Alpe d'Huez said:
The snide part of me wants to see something akin to the Argentina-Netherlands match. A 0-0 tie with very few goal shots. Add in several blown offsides calls by refs, and end the match in a shootout with the weaker team winning. Why would anyone want such a thing? To perhaps wake up FIFA to making some badly needed, if subtle, rule changes (not that I'd hold my breath).
This would change nothing.
This is not the NFL. There you have 32 little dictators with a speaker president, a true speaker, a rule commitee, and else. That leads to open discussions for mostly the better for the sport (and business OFC).
Fifa OTOH is rotten to the core. Blatter is everything in one person (where the NFL has it distribution). the rest around him a corrupt gotten rich yes men.
Yeah a lot of Broncos Brazil comparisons here. Both teams were said to be even or slight favourite before the game, and then hell broke lose to them from the around the beginning on.
A lesser talented team that knows it will be clobbered can live with it. OTOH, those highly trained sport machines won´t recover mentally, always remember the shame, may melt again under pressure (with Manning that´s 100% sure in any case).
Alpe d'Huez said:
Usually works in the US.
Usually. I do see more problems in euro sports though. Like our previous discussion about F1 and how different (as in boring) it is compared to the glory days 20+ years ago. Cycling seems to be doing at least a little better in the last couple years, after the witch was caught and burned at the stake.
Agree with that. But I meant my post different. In your country talent is spotted and goes trou the highest level educated (even tough in their sport only) for max production.
In Germany (& maybe rest of Europe) sports is at zero in schools, education in sports is bad. Into the 90s we depended on the leftovers from GDR (Ullrich, Ballack, olympic sports athlets, etc.). Now Germany depends on 3 double passport holders. In the not too far future it will be 11 of those in our "national" teams. The rest dies dumb, poor educated, fat, watching Freak-Show-TV... It´s not as bad as Africa, but the overall level is shrinking in every phase of life...