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The FIFA Football World Cup 2018

In yesterday's breaking news, your cousin/friend/relative who's never watched league soccer watched 5 minutes of the Croatia/Denmark game then posted on social media that soccer is boring.
 
rousseau said:
In yesterday's breaking news, your cousin/friend/relative who's never watched league soccer watched 5 minutes of the Croatia/Denmark game then posted on social media that soccer is boring.
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Social media sucks as people that don’t know football exists outside the world cup feel it necessary to post scores.

About the only thing I’m spoiler safe from is Le Tour.
 
The Belgian team showed real character in coming from a 2-0 deficit to beat Japan 3-2. I am looking forward to Friday's quarterfinal matchups: France v Uruguay, and Brazil v Belgium.
 
Incredible match. Doesn’t get much better. That last goal, both the stamina required to pull it off and the where with all from Courtois to Lukaku to make it work shows why Belgium is one of the best.

I’m not as impressed they didn’t “ give up”, as Belgium at 0-0, 2-0, 3-2 all looked the same. Intense and waiting for the chances to finally score.

Japan played so well, much better than the US did (except Tim Howard who recorded a record number of saves) in the same round last World Cup against Belgium. Japan made very few errors and made many great offensive and defensive plays.

A shame a team must lose. And now Brazil plays Belgium. This bracket is just nutz!
 
A lot of buzz about the Belgium v Japan game so I tuned in to watch the second half on the rebroadcast. It was a very entertaining game, the best I have seen but I'm not watching an awful lot. This was two very skillful and competitive teams putting on an exhibition as to how the beautiful game should be played. To a certain extent I think Japan were a bit naive to continue to play the way they did when leading 2-0. But fair play to them, they played like they were having fun and believed they could thrash the Belgians 6-0. And the lack of play acting when players were fouled was refreshing. Which brings me to, what the fuck is wrong with that horse tooth freak Suarez ? He gets slight contact on his ankle and goes down clutching his head like he has been battered with a baseball bat. Don't get me started on Neymar.
 
Speakpigeon said:
Underseer said:
bilby said:
And so ends another typical performance from Australia; Looked OK for a while, but finished bottom of their group.

See you all in Qatar for our next slightly disappointing attempt...
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At least Australia got in the Cup at all. America, not so much.
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Well, they did a 1-1 in the friendly with France just before the start of the world cup. They seem to be improving year after year. There's no magical recipe. You just have to slog it out.

It's already something that the country of baseball should condescend to play "soccer".

I mean, real football. :D
EB
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You're French, so you probably don't know the background of that word.

"Soccer" is a slang term that derives from association football.

Soccer is their (British) term. We just don't make slang words in that way. If you asked Americans to make a slang term from association football, we would probably call it ass football or something.

We use their word because we already have a game called football.

You might be confused about why we have a completely different game with the same name, and understanding that requires a but of history.

Originally, every school had a different game with different rules because it was expected that these games would only be played within reach school, never with people outside the school.

All of these very different games were collectively called "football."

We call our game football for the same reason the British call their game football: we never stopped calling it that. Both games merely followed different evolutionary paths.

Eventually, the British wanted standardized rules so that schools could play each other. This is what led to "association football."

America and Canada could not reasonably play against British schools, so our schools ignored the new standardized rules and sort of just kept doing our own thing.

Long story short, our (American and Canadian) version is "real football" as much as theirs is.
 
In Australia, they play "British rules football," "American rules football," and "Australian rules football."

I dunno how they keep it all straight, and my information is third hand and decades old, so they might have different terms by now for all I know.
 
Underseer said:
In Australia, they play "British rules football," "American rules football," and "Australian rules football."

I dunno how they keep it all straight, and my information is third hand and decades old, so they might have different terms by now for all I know.
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Oh, it's far more complicated than that.

Which game gets called 'football' varies by state, and to a degree by fandom. In Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory, 'football' usually means 'Australian Rules Football', aka AFL or (historically or as a derogatory term, VFL), from the acronym of the governing body, the former Victorian Football Leage, now Australian Football League.

In Queensland and New South Wales, 'football' usually means 'Rugby League Football'.

In Western Australia, 'football' could mean either; or it could mean Association Football - usually known as soccer (I have never heard it called 'British Football'). Mostly it's AFL in WA; But Perth has a much larger soccer fandom than the other states.

Another commonly played code is Rugby Union Football, which (to avoid confusion with Rugby League Football) is called 'Rugby'.

The AFL also arranges matches called 'International Rules Football', which is a hybrid game with some characteristics of AFL, and some of Gaelic Football; Such matches are typically played between an Australian and an Irish team, but do not use the same rules as matches played in either country, so International Rules is a game in its own right.

We also have a number of American Rules Football teams over here, though that code is still a very minor part of the sporting landscape.

Any and all of these might be referred to as 'footy'.
 
Thanks for stirring the mud for everybody, bilby. It's much clearer, now.

That's even more contorted than the North American situation.
 
TSwizzle said:
A lot of buzz about the Belgium v Japan game so I tuned in to watch the second half on the rebroadcast. It was a very entertaining game, the best I have seen but I'm not watching an awful lot. This was two very skillful and competitive teams putting on an exhibition as to how the beautiful game should be played. To a certain extent I think Japan were a bit naive to continue to play the way they did when leading 2-0. But fair play to them, they played like they were having fun and believed they could thrash the Belgians 6-0. And the lack of play acting when players were fouled was refreshing. Which brings me to, what the fuck is wrong with that horse tooth freak Suarez ? He gets slight contact on his ankle and goes down clutching his head like he has been battered with a baseball bat. Don't get me started on Neymar.
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It’s a South American thing (possibly a genetic trait from the Spaniards). Suarez makes up for his antics with his across the pitch tenacity that is matched by few.

And luckily we haven’t seen his pac man impersonation in a... well since the last World Cup.
 
jonatha said:
bilby said:
Gaelic Football
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Is that basically a soccer game where they play the bagpipes at halftime?
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It really couldn't be much more different from soccer. Unless it was AFL.

It is very entertaining to watch though; And in case it's not violent enough for you, the Irish have a second version in which the players are armed with giant wooden clubs, which they swing around at head height, called 'hurling'. The death toll is astonishingly low.
 
I think the quarterfinal matches on Friday look to be very entertaining: France v Uruguay and Brazil v Belgium. Frankly, I think all 4 of those teams could beat whomever ends up representing the other bracket.
 
laughing dog said:
I think the quarterfinal matches on Friday look to be very entertaining: France v Uruguay and Brazil v Belgium. Frankly, I think all 4 of those teams could beat whomever ends up representing the other bracket.
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I agree; I am hoping for a France - England final, just to see the English press go into a complete meltdown.
 
bilby said:
laughing dog said:
I think the quarterfinal matches on Friday look to be very entertaining: France v Uruguay and Brazil v Belgium. Frankly, I think all 4 of those teams could beat whomever ends up representing the other bracket.
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I agree; I am hoping for a France - England final, just to see the English press go into a complete meltdown.
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How would we be able to notice?
 
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