Can Slovakia continue the Cinderella story or will it be Dutch treat?
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Anton Sirius
I don’t see the Netherlands choking before the quarter-finals this year…
cmorenc
I’ll go out on a huge limb and predict a game effort by Slovakia, but the Dutch will simply be too strong, too good and will end up winning rather comfortably by something like 2-0 or 3-1. Actually, the “limb” I’m climbing out on is more like the trunk of a mature oak in making this prediction, which will only be foiled if the Slovakians manage to bring a chainsaw to this game.
cmorenc
@Anton Sirius
Oh, and why might they choke in the quarterfinals? All the Dutch need do to
bring us the broomstick of the wicked witch of the Amazonbeat Brazil.Punchy
Do the Dutch double-dutch while dating dutch?
KRK
People from Slovakia are Slovaks, not Slovakians. I wish it didn’t bug me so much that everyone on ESPN gets this wrong.
Randy Paul
@cmorenc: Brazil has been a bit of a bête noire for the Netherlands in their last couple of meetings, as France has been for Brazil.
Dave C
Not sure why I’m awake right now, but since I am, I might as well watch some soccer!
handsmile
It would be too easy to say that even wearing wooden shoes, Holland will defeat Slovakia today.
The competitiveness of the match will depend on what Slovak team takes the field: the lackluster squad which gifted a penalty time goal to New Zealand; the training ground opponents to Paraguay; or the ruthless and resolute band that humiliated Italy. For that victory alone, Slovakia has won eternal glory: both from its nation’s citizens and fans of football worldwide.
I must say I’ve been impressed thus far with the Dutch defensive unit, regarded before the tournament as the weak brick in the dike. (In this, a parallel with the reputation/expectation of Argentina’s offense and defense.) The goalkeeper Stekelenburg, in particular, has demonstrated his worth as successor to the legendary Edwin van der Saar (some pressure that) in his play against the potent but very different attacking styles of Japan and Cameroon.
I foresee that this coming weekend we will be offered the equivalent of two World Cup title matches: Holland v. Brazil and Argentina v. Germany. Oh my.
Miss Kitka's Comrade Wayne
Hup Holland!
Anton Sirius
That was an amazing goal.
bjacques
At the risk of jinxing the match, I predict that Holland will grind Slovakia under their wooden heel.
You know what a Dutch treat is?
NO TREAT AT ALL!
Randy Paul
@bjacques: And a Dutch door is only half a door, a Dutch uncle is not really an uncle and Dutch courage is fueled with alcohol.
handsmile
Arjen Robben must embody trauma for opposing defenders. No matter how many times in training you prepare by watching videotape of him running 1v1 at an opponent, shifting the ball to his left foot, snapping a shot, scoring: you just know that inevitably you too will be victimized, to relive the episode over and over.
Once again, in this, his first match of the tournament. Ah, if only he weren’t made of glass.
OT, but readers might enjoy a feature at the Huffington Post sports section displaying today’s front pages of English newspapers across the journalistic spectrum. Schadenfreude is precisely the right word to describe one’s response.
burnspbesq
That was a heck of a save by Mucha. Nice use of the face.
ColeDBiers
@KRK:
Most of the announcers on ESPN are Americs.
A crass and self absorbed people prone to such linguistic blasphemies.
Fern
@ColeDBiers: The announcer on the CBC feed seems pretty good.
KRK
@ColeDBiers:
Well, that’s a nice theory but I don’t think it’s simply a matter of American ignorance since McManaman & Gullit do it too. I do appreciate that McCoist says “Slovak.”
Bill Murray
@ColeDBiers: That is not true of the World Cup — the only natural born American announcer is John Harkes and he isn’t doing this game. This game’s announcers are Derek Rae and Ally McCoist who are both Scots although Rae may be a naturalized American
Punchy
Nary a single upset in this round of 16, unless you count the US, which most dont, even though they were technically Vegas favs…..
Dutch just secured it with a second….
Miss Kitka's Comrade Wayne
No offense to the Slovaks, who are a perfectly lovely people, but because I’m part Brazilian, part USian, whenever I hear “Slovakia” I think of a very slow cow.
frankdawg
@Randy Paul:
And to be “in Dutch” means you are in trouble. I often wondered where that came from.
Since this is already OT I’ll add that in the US the term Dutch was mostly applied to German immigrants so that Pennsylvanian Dutch were actually German settlers. Not sure if that impacted the origin of some of these terms.
Oh, and GO ORANGE!
kezboard
I’m in Slovakia right now. It’s a bummer they lost, but at least there are some football fans out there in the world who won’t be calling it “Czechoslovakia” anymore.
KRK
@kezboard:
Where are you? Not Kezmarok by any chance?
handsmile
On the comments thread for a previous Holland match, I wrote of my reverence for Dirk Kuyt. Today, ESPN’s Robbie Mustoe asserted that Arjen Robben was the Dutch player who possessed the “X factor,” someone capable of blowing open any game.
Yet in watching all four of Holland’s World Cup matches, the DNA of their success is provided by Wesley Sneijder. His positional clairvoyance, panoptic vision of the run of play, masterful ball control and distribution, and variety of goal-scoring abilities make Sneijder the one essential element of the Dutch football organism.
(The late penalty notwithstanding, Maarten Stekelenburg’s performance in goal today only underscored my appreciation of his World Cup form.)
Zifnab
@Miss Kitka’s Comrade Wayne: I’m sure the Dutch are thinking the same thing, the way they creamed the Slovs.
