Football World Cup 2006 in Germany

[stainer 0]

Oh and stainer, FIFA recognises China as the birthplace of football. There are records of it there before there are any in the UK.

Well that was 2,300 years ago when some Chinese guys began kicking a ball and called it Cuju. Cuju is barely recognisable as football, the ball isn't even allowed to touch the ground, England is still the birthplace of the modern game.

As for expecting England to be better than they are, well that's just how many English are. I don't think any English fan actually thought that England would win the World Cup, but we are in it to at least attempt to win.

England aren't a bad team, they have managed to reach the last 8 in the world, it's just warped memories of 40 years ago return and we always hope to relive those moments.

[deanosbeano 0]

i have some advice for you all.i know its hard ,when the English bashers abuse the world cup thread to give us some shit.

Do Not Feed The Trolls.

[denoir 0]

but your still pulling the english hooligan statitiscs thing from your arse.

No, actually from my web browser:

http://news.google.com/news?hl....rrested

(Google News search on "fans arrested")

You can browse through page after page and they are all about English fans getting arrested.

[stainer 0]

Still most of those are duplicate results, and the media knows English fans have a reputation and they use it to their advantage.

Edit:- Exactly Placebo

[Placebo 28]

You can browse through page after page and they are all about English fans getting arrested.

And we can all google "racist fans" and find page after page about Spanish and Italian fans (out of the Western European countries, no point even discussing racist attitudes amongst Eastern European countries) but of course it's always England fans who are the evil scum........

That's ignoring the fact that a large part of the problem is that FIFA still allow tickets to be sold at grounds on the day, instead of limiting the sale to members of the official England fan club, which is controlled and organised and members are significantly less prone to any form of violence or illegal activity.

[Daddl 10]

So watching fooball live should be limited to fan club members? Now that's something that would definitely suck!

[ran 0]

hehehehehehehehehe

I liked Ronaldo's desperate foot plants.

-edit-

Et un, et un, et un, zéro.

[Placebo 28]

So watching fooball live should be limited to fan club members? Now that's something that would definitely suck!

Why would it suck if you know that the people watching with you are real fans and not scummy thugs who are there solely to cause trouble? If I'm watching a football match I'd like to know the guy next to me is a human being, not a violent thug or a racist piece of dirt.

[TeRp 1]

wow, Zidane is a magician.

However, at the beginning the game was quite boring, but after the French made the goal. Wow, the game was actually worth looking.

Nice game France

[sanctuary 19]

Ah , it was a good match tonight.

France deserved the victory after playing a better football than Brazil, and they won logically. As i said, it seems the better is their opponent , the better France is playing.

Despite it was the same players, it seems the french team that played there had really nothing in common with the hopeless tired team that faced the Swiss and South Korea in the 1st turn.

Now to the semi final, i hope they will continue on this excellent way.

[raedor 8]

Wow, France all the way... it was funny to see 3-4 french players hold the ball in the brazilian half for more than 5 minutes

Go France! One more match for Zidane, finally a very good match by him!

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Kick these Portuguese divers out...</span>

[Daddl 10]

So watching fooball live should be limited to fan club members? Now that's something that would definitely suck!

Why would it suck if you know that the people watching with you are real fans and not scummy thugs who are there solely to cause trouble? If I'm watching a football match I'd like to know the guy next to me is a human being, not a violent thug or a racist piece of dirt.

Yes, but most people will not join a club just for being able to watch a game live - it works the other way around: people find that they like the experience and then they join the club.

I know I wouldn't join a fan club for the sake of being able to watch a game or two a year, nor would anyone I know.

[denoir 0]

You can browse through page after page and they are all about English fans getting arrested.

And we can all google "racist fans" and find page after page about Spanish and Italian fans (out of the Western European countries, no point even discussing racist attitudes amongst Eastern European countries) but of course it's always England fans who are the evil scum........

That's ignoring the fact that a large part of the problem is that FIFA still allow tickets to be sold at grounds on the day, instead of limiting the sale to members of the official England fan club, which is controlled and organised and members are significantly less prone to any form of violence or illegal activity.

Well, it's true that the English get more attention because of their history, but still, the mass arrests (200-500 people at once) have been of English troublemakers. Of course, one could say that the German police is biased, but at some point you have to face the possibility that there might be something factual behind it.

As for a "racist fans" google news search, while the Spanish do pop up, it's not nearly as dominant as the English on the "arrested fans". In addition, you might have noticed that English fans are also mentioned on the first page of news results when searching for "racist fans":

http://news.google.com/news?hl....ch+News

As for FIFA limiting the sales, well while I do get your point, I wholeheartedly disagree with you. It would be really sad if you had to be a member of an official football fan club to go and watch a game. I think that  first of all that it's treating the symptoms rather than the disease. And second, the only result would be in hooligans enlisting in football clubs. It's not like there's an entrance exam, right?

Edit:

By the way, Brazil-France - awesome. Although I never can bring myself to dislike Brazil's football, I did like the outcome of the match and especially Zidan's contribution..

[da12thMonkey 1943]

but your still pulling the english hooligan statitiscs thing from your arse.

No, actually from my web browser:

http://news.google.com/news?hl....rrested

(Google News search on "fans arrested")

You can browse through page after page and they are all about English fans getting arrested.

That's a very poor way of generating statistical sample.

