T1B

Left Seater wrote:I have tried hard to get into this and again have been turned off by the flopping. Where the hell are the cards for all of the horrible flops? Yes, some good games, but even those have horrible flops.

Perfect example is the German keeper in the second half against Portugal. Shortly before the second Portugal goal there was a gental collision between a Portagee striker and the German keeper. The replay shows the collision is about as hard as a hand shake and yet the keeper falls down. He quickly jumps up looking for the ball and as soon as the sees it crossing the end line, he is back down and looks like he has been shot. 10 minutes later after the training staff has rubbed ice and poured water on him he is fine and diving around with no ill effects. Horrible! Turns us casual fans away.

shit on someone else thread jerkoff

Left Seater wrote:

shit on someone else thread jerkoff

Guess I shouldn't expect anything else from you. Typical.

Jittery Spaniards prepare for their bete noire

After 88 years without a competitive win over Italy, Spain are already panicking about Sunday's quarter-final
Sid Lowe
June 18, 2008 1:09 PM

The newsreader put on his most earnest face, smoothed down his moustache, looked into the camera and read from the autocue. Never mind that this was TVE, supposedly the sober voice of serious, straight news. "Spain", he said, "will play Italy. The same old Italy; the Italy that never plays football but always wins." As the tape rolled, a voice testily told how the Italians, "champions of the world and champions of luck", had beaten France thanks to the fact that "destiny favoured them yet again". The Azzurri, agreed Marca, are the team with "seven lives".

No side provokes such distaste in Spain as Italy, whose football is derided as cynical, dirty and boring, somehow illegitimate. As José Ángel de la Casa, for decades the voice of the Spanish national team - a kind of tranquil John Motson without the obsession over his dinner, the sheepskin coats or those heh-heh moments - admitted with a hint of discomfort: "As a nation, we have always shown contempt towards Italian football." Not just because of the chance but also because of the "cheating". Now and over the next few days, that will become more evident than ever.

The Italians, declares this morning's Marca, "are experts in 'the other football', the maestros of time-wasting, of destroying games and subterranean play". The paper's cover runs with the photo of Luis Enrique, blood covering his shirt, after Tassotti smashed his nose all over his face in the penalty area at the end of the 1994 World Cup quarter-final, an elbow that "still hurts Spain". "If there is an image that sums up Italy v Spain meetings it's the bloody face of a crying Luis Enrique after getting an elbow that referee Sándor Puhl didn't see - or didn't want to see," Marca snipes.

"Italian cheating once again went unpunished, but at least they got what they deserved by losing in the final with two historic penalty misses from their great stars: [Roberto] Baggio and [Franco] Baresi", Marca continues, picking on two innocent men, while the front page headline warns: "Italy, we have not forgotten this."

They can say that again: as Roberto Palomar puts it, everywhere he looks he sees Luis Enrique and from now until Sunday's match there will be no escape as the telly goes into smashed-nose overload. "I go to fill the car with petrol and there's Luis Enrique vomiting blood behind the pump; I go to take a piss and there's Luis Enrique in the cubicle, doubled over, cleaning the blood off his disfigured face; I climb into bed and there's someone there next to my wife - it's Mauro Tassotti".

The same Mauro Tassotti who won that day - and that's kind of the point. Italy, as Palomar argued, is a ghost that haunts Spain. Despite the bravado, despite the implicit threat on Marca's cover, Italy don't just inspire loathing, they inspire fear too. Lots of it. There is a hint of getting your excuses in early about the Spanish media today. And there is little hiding the disappointment when they look at Romania - the speedboat Jim Bowen says they could have won - and then back at the Italians they've actually got. One headline this morning simply screamed "No!". "Italy, always Italy", sighed El País. And on the radio they were asking an uncomfortable question: "Are you shitting yourself?"

The answer was yes. Last night's result was the last thing the Spanish wanted: Luis Aragonés said it, the press said it and the online polls said it. José Vicente Hernáez signed off from yesterday evening's preview on Marca TV with a: "Do us a favour Holland, lose! Come on Romania!" Never mind the ethics, he spoke for everyone. Romania would have been perfect; a creaking France, just about acceptable; Italy, a disaster. "They're not the opponents we wanted, that's for sure," mumbled Aragonés. AS likens Italy to the beetle-tick that stalks the Austrian mountains, ready to deliver a fatal blow with a single bite. As Álvaro Arbeloa put it: "Italy are always the same: they scrape through and then win the tournament." Which would of course mean beating Spain.

On the face of it, Spain shouldn't be worried. In fact, they should be relishing the opportunity to bury those ghosts against a team that - as the commentators reminded us 37 times in the final 10 minutes last night - will be without Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso. After all, after two games for every team, Spain had completed more passes than any other country, and a higher percentage too. They are No1 in attacks, No1 in shots and No16 (in other words the best) in shots faced.

Better still, for all the talk of short, precise, slow build-up and despite its visceral defence from the talibans of tiki-taka (pass and move), Spain have scored six goals this tournament - five from breaks or, let's face it, aimless hoofs; one from a set-play. This time, there's real pace, a cutting edge, a will and a way to do it differently. And a bit of luck too. Spain have some semblance of togetherness at last, a team Cesc Fabregas can't even get into, after Aragonés sensibly recognised that his five-man midfield didn't work, and consequently they have David Villa - the new kid on the block, the revelation of world football who's only been the best striker in Spain for four years.

And yet, apart from Cuatro TV - whose "come on!, yes!, yes!, yes!, you can do it!, go on!, yes!, that's it!, that's it!, good!, that's the way!, oh yes!" commentary sounds more like the soundtrack from a saucy film than five blokes narrating a football match - the Spanish have been strikingly calm about the tournament so far. Sure, they've been delighted with what they have seen. But so often bitten for once shy, there's been little of the tub-thumping from the last World Cup, when they promised to retire Zinedine Zidane three games before Marco Materazzi actually did and announced themselves the best side in the tournament after a single game.

Not least because there's a recognition of their failings. Attack may be the best form of defence but there are fears about the back four, about the weakness of Carles Puyol and Carlos Marchena and the huge dip in form of Sergio Ramos. There's concern too about the anaemic performances of Andrés Iniesta and an unusual recognition that, even as Spain prepare to play tonight's match with the rare luxury of fielding a team of subs, they've not actually won anything - the message conveyed by players and press alike. The real stuff starts here; the very point at which Spain normally end.

If Romania awaited, they might now have begun to believe. But it's Italy. And as the editor of AS put it: "Italy don't scare me, they terrify me." Italy. Spain's bete noire (even if their last competitive game was that one 14 years ago). Italy. The side seemingly best equipped to undo Spain's technical yet lightweight midfield. Italy. In the quarter-final. On June 22. The team they have not beaten in a competitive match for 88 years. At the traditionally insurmountable hurdle, the stage they have not passed in 24 years. On the same date that they have been knocked out for each of the last three tournaments.

Happily, there is one, big difference this time. Not the absence of Tassotti - after all, the man with the razor-sharp elbows will be on the bench on Sunday - but the absence of the other sadly decisive man from that day in the US. This time, Spain have David Villa and Fernando Torres, not Julio Salinas.