Group F: Brazil, Croatia, Australia, Japan

[TT Boy]

Originally Posted by steds

He's a very good player who's played well for Liverpool this season.

Though prior to his one good season, he was too concerned of just chewing the fat and doing sweet FA other than getting fat and losing his pace.

[Pedro Delgado]

Best @rse in the Prem though apparantly.

[Great Birtannia]

Best losing match from an Australian team I've seen. Hiddink certainly has them well drilled and apart from the first 10 minutes of the second half we held our own. Lucas Neill was huge.

After watching Croatia fire blanks against the Japanese I'm feeling a little bit more confident on progression. Finishing will need to be better, I can see a flukey goal from a set piece deciding it for either team.

Kewell went nuts with the referee at the end. Do FIFA dish out a suspension or some token fine for that sort of thing?

[FaaipDeOiad]

Kewell certainly went off. Viduka was obviously pretty annoyed about the refereeing at the end as well, though he declined to comment directly and just said that "everyone saw" what happened. I think a suspension is possible if what he said was bad enough, though I can't recall it happening before.

[Blaze]

I hope Croatia don't sneak a 1-0 win over Australia now and go through..

[luckyeddie]

Originally Posted by social

Kewell has hardly played of late (due to a groin injury)

Aus, if you've noticed, has few world class players. If Kewell was even hal fit, he'd play more minutes.

So, I assume youre saying Ital and Eng arent crap and Spain and Portugal dont choke>

A match-fit Kewell is exactly the same as a non match-fit Kewell - a bone-idle one-trick pony passenger of a waste of space. Championship standard if you are lucky, a cheating, diving piece of filth who has made a living conning one club after another into giving him a lucrative contract.

And I'm only saying that because I like him so much.

[social]

Originally Posted by steds

But to say they'd definitely score 2 goals against Brazil if he was fully fit is a bit hopeful.


And I was saying Italy and England are decent teams (maybe not awesome) who haven't played to their potential and to dismiss Spain and Portugal purely as divers/chokers is pretty stupid.

Not match fit, i.e. not sharp, not in form etc etc because he's hardly played in the past few months due to injury.

Kewell had 2 relatively straight forward chances to score and didnt. Given his quality, it's reasonable to assume, he'd have gone closer with more matches under his belt.

Italy decent? Sorry, but they are fielding one of their worst teams in memory.

England? Embarrasingly bad. Sven Goren bought his play book from the Wimbledon manager of the 80s.

Spain and Portugal? Please nominate the last championship that these world class chokers did anything in. Give you a hint - LE's great grandfather was too young to see it.

[luckyeddie]

Social, Portugal made the final of Euro 2004.

[Matteh]

Originally Posted by social

England? Embarrasingly bad. Sven Goren bought his play book from the Wimbledon manager of the 80s.

6 points from 2 games - how could England be "Embarrasingly bad" based on that?!

[FaaipDeOiad]

Originally Posted by luckyeddie

A match-fit Kewell is exactly the same as a non match-fit Kewell - a bone-idle one-trick pony passenger of a waste of space. Championship standard if you are lucky, a cheating, diving piece of filth who has made a living conning one club after another into giving him a lucrative contract.

And I'm only saying that because I like him so much.

Had a pretty big hand in getting Australia qualified for the world cup, for such a waste of space.

[steds]

Originally Posted by Matteh

6 points from 2 games - how could England be "Embarrasingly bad" based on that?!

They didn't play well for those 6 points, mind.

[social]

Originally Posted by luckyeddie

Social, Portugal made the final of Euro 2004.

Won by Greece who werent even good enough to qualify for the World Cup and were made to look decidedly second rate by our boys a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, Portugal's failure at the last hurdle in this competition against such average opposition simply reinforced their position as being amongst the soccer world's great under-achievers of the last 20 years.

[social]

Originally Posted by luckyeddie

A match-fit Kewell is exactly the same as a non match-fit Kewell - a bone-idle one-trick pony passenger of a waste of space. Championship standard if you are lucky, a cheating, diving piece of filth who has made a living conning one club after another into giving him a lucrative contract.

And I'm only saying that because I like him so much.

1 club to be exact and you can hardly blame Kewell's management for screwing Leeds out of some lucre - they were hardly Robinson Crusoe in that regard!

[Cloete]

Fairly even game IMO. I thought a draw would have been a much fairer result. But if one said had to win it, it deserved to be Brazil.

Our finishing needs to improve, but we're still streaks ahead of the Croats in that department. In order for us to lose, Croatia need to score a goal

So yeah overall a fairly entertaining match that was very evenly balanced. Better finishing and running off the ball was the difference IMO. Anyway, I said it last game, Neill will be at big club after this World Cup. The game against Brazil just confirmed that. He's an absolute gun... Been one of the best defenders at the tournament so far.

[Nnanden]

Frustrating matches, both of them. Croatia`s finishing has been terrible, though the save off Prso was brilliant. Australia deserved to lose IMO, but not by two.

Now for Australia vs Croatia. My heart hurts!