Simply looking at the number of news-pages in english with a mention of hooliganism or fan arrests as a measure of the population of fan-violence in Germany is extremely un-reliable: as stated, there will be multiple articles on the same event, the news stories are in English, so they are far more likely to be about English fans: There's something out there called the concept of News Values, that describes the conventions of news stories that are published, relative to the expectations and interests of the publication's audience; basically, anything about english-speaking people, is more likely to be published by english-speaking media outlets, than if it's about who are further outside the audience's cultural proximity, especially if the story agrees with the audience's prior expectations. If you searched, say a Polish news-page for stories about fans being arrested, you'd probably find more stories about polish fans being arrested.

This effects search engines especially, since the pages with the most hits will be returned before those that have been looked at less. Creating a sample by sytematically going from the first result, to the next result until you have looked at as many results as you want for your sample is highly unlikely to create statistics that represent the entire population you're investigating; especially if the results are in some sort of order, rather than arranged randomly. This method would only come close to being a reliable measure if you read the figures on the number of fans arrested in all 1,170 articles the search returns, and eliminated repeated incidents.

Unless you have figures for the total number of fans arrested, and the team they support (or at least their nationality) you can't really claim that english fans are statistically the worste. I'm not denying that there is the posibility or indeed any liklihood, that we've had more arrests then any other nation (especially as the Poles were knocked out in the first round ), but I think it's unreasonable to claim it its a statistical fact.

Like I said, I'm interested in seeing some genuine statistics from say the German police; I'm conscerned by any violence comitted by English fans and want to know if we really are cleaning up our act, and deserve the reputation we still seem to have.

Oh, and congrats to France!

[blackjack-VS- 0]

congrats france! looks like we'll a have the euro2000 semi-final replay match. i couldnt see tonight match , but for what i could watch in 5min, it was a clean and fair victory. so for those who called zidane a pensionist... sad i cant play against our brazilian brothers, but the "tricoleurs" are nice to.

[Soldierg36 0]

winner world cup 2006 : France

[Radnik 18]

Zinedine Zidane for me is the most valuable team player ever played on Earth. His gameplay is like magic...there`s no other word to explain!. And this is only his average gameplay showen today against Brasil.

Zizou all the way !

[berghoff 11]

Wha Brazil played badly. Nice victory for France

[denoir 0]

That's a very poor way of generating statistical sample.

Absolutely, as I said, I only had anecdotal evidence (i.e my subjective impressions of the news that I've seen)

Quote[/b] ]Unless you have figures for the total number of fans arrested, and the team they support (or at least their nationality) you can't really claim that english fans are statistically the worste. I'm not denying that there is the posibility that we've had more arrests then any other nation (especially as the Poles were knocked out in the first round ), but I think it's unreasonable to claim it its a statistical fact.

I won't argue with you there. However as we are talking about pretty large-scale events (such as arrests of hundreds of fans), it is unlikely that for instance there would be no report of 500 Swedes or 500 Poles being arrested. With hundreds of supporters involved it has news value, regardless of where they are from. For instance the only other large-scale arrest that has taken place (300 fans, a mix of Germans and Poles) was prominently featured in the news. The bottom line is that while I can't give any exact numbers with a reasonable confidence, getting a good picture of the large arrests is not impossible and thus deducing whose supporters top the arrest list.

[raedor 8]

Zinedine Zidane for me is the most valuable team player ever played on Earth. His gameplay is like magic...there`s no other word to explain!. And this is only his average gameplay showen today against Brasil.

Zizou all the way !

It was his first good match out of the last 8. Okay, the last one was good, too, but the six matches before were just crap (in the world Cup, of course).

But I agree, he's a very good player and it's nice to see that he has a pleasant end for his career.

[karantan 0]

Now it's clear that previous bad performances on this championship from Brazil were the real indicator of (current) possibilities of this team. There's no place for Pop icons in this sport, but only for the real sportsmen, and right is so.

To comment the overall performance from France is the best to use this quote:

As i said, it seems the better is their opponent , the better France is playing.

Despite it was the same players, it seems the french team that played there had really nothing in common with the hopeless tired team that faced the Swiss and South Korea in the 1st turn.

Now to the semi final, i hope they will continue on this excellent way.

True, very true.

[Chris Death 0]

Wow

Thx Zizou for your answer to replies like: 'if one is to old

he is too old no matter ....' anybody remember that one

It was a little bit like the 98 final, when Brazil was way to

nervous and couldn't get anything right - just one difference

98' France made 3 06' just 1 goal.

Brazilians did look very helpless tonight and French were

always doubl'ing Brazilian offensives what ended in nothing

usefull for the Samba team.

French players were almost everytime the 'one step' faster,

like those days when they became champions WC and EC.

btw - Ribery shouldn't be forgotten - he's made an awful

performance too and also Viera - formerly known as Mr. Yellow Card guaranted, nowadays laid off his yellows and

has become a very constructive player.

The devensive performance of France in general at this

tournament was amazing besides that one mistake against

South Korea.

Anywayz - Brazil was before the first game started not my

favourite and i wasn't surprised either that Argentinia yesterday failed.

Europe to Europeans and Rest of the world to errm Brazilians

(well and South America to Argentinians too).

Allez les Bleu (my first Banana ever on this forums)

~S~ CD

[solomeo_paredes 0]

what a great game GOOO FRANCE!!!!!!!!!! all the way to the final

[ProfTournesol 956]

It's time for the banana dance :        

Brazil - France was wonderfull quarter final match, thirty year old guys are still able to prove they are valuable, very cool that we'll fight our way to the final against our portuguese friends  

But if we win again, i'll really become Champagne -oholic...the little indians dancing into my brain this morning are really making too much noise...

[Buskape 1]

So sad, france does not deserve to win anything with their crapass "chauvinisme" that can be heard around the globe, i hope Portugal kick those crappy actors out of this tournament i'm sure the french paid the ref again goddamn france burn in hell