South Korea is out

Thus ends my interest in the World Cup. Please refrain from discussing it in my presence henceforth.

(threedogs, you can keep your stinking holercreds!)

 

My interest has just begun.
Oh and maybe you are forgetting sheriff, you may still want to watch the 3rd place match.

 

Amazing, when S Korea doesn't get imaginary red cards or legitimate goals by the other side called back they fail to advance.

 

or ... when South Korea play the team that just knocked the USA out and regularly gets into the World Cup latter stages, they get knocked out.

Jinxed, I don't care who gets 3rd place. I'm watching tennis for the next couple of weeks and you can't stop me.

 

or when they don't have a 3rd world ref.

 

True. It's a shame that few bad decisions (made by the ref, not South Korea) in the most recent matches are what people are focusing on.

Here's a country that has come to the World Cup for the first time, won their group (more or less fair and square, I think?) and been an excellent host nation. People are ignoring that in favour of going on about a few bad referring decisions that may or may not have altered their progress through the tournament.

 

Err... what do you mean by third world countries? What matters in this case is the football tradition, not the riches of a country.

Unless of course “third world� has become a generic pejorative term and I am not aware of it.
Damn you! You made me speak of football again!

 

So you're trying to say Third World countries can't referee properly? Or a country must be rich to be able to play good football?

 

It's all due to Sheriff's Support Curse.

Now the Cup is going to get interesting esp. if Turkey falls out. Yuppie, Brasil vs Germany, I doubt I'll be able to to go through that match w/o heart attack. I think I'll just switch off TV. I don't need it on to get bored.

 

S_F its not the 1st time S Korea has been in the world cup, it is the first time they won a match. Even the U.S. made the 2nd round when they hosted. The simple truth is Korea did not deserve to be in the semis. "The latter came when Ragoonath raised his flag, ruling that Spain's Joaquin dribbled out of bounds moments before his pass to teammate Fernando Morientes was headed into the South Korean net in sudden-death overtime. Replays clearly showed the ball stayed in." kind of funny since the lines man was right there.

D_M egypt has a long footballing tradition?

Just making an observation, not drawing any conclusions.

 

Yapeee!!! Korea lost!

 

I'm glad that the team which unfairly knocked out the team of my ancestors has now been knocked out by another team of my ancestors.

 

That's funny, I didn't see a team of English criminals knocked out by South Korea or a team of ape men knock them out ... :razz:

Threedogs, it is the first time South Korea have been to the World Cup finals. The finals being the televised stages that just occured. The comparison with the USA is fairly useful. When the USA hosted, they were claiming to have taken great strides in their footballing abilities even before they got through to the second round. I'd say their claim that they're improving (rather than only getting through on home advantage) is born out by their even better performance this time.

Hosting the World Cup is a big deal. It's almost certain that the Korean team had more resources and attention focused on it for the last couple of years, just so they performed well when hosting, resulting in rapid improvements in their ability. To my untrained eye, their team looked fitter and more together than most of the other teams out there.

Denis, third-world countries typically do not have as good footballing abilities (including professional refereeing, I suppose). I think Africans, with their more athletic physiologies, would be dominating the sport the same way people of African descent dominate athletics, if the playing field were level. It isn't level. They don't have the money to put into the sport and often don't have the political stability to support organised national teams. To say that 3rd world countries have less able international sportsmen is an ugly generalisation, but I think it is an accurate one.

 

Splitting hairs here, but do you consider all second round play to be the finals?

 

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I was talking about the difference between the World Cup Prelimenaries (or qualifiers) and the World Cup Finals (the bit hosted by Japan/Korea this time around).

Actually, I think I was wrong about it being their first time. It appears they have been in the Finals several times before.

Either way - I still think they did very well for one of the smallers names, as did the USA and Senegal.