Opopanax
@Randy Paul:
When we moved to Holland, one of the cultural guidebooks given to us mentioned that many of these terms were coined by the Netherlands’ old foe, England. Sounds plausible to me.
Oh, and Hup Holland! Lots of ringing of bicycle bells and blowing of horns around here when that second goal was scored.
Opopanax
@handsmile:
Yes, well said. He’s the key.
Randy Paul
@Opopanax: No question, especially as they seem to have come up in colonial USA.
frankdawg
@Opopanax:
D’oh! That makes so much sense, now that you mention it. So you are living there now? Since this thread is probably pretty well dead what with the game being well over and all – how did you end up there & what is daily life like?
salacious crumb
dont understand why the dutch are still considered top notch. Their performance against Slovakia was mediocre at best, Slovakia isn’t that much of a highly ranked team. Plus Brazil is worrying me. they are not the same as they were with Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. At the moment Argentina, Germany, and Portugal and Uruguay look like strong contenders for World cup.
ajr22
Were is a new post? I’m on my lunch break and need something to read. Are front pagers working today or something?
frankdawg
@ajr22:
Wouldn’t it be awful if they got real jobs & left us here with nothing to comment on!? :)
Seems its either feast or famine – this must be one of those times when real life is getting in the way of their important work.
Paul L.
Awaiting John’s rebuttel of McMegan.
Peer Review is No Panacea
I am guessing it will be Peer Review is flawless and how dare a non-scientist like her question real scientists.
That and her example using Michael Bellesiles is completely wrong.
Michael Bellesiles was SWIFTBOATED by the NRA.
Joel
Peer review is better than the alternative.
David in NY
@kezboard:
Yeah, now they’ll be calling it Slovenia.
flukebucket
Damn guys. It seems like every time I open up Yahoo there is some story about some kind of officiating problem at The World Cup.
Is this shit being overblown or is shitty officiating really a bigger problem with soccer than it is every other known sport?
Brachiator
@Paul L.:
Well, one can dismiss McMegan’s bullshite right here:
Really? There are obviously other steps in the evaluation of scientific works, including attempts to replicate experiments, but McMegan is obviously trying to take a specific example related to the sciences and apply it more widely while ignoring other procedural steps, many of which may not be “widely applicable” at all.
As for the non-scientists questioning real scientists, this is a phony issue. In practical terms, most non-scientists don’t have the background to ask the right question, let alone understand an answer.
Her conclusions about the value of peer review are trivial because they don’t say anything that isn’t already known.
fucen tarmal
toyota is having a “sponsafy your ride contest” like one they apparently had back in the spring, you go to a site, create a paint scheme for a nascar and people vote on the designs…
one of the categories is “causes”
how great would it be to have an EFCA car sponsored by toyota?
Paula
@flukebucket:
This is pretty bad. But what’s worse is that ESPN punditry seem to be excusing it by way of “well, it doesn’t matter, x team was the better team anyway”. [still pissed @ Alexi Lalas excusing Fabiano’s handball]
It’s a pretty poor advertisement of this sport.
flukebucket
@Paula:
Well when you mix bad officiating with a sport that you do not know much about anyway it makes it tough to follow.
But soccer has helped me understand my wife a little more. She has always said that she can not understand American football. To her it is just a group of guys who line up and then all of them fall down and then all of them line up again.
Soccer really is that incomprehensible to me. Most of the time I have no idea what the hell is going on. So I just holler when everybody else hollers.
ColeDBiers
Here, on one of the internets most important blogs devoted to covering sports and cats and conservative idiocy , all at the same time, we are still on last games thread.
Oh, the humanity
ColeDBiers
never mind
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@flukebucket:
Yes and no.
No, the officiating in soccer is every bit as competent as any other sport as far as I can tell.
As far as England’s non-goal is concerned, it’s obviously asinine to expect three people to closely monitor such a large area, official competence has nothing to do with it, and simple solutions immediately come to mind.
As far as the offside rule is concerned, it’s also asinine to expect a guy wearing shorts and holding a crossing guard flag forty yards away to correctly judge the relative positions, sometimes to within inches, of a dozen or more people running around. I personally think the offside rule needs to be changed.
As far as the more run of the mill issue of calling fouls goes, I don’t see any substantial difference between soccer, American football, basketball or hockey in this regard. Sometimes officials make errors in judgement, sometimes they don’t properly control the overall flow of the game, and so on.
There is indeed a lot of bellyaching going on right now about World Cup officiating, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the issue even gets its own Wikipedia page.
flukebucket
I have been thinking the exact same thing but have been ashamed to say it because as I have said I really don’t know what the hell is going on.
How about instant replay?
Paula
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, FIFA to “censor” stadium replay.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@flukebucket:
I’ve been having a discussion about it on the Argentina-Mexico thread.
I’m generally loathe to endorse video replay in any sport, but if its use was strictly limited I could live with it. You could also add goal officials at either end, though they might get awfully bored in some games. And isn’t there some sort of electronic device that could tell you if the goal line has been crossed?
flukebucket
I would assume so. Doesn’t a red light go off when a goal is scored in hockey? Does the puck set that thing off? Hell usually the only way I know somebody has scored in hockey is to watch the red light. I can’t ever see the puck.
Instant replay can be more infuriating than helpful. Nothing is worse than watching a bad call 15 times in super slow motion from eight different angles and then hearing the referee say, “the play stands as called on the field”.
Silver
@flukebucket:
No, the puck doesn’t set off the goal light. The goal judge does that. Before the age of replay, they used to actually sit behind the glass directly behind the net.