Last day of the group stage:

Early games: 

 

USA v. Germany

Ghana v. Portugal

 

Later games:

Algeria v. Russia

Belgium v. South Korea

 

 

Ghana have apparently kicked Sulley Muntari and Kevin Prince-Boateng off of the team. 

 

So nervous for the US, even with a great chance to advance out of a tough group, I have this sinking feeling that something won't go our way today. 

Will be interesting to see if Lukaku starts tonight. 

Read earlier that the USA midfielder, Jermaine Jones is going to sing both national anthems as he was born in Frankfurt.

Saw a few American fans when I went out to lunch. I work in London. One of them was dressed in late 18th century clothes. Guess he was trying to look like George Washington. Good for him.

Muntari slapped Ghana Management Committee member Moses Armah.

 

Boateng has been sent home for “vulgar verbal insults” targeted at coach.

 

 

Only at a World Cup do you get this craziness. 

Muntari slapped Ghana Management Committee member Moses Armah.

 

Boateng has been sent home for “vulgar verbal insults” targeted at coach.

 

 

Only at a World Cup do you get this craziness. 

 

Love it! Total insanity!

Read earlier that the USA midfielder, Jermaine Jones is going to sing both national anthems as he was born in Frankfurt.

5 of our players were born in Germany. German mothers, American servicemen fathers.

So if Germany beat USA 3-0 and Portugal beat Ghana 2-0, a toss of a coin will decide who goes through?

So if Germany beat USA 3-0 and Portugal beat Ghana 2-0, a toss of a coin will decide who goes through?

I think Portugal advance there on goals scored?

I think Portugal advance there on goals scored?

 

Nope. Everything would be equal. Not the most unlikely results either

Nope. Everything would be equal. Not the most unlikely results either

Oops. For some reason I was switching the 2 and 3.

Heard there's flooding in Recife putting the USA Germany game in doubt.

Edited June 26, 201412 yr by mactheknife

Found this posted on another forum. Have no idea who Ann Coulter (do those from the States who post here know who she is) or if she is being serious or tongue-in-cheek. If serious, strikes me as not right,

 

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-06-25.html

 

AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER

June 25, 2014

 

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I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.


(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.


In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."


Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.


(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.


(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.


Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties -- and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.


(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.

Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.


(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!


(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.


I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.


(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.


(8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.


Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.


Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?


(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."


The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)


Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.


Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.


If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.
 

The rationale of American Conservative (sorry to any American conservatives).

What I do find strange is the slow growth of football among African Americans. Though from my knowledge/perception football is a sub-urban game in America where there are less African Americans.

Could any Americans back this up?

Muntari slapped Ghana Management Committee member Moses Armah.

 

Boateng has been sent home for “vulgar verbal insults” targeted at coach.

 

 

Only at a World Cup do you get this craziness.

Greatest World Cup ever in terms of craziness; the Ghanaians also had $3m flown by air from Ghana to pay their players in Brazil.

Aguero is out of the rest of the World Cup. Another injury for Aguero then. In the last 2 seasons he has become very injury prone.

Aguero is out of the rest of the World Cup. Another injury for Aguero then. In the last 2 seasons he has become very injury prone.

 

Indeed. I predict he will become the Owen Hargreaves of football.

Anne Coulter is a joke and mostly does everything for shock value. I refuse to read what she said.

As for Mac's question, yes, soccer is very suburban. Most of the urban populations are drawn to basketball and American football.

Indeed. I predict he will become the Owen Hargreaves of football.

 

As apposed to the Owen Hargreaves of boxing? 

Podolski's right foot is the most useless limb on the pitch. Seriously, people have better technique putting their boots on their hands.

I can't figure out whether Christian Atsu is the real Gael Kakuta or the Ghanaian Shaun Wright-Phillips...

Bit of both. He's got some skills which make you think he'll be a good player, but he's not really that good and his end product appears to be lacking.

How the ref avoided a booking there I do not know.

BTW whatever happened to Freddy Adu, he isn't in the US squad, is he?

i think i'm enjoying the World Cup even more now that Suarez has gone