World Cup 2010 Blog: “The World Cup Awards: Quarterfinals” plus 8 more

---

• The World Cup Awards: Quarterfinals
• Carlos Tevez Enlightens Us: Germany & Holland Have “No Top Players”
• Photo: BBC Thinks Diego & Dunga Are Sittin’ In A Tree
• Soundoff: Did Leo Messi Disappoint at World Cup 2010?
• World Cup Semifinals: Pick Your Winners…
• The Myth Of The ‘Nike Ad Curse’
• Man’s Best Friend & The Vuvuzela
• This World Cup is Full of Cocaine
• Cristiano Ronaldo’s a Daddy

The World Cup Awards: Quarterfinals Posted: 04 Jul 2010 04:59 PM PDT Team of the Quarters: Germany. A more difficult call to make than it’d seem since it was tantamount to shooting fish in the barrel, but ultimately Brazil shooting itself in the foot wasn’t enough for the Dutch to tip the scales. Jogi won’t be receiving Christmas gifts for the next ten years after receiving Argentina on a silver platter from Diego, but they were still clinically impressive and did exactly as they should have. It’s just a shame the Argentina staff didn’t watch any tape – of themselves or of Germany. Player of the Quarters: Bastian Schweinsteiger. Lesson learned: don’t mock Bastian. They Are Who We Thought They Were Award: Argentina. Great attack, no midfield, poor defense, poor keeper, joke of a coach. (Alright, maybe Romero was just “untested”.) Who called that pre-World Cup outside of everybody? Pick up your cookies on the way out. The Gary Lineker Award: Love Wikipedia. Melo has a son called Lineker, who he named after the English centre forward Gary Lineker. But ironically, Lineker couldn’t get Felipe’s name right in his definitive guide to the 2010 World Cup. On page 26 of his glossy guide to the tournament, he called the Juventus midfielder “Fernando Melo”. Quote: It is the Daily Mail and, as noted previously, they have zero legitimacy – but it doesn’t make it any less funny. On Cristiano’s baby: If indeed the news is true, it’s not known whether the Portuguese star had a fling with the woman in question or whether she had the child through a ‘Ricky Martin’-style arrangement. Which ’she’ are they talking about? This Is Why You Don’t Get Called Up Award: Somewhere, Adriano is jealous. Welcome To The World Cup, Kid: For most, this is simply a quadrennial exercise in weeping. Welcome to the club. Love Conquers All Award: Well, until he’s sleeping on the couch. Fan: I count no less than three Ghana flag paintings. This could be a World Cup record. Quarterfinal Matchup: A six woman royal rumble. Pick at your peril. v. v. v. v. v.

Carlos Tevez Enlightens Us: Germany & Holland Have “No Top Players” Posted: 04 Jul 2010 03:46 PM PDT Would you believe I’m reading this with a background tab of the infamous Daily Mail headline? Probably not, but I am. Carlos Tevez has put mouth firmly in foot, making himself the new posterchild for footballer stupidity at this World Cup – and joining the elite Daily Mail pantheon of idiocy. It’s so good you won’t believe it. It started as a good natured respectful congratulation in defeat, but quickly turned into an all-time backhanded compliment. I’d say Carlos just won that tennis tournament they’ve been muttering about in the background. “We didn’t play as a team, and that was our biggest problem,” said Carlos Tevez. “We knew Germany would play on the counterattack, like they did against England, and our mistake was not being able to stop that. It was the fact that we didn’t play as a team that cost us. Of course that’s what happened – are you stupid? We have some of the top players in the world. Germany and Holland don’t have top players, but they won their games and made it as a team.” Are you stupid? Are you, you sock sucker? At some point, this quote is going to wind up framed and in museums, with signed lithographs available for purchase in bulk for family and friends at holidays. It’s simply so bad it’s genius. As for the issue at hand, it’d be an insult to the Germans and the Dutch to name all their “top players” – not to mention the inevitable case of carpal tunnel – so we’ll just leave it at this: if you pop across Carlos Tevez when looking for directions, ask him – and then go the other way.

Photo: BBC Thinks Diego & Dunga Are Sittin’ In A Tree Posted: 04 Jul 2010 03:19 PM PDT Is this the most disturbing photo implication of the World Cup? It has to be. And from the BBC of all people. (What’s worse is I imagine both of them actually kiss like that.)

Soundoff: Did Leo Messi Disappoint at World Cup 2010? Posted: 04 Jul 2010 01:30 PM PDT A lot of big name players who failed to impress in South Africa. Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Franck Ribery, and so on. With Leo Messi I’m not so sure. On one hand, little Lionel looked like Barça Lionel when he terrorized the Nigerian, South Korean, Greek and also Mexican defences. He created multiple chances for teammates and drew endless saves from opposition goalkeepers. On the other hand, Messi failed to score at all in World Cup 2010, and looked incapable of penetrating Germany’s defence in the 4-0 quarterfinal defeat. See above picture for a possible reason why. Personally, I’m inclined to give Messi a pass. He was desperately unlucky not to score at least once in the group stage, and who says scoring is the only measure of success anyway? It’s worth remembering that Messi’s not actually a striker. He’s not a Michael Owen type player, who you can more or less judge on number of goals scored. He’s a dribbler and creator, and at World Cup 2010 Messi did plenty of dribbling and creating, and was plenty exciting to watch while doing so. If we are to argue that Messi did disappoint at World Cup 2010, we’d have to make the case based on the fact that he could only dribble and create his way as far as the quarterfinal stage, and not all the way to trophy lifting glory as Diego Maradona did in 1986. As the currently anointed best player in the world, and surrounded by plenty of complimentary talent, one could maybe say that dribbling through second those Nigerian, South Korean and Greek defences in the group stage was too easy, and that Messi actually failed to perform and inspire when faced with serious opposition in quarterfinal vs Germany. That’s the case against, though personally I enjoyed many of Messi’s moments at World Cup 2010, and so can’t claim to be too disappointed. What do you say? Were you disappointed with Leo Messi at World Cup 2010?

