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Post 15 Jun 2014, 2:24 am

freeman3 wrote:That header off a long pass that arced over the goalie in the Spain-Holland game was amazing...that corner kick by Italy turned into their first goal was very well-planned and executed I thought (Sorry Sass and Dan!)
No apologies needed. England were not good enough last night. They were not awful, and the way they came back from the first goal to equalise was really encouraging. But they were not as good at holding possession and towards the end started to panic a bit. For that free kick it was a case of slack defending and giving Italy space to operate, which was a feature of the game. They were trying to mark Ballotelli but seemed to forget the rest of the Italian team.
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Post 15 Jun 2014, 5:50 am

I dunno, I felt a draw would have been a fair result. Can't really complain because Italy created the better chances and made better use of the ball when they had it, but England did ok last night.

It's been a good World Cup so far, I've enjoyed all the games that I've seen (which is most of them). Much better than 4 years ago.
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Post 16 Jun 2014, 5:05 pm

Fun game to watch, USA!
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Post 16 Jun 2014, 6:37 pm

This! https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 1060_n.jpg
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Post 16 Jun 2014, 6:53 pm

Two great offensive plays from Dempsey and Brooks (the velocity on that header!) but otherwise we're going to have play better, I think. Not maintaining possession, trying to survive defensively--don't think that is going to work. Still, a nice win.
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Post 17 Jun 2014, 2:24 am

I'm happy with the US win, but the injury bug has really hit my fantasy team. I pulled Najar (2 pts) to play Schweinsteiger - wait, where's Schweinsteiger?!? Then I pulled Dzeko (3 pts) to play Altidore, figuring he's sure to play 70 at least - a safe 3 pts, even if he doesn't score. Oops!

SLOTerp hit the jackpot with Captain Neymar.
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Post 17 Jun 2014, 5:40 am

My take on the action so far:

Group A:
Brazil looks strong; it's tough to imagine them not winning the group at this stage.
Croatia, despite losing, looks very dangerous; I wouldn't be surprised if they won out from here.
Mexico looked good, and sitting on three points is not to be sneezed at, but they will have their hands full with Brazil and Croatia.
Cameroon looked OK, but honestly from what I saw, Mexico could have been their best chance to get points.

Group B:
Spain is still Spain, but they have a huge hole to dig themselves out from. Chile could give them a battle, and it's not clear if they can score enough to correct the -4 goal differential if they don't win that game.
The Netherlands looked like a team ready for the finals - unless they've already played their championship game.
I didn't see the Chile-Australia game.

Group C:
I didn't see any Group C games, so I won't offer any comments.

Group D:
Costa Rica's win was no fluke: they flat out-played Uruguay. England should be concerned; not only do they now face a desperate Uruguay - with maybe Costa back - but Costa Rica cannot be considered a gimme in any sense.

Group E:
I wasn't overly impressed with Switzerland, but they still look likely to advance.
I was less impressed with Equador; they will have to turn it up or it's three and done.
France looked strong, and they're my bet to top the group.
Honduras were overmatched, but they sure fought hard. IMHO they may well get a result against Equador, but I'd be surprised if they made it out.

Group F:
Again, I didn't see any of these games.

Group G:
All I can say is that Portugal is in a world of hurt. They may be ranked #3, but they have will have a lot of work to get enough points and enough goals to claw their way back. There are no easy wins in this group.
The US have put themselves in good position to advance, but it doesn't get any easier. They looked kind of sloppy to me, and they will need to tighten up their possession and their passing accuracy if they want to compete with Portugal and Germany (I for one think they can, but we'll see if they do).
Ghana looked very strong, and will give the Europeans a tough run. They will have to finish better to have any hopes, though.
Germany is in clear pole-position, but I'm not ready to give them a pass yet. It will be interesting to see how the officials call the game when the Ghanaian physical style comes up against the European penchant for theatrics.

Games are late here (I had to get up at 1:00am to watch US-Ghana - and missed Dempsey's goal), so it's tough to see as muich of the action as I would like.
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Post 17 Jun 2014, 7:59 am

Back to the fantasy game for a moment:

I've got 98 points so far in round 1 with two Belgians midfielders playing today. I'm not done!

What is strange is that you've got two round 1 games and a round 2 game smack in between them. I suppose if you've got Brazilian or Mexican players on your bench they're going to be stuck there for round 2. Neymar is my only guy in that match and he's on the pitch already.
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Post 17 Jun 2014, 8:01 am

Oh, and my knowledge of the game itself is zero, nada, zilch, so I can't contribute to that conversation.
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Post 17 Jun 2014, 11:01 am

SLOTerp wrote:What is strange is that you've got two round 1 games and a round 2 game smack in between them. I suppose if you've got Brazilian or Mexican players on your bench they're going to be stuck there for round 2. Neymar is my only guy in that match and he's on the pitch already.

I see... they've got a second pitch for round two.
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Post 27 Jun 2014, 6:45 am

To paraphrase Ricky's question in the World Cup thread...

Q. How did the top teams choose their players?

A. I know more about World Cup soccer than the rest of you suckers.

Standings after the group stage.

1. SLOTerp 290
2. Pigmalia 250
3. steven.r.ted 224
4. drosenstock 215
5. Rudewalrus 213
6. Sasselinho 212
7. bbauska 208
8. RUFFHAUS8 198
9. rickyp898 196
10. QuipWitted 176

I know some of you will say such things as:

- I did it last minute without thinking about it.
- The fantasy game is all luck.
- I didn't understand the rules.
- I forgot to change my players.

My response:

- Whatever, losers!*

* If you have to make excuses as why you suck at this game, you are indeed a loser.
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Post 28 Jun 2014, 9:51 pm

I love World Cup, but outside of that I don't spend even as much one minute on soccer.
The World Cup is brilliant, soccer is a great equalizer; even the world's poorest countries can put together truly formidable teams, great economic powers like US, Russia, China, and Japan are just run of the mill nations, fun to be the underdog.

I absolutely loved watching the Germany/Ghana game, pure joy to watch. Today's games were fun too; Chile went from getting completely run over to pulling their shit together and making a very respectable show of it.

And what can we say about Columbia? Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! And thank you Rodriguez. They advance to the quarter-finals for the first time ever. What a change from my first time of really watching World Cup back in 1994 where they honor killed their goalie. At the time, I was at a language school in Europe with students many nations all over the world and it was always super fun to watch World Cup because we always had someone to cheer for.
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Post 30 Jun 2014, 9:22 pm

OK I'm a bit irritated with quality of the FIFA site for this fantasy game, the players points keep changing hours and hours later, and now I've rotated out someone who was worth more points than the person I left in. Ugh!
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Post 01 Jul 2014, 5:53 am

Neal-

I sympathize. My bigger issue is why the #*// didn't Mats Hummels play last night? I can't see that he had cards accumulated; did he have an injury? He averaged almost 14 points/game during the group stage, and then doesn't play in the knock-out? Because of that, and because I've already used up my other defenders, I'm now forced to carry a 0pt player on my roster for this round. grumble...grumble...grumble...

Oh, and if you don't like the functionality of the FIFA site for the fantasy game, try working with it on a mobile phone (it's worse). Since I've already packed out my computer, I have to use my phone to manage my team on weekends, holidays and leave days.
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Post 01 Jul 2014, 6:39 am

I concur on the quality of the site - it sucks. You can't see the other squads & there is no chat function (essential to quality smack talk). They got the game rules right but horrible execution.

Too bad ESPN or Yahoo don't run contests for the World Cup. They know what they're doing fantasy-wise.