If that would've happened, Ecuador would have taken a feast over Italy, and they would have passed to the next round instead. Remember that at Conmebol qualifiers, Ecuador beated out Uruguay (whom defeated Italy at the WC), for the last direct spot for Conmebol, to the WC. Italy, on regards to France, probably had a more difficult group at the WC, as France got lucky with the draw that put them with the worst seeded team, where their luck is only comparable to the luck that Italy had, a few years before, when Italy got one of the easiest groups in Europe's qualifiers, which is the only reason why Italy actually went to Brazil. At that time, France didn't get any luck being put in the same qualifier group where Spain was, whom not only was the WC and Euro champion of the time, but also the team that almost got bored of the many times they beated Italy (you can call it friendlies or official games, it doesn't matter). IF (another "if"), Italy would have been in the Euro group where France was at qualifiers, Italy would have watched the WC from home, as Ukraine would have eliminated them at the Euro playoffs.
Like it or not, France is and was a lots worthier team than what Italy is and was during last WC. Fact.
WHAAAAA? No. Ukraine would never have eliminated Italy. What is it against Italy you have? Ecuador defeating Italy? WOW. Ecuador defeated Uruguay in one of the qualification spots, but that was a qualification. In qualifications certain teams don't always try their best to go for the win if they are in a secured qualifying position. If Italy and France switched qualification places in the world cup 2014, then France would have came first, but Italy might have been able to come first and send Spain to the playoffs. The only time Spain really defeated Italy was 4-0 in the Euro Cup and that was after we were down to 10 men because after 3 substitutes, one of our players got injured and already 2 goals dow. I think we gave up that day. But if you look at the 2013 confederations cup: We dominated Spain in that game. Spain beat us on penalties just because one of our players was under pressure and hit the crossbar. Also how can you say Italy had an easy group in qualifications: Denmark and Czech Republic? Easy? How good is Czech Republic doing in the 2016 euro qualifications? Italy would have beaten Switzerland, Ecuador, and Nigeria and would have faced Germany in the quarterfinals if they were switched. Germany would have probably beaten Italy but history is on our side. Also Uruguay defeated Italy controversially. It wasn't a fair game. Costa Rica defeated Italy in EXTREMELY HOT WEATHER where Balotelli was the only one that could really play in that weather. You could tell if you watched the game. No other italian players were really playing the game, and one man teams never work. They don't depend on Balotelli usually but in that game they kind of did because he was the only one that could play in that weather. Ukraine eliminating Italy? C'mon. Its true I might be a little bias because I am italian but seriously what is this thing you have against Italy?
Also just to point out with Italy and France switching places in World Cup qualification: it would have been impossible because Italy was in pot 1 while France was in pot 2. Spain was also in pot 1. IMPOSSIBLE. But in the world cup it would be possible because France could have been drawn into pot 2 instead and then drawn in to the group of death while Italy in Group E.
Uruguay suffered till the last game of Conmebol's qualifiers, as they failed to avoid the playoff spot battling with Ecuador for the last spot (against whom they only tied on points but lost by goal diferentiation). Ecuador at that point, was a lots much worthy opponent than Uruguay was. They defeated Uruguay at home and also had a draw playing in Uruguay. Last time Italy defeated Spain was in a friendly of 2011, and before it back to 1994. Italy in the last 20 years, has become Spain's son. We lost to Spain the WC before, by only one goal, being one man down almost the complete match (we even scored against them at that point), so being one man down is no excuse to lose by 4 goals against them. You simply lost and have to learn to accept it. They were lots better than you guys back then, as they are right now. I don't consider most Uefa teams as being so strong at all. Most are highly over rated. Denmark and the Czech Republic are only average teams. Both were ranked as average in each one of the pots they were in, before the Euro WC qualifier draw took place (same as Italy in its respective pot btw), while at the same time, both Spain and France, were the top ranked teams of the first 2 Uefa pots. Their luck is that they ended together, while you guys only confronted average teams. Piece of cake, for you guys or for almost anyone. I doubt it. Italy practically forgot how to attack. No attack : very few goals. Italy once before in the past was great, but now, .......... well now as it stands after 2 WC's in a row, at this point you are about at same level of Cameroon or Australia. Teams who got eliminated twice in a row, at group phase. The rest of your post is only "If, If, and more if's". "If" means that even Tuvalu can be the WC champion. some facts, though : in 2013 Italy faced Nigeria in a friendly match, and only achieved a draw. In 2012, Italy played France, guess who won ?, yup that's right, France beated them playing in Italy's own back yard. Switzerland has a positive record against Italy in whole WC history, 2 wins against one defeat. Oh yes it was a fair game. You guys simply lost your head over a numb situation, and decided to not play for almost the whole match, they scored at the last 10 minutes of the match and you lost. Pretty similar as in 2010, where you only started playing, when you realized you were getting eliminated. Too bad, Italy hasn't learned that if you don't attempt to do anything, most of the times you will lose. Oh, and weather was hard on both teams the same, against Costa Rica. With that sort of excuses, you only seem as "sour grapes", as great teams manage to play at all weather conditions. Besides, this WC was going to be played at Brazil, where everybody knew in advance lots before it even started, how the weather was going to be. Your team had lots of time to prepare for it and I don't see you going for that same foolish excuse against England, which was played at Manaus, which had probably the worst weather issues than whatever Recife or any other city in Brazil could have ever had, compared to that. I don't have nothing against Italy (my grandmother's father was italian). They simply are a lousy team now, full of over rated players with very few exceptions among them, and not even a glimpse of what they ever were in the past. Same as England, btw (with the diference that they accept it, and don't go for cheap excuses when they lose).