World Cup Semifinals: Pick Your Winners… Posted: 04 Jul 2010 11:30 AM PDT We have our World Cup semi-finalists. We do. And they are: Uruguay, Netherlands, Spain and Germany. If you’ve read your World Cup 101 then you’ll know that two of those teams will progress to the World Cup final on July 11th, while two will not. The World Cup semifinal schedule is as follows: Tuesday, July 6th: Uruguay vs Netherlands, Cape Town, 8:30pm local time (2:30pm US eastern) Wednesday, July 7th: Germany vs Spain, Durban, 8:30pm (2:30pm US eastern) I’ve done some primitive calculations in my head, and have determined that there’s no bad final can come out of this. But some finals will be better than others. Here’s my thinking: Any final involving Uruguay will be fascinating, because la celeste are the surprise semi-finalist. So a Uruguay vs Germany or Uruguay vs Spain final is fine by me. However… the neutral in me is hoping to see Netherlands make it to the final. Netherlands vs Spain would be magnificent because guarantees a new World Cup winner. Both nations have won the Euros, but neither is yet to join the big boys club. So history will be made either way. The final possibility is Netherlands vs Germany. If I’m honest, that’s the one I want to see. It’s not just a rematch of the famous 1974 final, it’s also one of the more interesting footballing rivalries in world football. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. There are two superb semifinals still to be played. So which two teams do you see progressing to the World Cup final?

The Myth Of The ‘Nike Ad Curse’ Posted: 04 Jul 2010 10:30 AM PDT As the bodies have dropped from Nike’s Write The Future, a theory has been formulated that some sort of curse surrounds Nike’s magnum opus. It’s a good theory with enough evidence and backers to make one think it might have legs. But it doesn’t. Because there was more than one Nike ad for this World Cup, and simply because you haven’t seen it – unless you’ve been joining our liveblogs where I’ve posted it hundreds of trillions of times…as well as here – doesn’t make it any less real. What it means is there is no ‘Nike ad curse’ or anything of the sort. It simply means the better – and more prophetic – Nike ad won out, and the Dutch are very happy for it. Now, Nike had this ad along with a viral which took place in The Dam in Amsterdam in which they claimed the World Cup to be spoken for. Poppycock, right? Maybe not…. It’s not the Year of the Nike Curse – it’s merely the Year of the Dutch Nike Ad.

Man’s Best Friend & The Vuvuzela Posted: 04 Jul 2010 09:26 AM PDT In a word or three: they don’t mix. Surely this must violate some sort of animal cruelty laws somewhere, somehow. There’s no way a vuvuzela can possibly be good for that dog’s hearing in such close quarters. Shitting on the carpet means they got away easy, and I’m fully in favor of tracking down these animals and bringing them to court. And one question…how does a dog shit a question mark?

This World Cup is Full of Cocaine Posted: 04 Jul 2010 08:18 AM PDT Not World Cup 2010. As far as we know, the tournament in South Africa is not full of cocaine. Diego Maradona has been clean for years and Adrian Mutu isn’t even there. But the replica World Cup trophy, pictured left, is very much full of cocaine, and was recently seized by police in Bogota, Colombia. Airports anti-drug chief Col. Jose Piedrahita says that Colombian authorities found the unusual statue during a routine security check by anti-drug agents Friday in a mail warehouse at Bogota’s international airport. The 14-inch-high statue was inside a box headed for Madrid, Spain. The statue was painted gold with green stripes on the base. Piedrahita said Saturday that laboratory tests confirmed the cup was made of 24 pounds of cocaine mixed with acetone or gasoline to make it moldable. Is it just me, or is that replica World Cup trophy actually quite convincing? So much so that if I was whoever made said trophy, I’d be more worried about the crackdown from FIFA’s licensing police than the Colombian authorities.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s a Daddy Posted: 04 Jul 2010 07:31 AM PDT From a note posted on Cristiano Ronaldo’s Twitter account earlier today: It is with great joy and emotion that I inform I have recently become father to a baby boy. As agreed with the baby’s mother, who prefers to have her identity kept confidential, my son will be under my exclusive guardianship. No further information will be provided on this subject and I request everyone to fully respect my right to privacy (and that of the child) at least on issues as personal as these are. So that’s that. C-Ron’s a Daddy, and that’s all he’s going to say on it. I’m the third-farthest person from a Cristiano Ronaldo fan in all of football, but I have to give him credit. He announced what sounds like a somewhat … complicated arrangement in a fairly simple anti-Paparazzi way. And with Portugal out and a bit over a month until La Liga starts up for his Real Madrid side, he can hopefully take a few weeks and get some quality time with Winker Jr. The questions are (because I personally don’t care who the mama is), 1) is he sincere about wanting to keep the kid out of the spotlight? and 2) can he do it?

You are subscribed to email updates from World Cup Soccer - South Africa 2010 To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610