, four Italians and a solitary
Portuguese.
So [...]