On that day Spain was much better than us, but now no. Spain 1-5 Netherlands, Spain 0-2 Chile. Italy 2-0 Netherlands, Italy 2-1 England. If Italy win Euro 2016, will you change your mind? France did beat Italy in 2012, but that was a friendly. Friendly's never use their best players. 2 world cups in a row, but what about 2012 Euro Cup and 2013 Confederations Cup? Slovakia 3-2 Italy was even less fair than Italy 0-1 Uruguay. Against Slovakia we had a goal taken away from us, it was clearly onside and plus we were robbed of a penalty as well when the goalkeeper kicked Quagliarella. France also was out of the 2010 world cup. We lose to Slovakia unfairly. France lose to Mexico and SOUTH AFRICA fairly. Slovakia >>>>>>>>>>> South Africa Just look at the record between Italy and France head to head. History is on Italy's side.
Italy's Offside goal was clearly offside as every image of the scene clearly proved. Besides Italy's first goal, that game, also started from an offside position which wasn't called and validated it. What do you expect ?, to get every goal coming from offside positions to favour you guys all the time. You got one of them, so as a biased fan you should at least settle with that, but in your case you insist you were robbed. If anyone should be more mad about it all, those should be the Slovakian's. As against Uruguay, as Italy only needed to draw its games, they played for the draw both games, and at the end, lost both games by being cowards to risk anything more. Slovakia won cleanly and sure, France lost more games than Italy in that WC. But this last time, in 2014 they came back from the ashes and went through, while Italy didn't. Besides, not being able to beat New Zeland, and only getting a draw against them, through a pk call given after a dive as big as the dive that the japanese referee called for Brazil against Croatia, is maybe even more embarrasing than any other thing. And sorry to say, but : MEXICO >>>>>>>> New Zeland As said before, group D was full of past historic achievements within it, but almost empty of any football quality, within it. Its only gem within the group, came from Costa Rica. You should know quite well that Football matches are won inside the pitch, not based on whatever you have done in the past.
True. Your right Mexico is way better than New Zealand. In my opinion Mexico is better than both Italy and France, although we did beat them 2-1 and that 1 goal was a penalty in the confederations cup, but Mexico was better than both France and Italy in the world cup. Mexico got robbed actually when Robben dived. Italy did do better in 2014 than 2010 though. They beat England 2-1. In 2010 Italy didn't win a single game. The New Zealand goal by the way was clearly offside, but still Italy were at their worst in 2010 by far.
One thing you must take in account here, is that Robben didn't "invent" anything that didn't exist, as all he did was exagerate the consequences of a play, where a mexican player stepped on his foot inside the area, which is still a pk offense. Diferent is the case where the italian player, whom had already passed the New Zeland defender, dived and threw himself to the ground in a perfect dive (should have won an Olympic gold for that one), as the holding between both players (both were grabbing each other before the play), ocured long before. Mexico wasn't robbed of anything. The Netherlands beat them fairly. On regards to the New Zeland goal, the player who received the ball and scored was originally in offside position, although he was not offside when the free kick was originally taken, but who gave him the ball with his hands (also a pk offense by the italian defender), was the italian last defender, which validates the whole play (wasn't offside due to it). If you want to punish someone over it, you must look inside your own team for whom to guilt with it, for being such a stupid player in not only doing so, but also on throwing himself to the floor afterwards, leaving his team mate (the goal keeper) alone to try to resolve his fvck-up, on that play.
