Brazil x North Korea [PBP] Thread

If I may just say one word.

YES!

 

Goarazo!!!!!!

 

It's little moments like this that makes World Cups special.

 

Brazil under a lot of pressure now

 

Heh heh heh.

Wouldn't mind a late equalizer, actually.

 

Chinese "volunteers".......

http://af.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idAFJOE65E0NX20100615


BTW, Brazil fell asleep on that goal. Learn to play full 90 minutes

 

You made me spill beer on my k-board.

 

2 minutes injury time, cmon.

 

I am afraid time is not on their side..

 

Brazil attacking as if they were trailing...

 

76' 2-0 To me, it's clear that Maicon shot deliberately. In fact, I strongly suspect it's a known pattern, he's done it before (many times) as a way of goofing off, and he's waited years to get that set-up in a real game. He got his chance, and decided even before he reached the ball that he's going to try "the shot".

We've seen similar tight-angle shots in other sports: Gretzky did it into an empty net from an even worse angle (and similar one-touch full-power). World B. Free did it in basketball, jumping from a full sprint over the baseline and catch-and-heaving a shot that would be a 3-pointer today (and then landing about 12' out of bounds).

My thinking is: as a kid, goofing off, you eventually get that situation, and maybe you try it on a lark. And then your peers laugh, challenge you, and you spend a few minutes at the end of every practice or sandlot game goofing off with these gimmick shots. Like Kansas shooting from halfcourt. More as a bonding drill than a serious in-game skill.

Bergkamp even admitted that he's done his wrap-behind trick so many times (just goofing off, one imagines) that he's built up a whole corpus of empirical knowledge about it: he knows what the speed and weight of the ball should be, the angle, the relative position of the defender, etc. When he finally got a situation + ball that matched his pattern, he'd been there before. It wasn't all impromptu. Ruud once scrimmaged with a NCAA women's team on an indoor field (seriously, he just happened to be staying in the same hotel, and the assistant coach knew him). And he pulls out a dazzling array of tricks and spins that nobody's ever seen him use before. Because that's what he's been doing for fun, for years. And he was pretty good at them.

So Maicon may have lived years knowing this idea of the tight curling shot into the far side netting. (He's a defender, maybe some 16-year-old kid did it to his 15-year-old ass a while ago, and gloated ever since --) He got his chance, and recognized it in time to execute it smoothly. Maybe, in one sense, it's an "easy" shot: the only concern is to avoid the near post, it'll curl in automatically because of the laws of physics -- And a couple of his teammates are looking at him like, Yeah, that's nice, now look at THIS trick --

 

Peep Peep Peep!

Great match. Cheers all.

 

Hats off to North Korea!

 

That would be the "how dare you actually score" beatdown coming...

 

I regret that Brazil did not lose this game or that North Korea did not tie. This is for all of you who rooted against Brazil.

It's amazing how the best always get so much hate.