@ Satis

Oh, sure, but the football culture is different too. Major League Soccer for example is an abberration for fans on other continents because of its bizarre format and rules to make games more 'spectacular' for American crowds. Where would you rank soccer in the US as sport? 5th or 6th most popular team sport?

The problem about American football is that parents have to pay for their kid to play professional football, whereas in Europe, kids are scouted at a young age (around the age of five even) and receive football education for free at the bigger clubs (see also or specificly ).

For typical white America, I think soccer/football ranks pretty low. But we have a lot of immigrants, including a huge number of people from Mexico, central and South America, so if you include those, there's actually a decent soccer fanbase. Now, they may not cheer for American soccer/football teams, but they still value the sport very highly.

Regardless, I'm interested to see how the US teams do. I hope they spank Italy.

mangia merda

heh...that's ok. The part they didn't show was when we used cruise missiles to kill his entire family.

And then when the mob retaliated by making all the prostitutes leave DC.
And then the US retaliated by putting an embargo on garlic imports to Italy.
And then Italy retaliated by halting pizza exports.

It was horrible.

Well they say football is war, and there actually has been a .

Well, we're on. I'll be rooting for Uruguay against France tonight, and am completely unsure what South Africa will do against Mexico. On the one hand, almost host countries always do good and survive the group phase and S Africa seems to be taking this VERY seriously...on the other, Mexico is just a much better football team. Anything can happen!

Haven't you seen Invictus?

Yeah, but the S-African rugby team was very decent, just not a favorite for the title. The South African football team is pretty shit. (and there are much more teams at the football world championship than at the rugby one)

Rugby is a dirty peasant sport whereas football is the glorious noble sport.

lol - i genuinely believe that the opposite of that statement is true.

France v Uraguay wasn't that thrilling, saw the second half and it was rather humdrum to watch. England tonight though, hooray! I do agree with earlier statements though that our defence is lame. However our defence is ALWAYS lame. Our big downfall always seems to be that we go up a goal or two, get cocky and over-confident, stop defending and then bam, next thing you know it we're a goal down. Happened way too much in '02 (the last World Cup I actually watched)

On a slightly random note, what the hell have they done to this years rendition of 3 lions? It's apalling! Bring back the original, or at least the 98 version.

You didn't miss anything Pev, the first half wasn't a spectacle either. Watched it in a bar with friends, good times supporting Uruguay. I would have liked them to win, but in truth neither team really deserved a win.

Watching Greece vs South Korea right now, nice game. I'll try and watch USA vs. England tonight (and defo Argentina - Nigeria) but I gotta go to my brother's housewarming I think. We'll see.

All football all day for the next month or so. Love it.

This is a pretty nifty link:

http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mun ... dario.html