To be honest I encourage diving and trying to fake penalties 100%. Whether Robben dived or it was a real penalty I am glad it happened, if the penalty was real than good for the referee doing his job, if the Robben dived, a big encouragement to him for tricking the referee. Whats your opinion in 2006 with Italy vs Australia on the penalty at the end? Did Lucas Neil trip Grosso, or did Grosso dive?
I understand your pov, but really can't accept it. That is exactly the same thing as cheating. In any case, Robben didn't fake something that didn't happen. He exagerated it, which is lots diferent as what caused it, actually happened. Well one thing for certain, as it seems then you must have loved when Suarez gave Chiellini a bite, as he actually faked it as if he never intended to bite him and simply crashed into him, and afterwards got away with it, as he finished playing the whole game against Italy. Don't come now and say that in this case you don't accept it, and for once be consequen. Chile didn't play that WC, so I didn't watch every match in the WC. Only saw a few of them, back then. The one thing for certain though, is that Zidane would have never lost his head and used it as a weapon, if no one said anything "nice" related to some member of his family, to him. . . You see in this WC, Materazzi did to France, exactly the same thing that Suarez did to Italy...... with a diferent type of action of course, but at the end achieved having the opponent to lose concentration, over it. You can't pretend to always have exactly the same things done over and over again. "Crap" when it happens to your team though. But, what are we talking about ?, you said it yourself : you love this type of things, and even encourage them.
I love diving because its funny, but when it comes to violence and biting, I hate it. Thats not acceptable. Diving is just funny, but violence is serious. Biting someone, Head butting someone, something very serious, it injures the players. Diving doesn't injure the players. Materazzi didn't do anything to Zidane except possibly say a few words but words don't physically injure the players. I did not like what Materazzi did to Zidane, you shouldn't insult people. I wasn't exactly sure what happened but knew Materazzi said things that were bad that I am against, but no matter what words you hear, you don't head but someone, thats even worse than biting. If you head but someone hard enough you could break their ribs. That is not funny at all its something very serious. Diving is just funny, but when it comes to using physical violence (head butting, and biting), that is serious and not acceptable.
Maybe so, but they can cause even a greater damage than an actual physical injury. Besides Zidane didn't head butt him so hard, and Materazzi exagerated it all. Same as Suarez btw, who actually only put his teeth over Chiellini's shoulder and didn't even make him bleed, by doing so (with his teeth, if he really meant to harm him, he could've perfectly taken a chunk of meat from his shoulder, and didn't. Only harmed Chiellini's ego and of course the ego and dreams of the millions of italians watching the game, who saw their team getting eliminated by them)
Exactly. I was about to say the same. He tried to refute my point and used the word IF again. These opinions are unproven because it all depends on momentum and match-ups. For instance, the poster says that Costa Rica were better than Brazil. For all I know, Brazil could have defeated them 4-0, given the right circumstances. No, the World Cup is a difficult tournament, and for better or for worse, what happens on the field (including, unfortunately, refereeing mistakes) is what props four teams to the final four. Most of the time the teams that are there in the semifinals pretty much deserve to be there since they actually did beat others and did survive the gruesome competition. People are up in arms this time because Brazil failed so miserably in their last two games, then people conclude they didn't deserve to be there. But the fact is that they hadn't failed before, while others did. There are 205 teams in FIFA. Brazil in spite of its shameful two final games, still did better than the other 201 countries. Now, the other idea, a round robin with 32 teams, would be such an impossible task and such a different task that NO predictions can be validly made. It would require a lot of stamina, depth, dealing with injuries, etc, and the tournament would have to be several months long. This kind of thing is so radically different from a Cup format, that one can't make any prediction of what a 32-round-robin tournament would be, based on what a Cup was. Teams that have good form for a Cup don't necessarily translate that into good form in a long round-robin tournament. See the recent Brazilian championships: Cruzeiro ended up some 18 points ahead of Atlético in the 38-round Brazilian Serie A and won the title, but lost the Copa do Brasil miserably to the same Atlético. These were the very same teams, playing the two tournaments simultaneously, and the result was RADICALLY different. So, while the first idea is full of What Ifs, the second one is even fuller of those. Like I said, debating these things is entertaining, but people need to realize that it's just entertainment, opinions, and speculations that are VERY FAR from being factual or from being likely to materialize in reality. So, WC ranking: yes, 1. Germany, 2. Argentina, 3. Netherlands, 3. Brazil. Period. Full stop. I hate to be a party pooper by bringing some reality-based thinking to a hypothetical but fun thread, but yep, that's what it is.
WTH? He left bite marks. South Americans never cease to amaze me when downplaying antics of other South Americans.
