Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

When we show up, we win.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The lights are all blinking red.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

You are here: Home / Sports / Quarter-Finals Open Thread Germany v France

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  5. 5.

    Morzer

    I think this will be France’s day. They’ve got the speed and quality to embarrass Germany’s not entirely stellar defense.

    Germans throughout the world, I have now doomed France, so you owe me a debt of gratitude. Citizens of le pays des singes qui mangent du fromage et se rendent, I apologize in advance.

    Also too: Colombia to win later today.

  7. 7.

    HumboldtBlue

    Vive La France!

    Aux armes, citoyens,
    Formez vos bataillons,
    Marchons, marchons !
    Qu’un sang impur
    Abreuve nos sillons !

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    Interestng suggestion from Guardian live-blog:

    Abolish anthems before football matches

    It’s really not fair that footballers are ordered to put on a singing show before each games. I didn’t see any of the participants in the last Eurovision song contest having to take part in a penalty shoot-out before they did their thing.

    ETA: Mind you, penalty shootouts would definitely make the Eurovision song contest more exciting.

  9. 9.

    Cacti

    WWII jokes aside, I think France prevails today.

    Aside from their 4-0 drubbing of Portugal, Germany has looked fairly pedestrian thus far.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack

    Heh. “Mannschaft.” Is there anything in German that doesn’t sound dirty? Rhetorical question.

    I’ve got no hund in this hunt, but I expect it to be a very good game.

    @Morzer:

    Colombia to win later today.

    I can definitely see this happening. Brazil has been sort of coasting on “We’re pretty and people like us!” and Colombia has been looking very good. I have alerted my non-soccer-fan brother to have his trauma counseling protocols in place for the horde of Brazilian in-laws that he is hosting at the beach.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Morzer: My German sister-in-law agrees with you. She’s firmly convinced that if Germany plays at the level they were showing last round, France is going to win handily.

  26. 26.

    Kevin

    @Cacti:

    Honestly, drop that shit, even as a “quip”… do yourself and everyone a favor. Basic hygiena, really.

    It was a slur in 2002-2003, it wasn’t funny back then – though, it is now! Except that the joke’s not on France, mind you -, it is mindless, 180° from any actual History, crass, and utterly hypocritical (the people who pushed it were chickenhawks at best, direct heirs to actual nazi-enablers, and big time ones, too, at worst).

    Bottom line, it is best left consigned as a self-identifying marker for the RWNJ. Especially on the 4th of July… you’re welcome for your independence.

    BTW, FYI & FWIW, the Battle of France (French casualties) as reported to the USA in 2014 : 750 000 KIA, in a month. Haw haw haw.

  28. 28.

    gene108

    I’m getting tired of seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s mug on my monitor. What if America lost the Revolutionary War?

    I can see a work of Harry Turtledove style alternate history fiction here, but otherwise the movie is just fiction and should be treated as such.

    And people (a) put up money for him to make this movie, (b) it is getting respectable distribution at the multiplexes, where I live and (c) people will go to see it.

    I do not know which of the three is more disturbing, if taken individually.

  31. 31.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    No one answers when I ask these questions, but I’ll try again anyway . . .

    Should Klose have gotten a penalty for that? It looked like the French defender both tripped him and had hold of his shirt, but the ball was drifting away.

  35. 35.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    HELP!!!1 Is there a site so we can see this game. Univision requires authorized cable outlets before I can see a stream, and most sports-stream sites require a viewer to download bullsh*t that is infected with God- knows what kind of malware.

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack

    @Roger Moore:

    “Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?”

    “Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race.”

  38. 38.

    Davis X. Machina

    No respect for tradition. The Belgian team is supposed to be in the middle, cringing.

  39. 39.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Amir Khalid: To my eyes he lost control of the ball and then was fouled, but a) I don’t know if that’s what happened by the rules of the game and b) I have no idea if having already lost control of the ball the rest of the action really matters.

  44. 44.

    Steeplejack

    @Mr Stagger Lee:

    I was just able to log on and see it via ESPN3.com. (Although I think it is actually streaming on one of the other ESPN sites, you can get to it from ESPN3.) Their feed is 50 seconds behind my (allegedly) live TV feed.

    ETA: I wasn’t asked for any authorization code, but it is possible I have a cookie on this machine from a previous attempt.

  45. 45.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Good lord. I think we can declare this ref to be the Golden Scissors loser.

  46. 46.

    Amir Khalid

    A French equaliser before halftime would liven things up for after the break.

  48. 48.

    hilts

    Come on France!!

    Win this one for Molière, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Proust, Balzac, Zola, Hugo, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Duchamp, Breton, Debussy, Ravel, Varese, Satie, Truffaut, Renoir, Godard, Rohmer, Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Proudhon, Saint-Simon, and the Situationist International!!.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g

  50. 50.

    Alex S.

    @hilts:

    Come on Germany!!

    Win this one for Uwe Boll, Roland Emmerich, Siegfried & Roy, Karl Lagerfeld, Karl Marx, Hitler, the Kaiser, and ah, I’m getting tired of this.

