and usa ended up 1st in the group-- thanks to pekerman's 10-sub team mostly, we would have made 2nd place otherwise

ecuador is gonna be a tough titty though

what is up with Lionel "Jim" Messison?

he's a little preoccupied at the moment

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/0...100447525.html

well that is what happens when a grown ass man lets his papi run his $

that was a nice 2-1 over ecuador but taking out clint at that point looked like a huge mistake



bullet:dodged

and if jj can't play next time (why did he have to lay hands on a losing opponent, he was MVP up to that point) i hope pulisic gets to finally start a game

peru-colombia just had a spectacular game. one of the best 0-0s i've seen in a long time.

in the end colombia won on penalties, as it should.

ill take your word for it usually 0-0 matches piss me off

Carlos Bilardo once said that the perfect match was the 0-0, because it meant that nobody made a mistake (the obvious implication being that only defensive errors explain goals).

Way to suck all the fun out of the beautiful game. :D

Oh ha ha fucking Bilardo pincharratas. The Darth Vader of football.

But yes there were few mistakes although it was lively and energetic and the James shot to goalpost was hypnotic. Worth searching for the gif.

Argentina 2-0 at halftime, should have been more like a 3-1, the more Venezuela loses the harder they try (except on shitty penalties lol). Let's see what happens 2nd half.

Looking forward to Mexico Chile-- normally my money would be on Chile but I think their new coach Pizzi has been fucking up and I've seen Mexico play like Chile should, so... It should be a tight game. Wild bet, Mexico wins provided they don't go to penalties.

Boy, I agree 100% with you there. Thing is, Pizzi is just not from the Bielsa school and he doesn't seem to know what the fuck to do with the team; he has slowed it down. Also, he left Valdivia out of the squad and Matías Fernández is injured, and while I don't think a "classic number 10" is the panacea, Chile's definitely suffering from a lack of real playmaking.

W00t! Chile really charged their batteries for today!

A little premature to call the game at halftime, but the way it's going, it's a pity we won't see Vidal against Colombia mid-week.

Ho
Lee
Shit!!!!!!!

Well !@#$%!, clearly we didn't know what the hell we were talking about. THAT WAS TOTALLY WICKED. It was so wicked, it was just, just... SATANIC! Complete annihilation! Mother-FUCK! This kind of score is reserved for when you play Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, the sorry-ass Faroe Islands, or Brazil at their own World Cup.

Yes, Colombia's gonna be damn tough; Vidal is the engine of the Lone Star's midfield. Plus, they're gonna have one more day to recover, and Chile made a tremendous physical effort to demolish Mexico. OK, maybe not so much after the... fourth or fifth goal, but still. :D

Slovakia plays England today.

What do you predict? I secretly hope for a draw. That would enable us to go through, and England would be through anyway.

I really REALLY hope it's going to be a draw.

i don't know-- i saw the game vs argentina and they were utter shit. unorganized, slow, sloppy passes and lost balls in the midfield, and argentina beat them with little effort.

maybe it was a ruse to deceive the enemy though. those two might meet again in the final.


but the devil is six! and god is seven.

speaking of seven, this is the new mexican kit:

home:



away:




i didn't know that it was particularly tremendous running. chile is used to running, and they didn't have to run much anyway with the massive spaces mexico left them. plus the big players at least are used to playing twice a week.

it was hilarious to always see more red shirts anywhere the ball was though.

poor fucking mexicans! they looked good against uruguay but i guess that was also misleading.

7-0?
Are you serious?
This doesn't happen on this side of the pond.
A team might qualify for the next round (not a picnic, it won't be) with two losses and a one goal win (Albania).
A draw for Slovakia would be fine against England ; and one for Wales too.

I've read a thing about Messi scoring three times, but that's Messi, man, he plays in Europe.
I'd like to see games from all over the world. Really.
French people went "what?" when André-Pierre Gignac left the old world to join Los Tigres in Mexico.
And guess what? He's back in the team. Not achieving much yesterday, as France was pretty happy not to play at all during the second half on a terrible terrible pitch.
Gignac played under Marcelo Bielsa, former Chile coach, when in Marseille. Bielsa divided the press a lot, but what he did really helped the team and some of the players improved their game (Payet for example).

I wish I could see the American games, to make comparisons, but I need sleep so much here (the noisiest place I've ever stayed at).

I had never seen a 7-0 score on a national team match. What an asswhuppin! It was a sight to see for sure.

USA vs Argentina Tuesday , and I hope hope hope the USA can come out strong.

hey, bertrand! yeah, 7-0. funny thing, before this mexico had played a year undefeated! problem is they're used to a different caliber of opponent ha ha ha. uruguay, which should have kept them in check, has problems of their own.

here's a video of mexico's destruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FntBihIwbLc

and some commentary: https://www.theguardian.com/football...-quarter-final

but see, before that, these were the expectations:
https://www.theguardian.com/football...vier-hernandez

so it's quite a crash.

chile won the copa america last year. with a finger up cavani's ass and a little help from the ref, but still, they've been the strongest ever in their history i believe. this copa america is out of the regular calendar for multiple reasons too long to explain-- but it's like having the euro again in 2017.

chile has players in europe of course-- THE BEST ONES (now i sound like donald trump, ha ha ha). but yeah, alexis in arsenal, vidal @ bayern, medel @ inter, bravo @ barcelona, vargas @ hoffenheim, etc-- plus they have players in the mexican league.

mexican professional teams have a lot of international players btw-- not the top ones like europe, but they attract people from everywhere-- brazilians, uruguayans, chileans, etc. news came out that the peruvian team's goalkeeper just got hired from the tournament to play in veracruz. so why not get a french player too. as long as it's not for puebla ha ha ha.