I was about to rep your post, as everything was almost perfect till I read this last parragraph, were you rank the teams and put Brazil at the same level as of the Netherlands. Hey man, learn to be a dignified loser, when you lose. The Netherlands beat you guys cleanly, same as Germany, with a diferent score, but still a very big score on their favour. The rank among the 4 teams, is exactly as it ended : 1. Germany 2. Argentina 3. Netherlands (and very far away from the other 3, in a total diferent level than them), 4. Brazil (probably the worst 4th place, in ages) I hate to be a party pooper by bringing some reality-based thinking, but yep, that's what it is
Come on, didn't you see the smiley at the end. I'm laughing and joking of the whole issue, as the OP said he loves to see anti-football. I gave him a sense of another form of antifootball.
Jesus, that was just a typo. I meant Netherlands third, Brazil fourth, like I've been saying: the *real* ranking is what counts. Sorry that I typed 3 instead of 4 when I typed Brazil; it was never my intention. As for the worst fourth place in ages, the team had a huge let-down moment right at the beginning of the Germany game then they were psychologically crushed and never recovered, not to forget that they were also missing their star player and were under enormous psychological pressure to avoid another Maracanazo (which they obviously did not manage to avoid). It doesn't negate what happened in the previous rounds, in which while Brazil wasn't by any means a dominating team, they did survive more or less, and I definitely don't think it was refereeing bias in their favor, because they'd have survived the group anyway without the refereeing mistakes in the Croatia game, and I believe those haunted them and turned subsequent refs against them more than anything. Brazil did fight hard and had a relentless team that was difficult to beat until they almost inexplicably collapsed and never recovered. With all the What Ifs in this thread, if you guys want What Ifs, here is one - maybe if the Cup weren't in Brazil, thus removing the psychological pressure against a second Maracanzo, and if they had Neymar healthy the whole time, and no refereeing mistake had happened in the first game turning everybody against them, this very same team might have finished second or third and might have lost by much less humiliating scores.
What is this thread turning to ? The world cup of the lame excuses by sore losers, and of multiple if's ? If I would've sucked my toe, we could've been WC champions..... Btw, with no help with the referee's, Brazil would have had to face the Netherlands instead of Chile, and as 2010 and what happened now in 2014, they woul've beaten you guys there and Brazil wouldn't have even reached quarters. Oh yes, with or without your star player in the pitch, included.
Very True. If the referee's were fair: Brazil 2-2 Croatia Mexico 3-0 Cameroon Brazil 0-0 Mexico Cameroon 0-4 Croatia Cameroon 1-4 Brazil Croatia 1-3 Mexico 1. Mexico 2. Brazil 3. Croatia 4. Cameroon
I knew it was just a typo. Brasitusa I repped your post instead of him. I know it was a complete accident.
You might as well rep him for the lame excuses instead, as like you, he is a worldchampion inventing them..... On regards to his typo error, it's just another lame excuse, as he crowned his "typo error" with a very acid comment in his last sentence after it, which I returned to him in my past post where I reply to it, with exactly his same words. If he would've limited himself to only rank the teams, without saying anything else, to it, I'd accept his mistake, but that last sentence, was very rude, so I can't.
Sorry, but unfortunately for you, the first time I addressed the issue in post #1263 I did have the right sequence, proving that my subsequent typo was just a typo: Now, about *my* what if, you didn't seem to understand me. I started that sentence by saying "if you guys want what ifs..." which only shows that two can play this game. I was saying I am against what ifs, but if you guys want them, they can be turned the other way around. Get it now? My position which I've stated several times remains the one that what ifs are fun but not realistic, and the only ranking that is realistic is the one conquered on the field. Regarding sore loser and world champion inventor, in NO moment I placed Brazil first (even in my "what if" saying it is possible to turn it the other way, I still said "second or third," never first, since I profoundly respect Germany and believe they were several steps ahead of other teams). So, no sore loser behavior. In my World Cup posting I congratulated the Germans multiple times, at the time. Anyway, Brazil fans don't need to "invent" world championships because we have five of them, unlike Chile. One wonders, you being from Chile and all, if the sore loser tag shouldn't apply to you, given that your country was eliminated (again!) by Brazil and the history of these two national teams is overwhelmingly in Brazil's favor, which might explain your hostility towards me, in this thread. The allegation that my last sentence was rude is preposterous. I said nothing rude there. Now I have, but you are forcing myself into it, since you are attacking me; the attacked person has a right of defense.
Thanks, mate. By the way, I don't know if you remember since I've deleted the signature line from my profile, but I'm also an Italian citizen (dual citizenship) and I also support the Azzurri.