  52. 52.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    Thanks for all the suggestions! Sadly some sites require I either have an IP that they work with like Comcast or Verizon among others( I got CenturyStink) or it looks like the ones ike ZDF and CBC are being blocked in the US. I can get radio streaming. Cie la Vie. Schisse!

  55. 55.

    Morzer

    @Amir Khalid:

    I did not know. Apologies to any and all Valdivias who have been gender-switched by me!

    I rather like the idea of Kaiserin Valdivia die Schreckliche.

  57. 57.

    Amir Khalid

    @Morzer:
    German can be weird about gender of nouns. The boy is der Junge (masculine) but the girl is das Mädchen (neuter) just because it ends in a diminutive.

  58. 58.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Good thing that didn’t go in since the French were offsides by about eight feet.

  60. 60.

    pamelabrown53

    To all you B-J commenters: enjoy the game; hope your team wins but where are the recipes?

  61. 61.

    Ronnie Pudding

    Univision Vivo works for me in the office, but at home, it asks me to enter something (I dumped cable, so no dice)

    That schoener-fersehen ARD thing works. Thanks.

  65. 65.

    Steeplejack

    @Mr Stagger Lee:

    Just saw a mention of a “Watch ESPN” app for your phone. Is that a possibility for you?

    ETA: Oops, I see you already got hooked up.

  66. 66.

    Amir Khalid

    Ooh, that was nearly Miroslav Klose’s 16th World Cup goal. Too bad he missed the pass.

    My optician gives me a new spectacle case for every pair of glasses I have made, even when (as usual) I just have new lenses put in an existing frame. So I came back from my latest visit there with three more spectacle cases (main white lenses, spare white lenses, sunglasses) that I don’t have glasses to put in. What do I do with them?

  68. 68.

    Onkel Fritze

    @Ronnie Pudding: You’re welcome (btw it’s fernsehen). Usually you can also see it in English if you scroll further down the list, but for some reason the BBC stream is out right now.

  72. 72.

    Mike E

    It’s funny how the Univision announcers delight in mispronouncing the German players’ names…saying “eh” for the final ‘e’ instead of “ah” or “uh”.

  74. 74.

    Onkel Fritze

    @Mike E: On Colombian TV this one guy keeps saying ‘Kherida’ instead of Khedira. ‘Qerida’ means ‘Darling’ in Spanish.

  75. 75.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @Steeplejack: No I got CenturyStink as my IP, and I am a caveman when it comes to phone technology., I got too much Mississippi in my genes I guess.
    I need to change IP’s before football season.

  77. 77.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mike E:
    The final e in a German name should be a schwa, of course, but as I understand it’s “eh” in a Spanish name.

  79. 79.

    SRW1

    Mesut Oezil still hasn’t arrived in Brazil.

    ETA: And now Giroud for the Hail Mary crosses into the box.

  80. 80.

    lol chikinburd

    Hummels would be MOTM even had he not been the goal scorer. There’s a white shirt in the way of most everything France throw into the box, and it seems oftenest his.

  84. 84.

    Alex S.

    With Benzema made harmless, France cannot create enough pressure. Pogba might be a little overrated. But then the german defense has been excellent. It’s a defense that wins tournaments.

  85. 85.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Alex S.: But . . . but . . . their defense is terrible. I was told this often.

    Did moving Lahm back make a big difference or have they simply stepped it up?

  88. 88.

    SRW1

    I don’t think that was quite the France Germany expected and, I suspect, France wanted to be either.

    Au revoir, mes amis.

  92. 92.

    Onkel Fritze

    Au revoir, mes amis. And now I’m off to the big screen. Vamos Colombia!

  93. 93.

    Morzer

    Well, Germany were not particularly impressive, but France looked as if they were sleep-walking for most of the game. If Colombia finish off Brazil, they would look at this game and back themselves to beat Germany.

  97. 97.

    Alex S.

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    I think they’ve been very good in all games. Those two goals scored by Ghana were created by individual mistakes, one by Lahm, ironically.

    Not really a good game, I guess. A free kick decided the game.

  99. 99.

    Morzer

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    It’s been a very odd world cup, in that none of the big sides have managed to look impressive or dominant for more than one or two games at a time. The side that have come closest have probably been Holland – and they would have lost to Mexico if El Tri had been more tactically astute in the last half hour of that game, rather than just trying to defend a 1-0 lead.

  101. 101.

    Tripod

    Hey, this German team looks pretty good. The US should hire a German coach, and then by the powers of soccer transmogrification…. WINNING!

  102. 102.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tripod:
    I know you kid, but Team USA have done precisely that and done better at this World Cup than anyone seriously expected.

  103. 103.

    Tripod

    @Morzer:

    The quality gap has closed, and no one plays jogo bonito anymore. It’s sides of bigger, faster and stronger athletes beating each other over the head.

  106. 106.

    Morzer

    @Tripod:

    I wonder whether you can play jogo bonito in an age of more athletic, tactically astute teams? I blame Helenio Herrera for inventing catenaccio!

  108. 108.

    M.C. Simon Milligan

    @SRW1: Mesut Oezil still hasn’t arrived in Brazil.

    He still hasn’t arrived in London for that matter.

    I think he’s still trying to get an exit visa from Casablanca.

    REEK! REEK!

Comments are closed.