One of the worst World Cup's ever?

darkman2

Anyone else really dissappointed with this tournament so far? With the exception of Argentina the games are so boring I just end up turning most of them off - which is unusual cause I love football. (maybe it's those horn things aswell)

Definately the most boring start to a World Cup in my short years. I don't think I can pick out a "good game" from any of the matches so far. Germany Austrailia was alright and as I said the Argentina games are watchable. I just watched the Dutch game - painfully bad.


And then we have the teams that have not showed up - France, England and Spain.....Brazil not great either. Hopefully when it gets to the knock outs it will improve. I doubt FIFA are happy so far!

We can't even get a laugh from England being potentially knocked out on Wednesday on a station like ITV because even they are saying England are sh*t basically!

What's your take on it so far?

101001

no.... im loving it

cherryghost

tis not the best. it's certainly not the worst. Best match of the tourney was the USA match yesterday IMO. End to end stuff, all attacking stuff

dreamers75

Excellent world cup so far. Defending has been top class, teams working very hard to keep out some fairly decent players.

PogMoThoin

Was a little disappointed until I saw the USA match yesterday which will go down as one of the best I've ever seen, more please

_Bella_

Its been quite enjoyable, a good few shocks and of course alot of drama

That_Guy

First round of games wasn't great but it's picking up a lot now.

The Cannibal

I haven't seen anyone grab it by the scruff of the neck yet. Usually there is one player where everyone goes "That was his tournament". He hasn't emerged yet.

Past that, the off pitch decisions by FIFA have contributed to a poor world cup.

South Africa was a bad choice of host. I've seen plenty of empty seats at games, even at some of the big games. The vuvuzela's probably aren't helping get the game over to neutrals and the ball is a disaster.

I think the ball actually favours teams that play negative football which is why the standard has been so low. It is hard to break a team down with that ball because long shots are less accurates and balls in behind the defence zip away as soon as they bounce. The only way to break a team down is to play through them which is hard when they put 10 bodies in your way.

gibson

Wait until the knock out rounds or at least the third round of matches, thats when it'll get a bit more exciting

Mikeyt086

Im loving it.

Serbia - Germany
USA - Slovenia
Mexico - France
Uruguay - South Africa
Germany - Austrailia
Brazil - North Korea
USA - England
Switzerland - Spain
Argentina - South Korea
Argentina - Nigeria
Nigeria - Greece

all been great games off the top of my head. i dont know what the OP was expecting? More goals? More glitter on the shirts?

Optimalprimerib

In fairness, by the layout of the groups i was not expecting a whole lot. Some of the best games have been ones i would have definitely avoided like greece and nigeria

speedboatchase

Mikeyt086 wrote: »

Im loving it.

Serbia - Germany
USA - Slovenia
Mexico - France
Uruguay - South Africa
Germany - Austrailia
Brazil - North Korea
USA - England
Switzerland - Spain
Argentina - South Korea
Argentina - Nigeria
Nigeria - Greece

all been great games off the top of my head. i dont know what the OP was expecting? More goals? More glitter on the shirts?

Pretty much agree. The turning point was North Korea/Brazil, every great after that, aside from England/Algeria, has been great. USA/Slovenia was amazing

ps. Holland/Japan was ok tbh

Closed ac

It had a bad start, but it's good now I think. The matches yesterday, apart from England & Algeria were great!

Vokes

speedboatchase wrote: »

Pretty much agree. The turning point was North Korea/Brazil, every great after that, aside from England/Algeria, has been great. USA/Slovenia was amazing

ps. Holland/Japan was ok tbh

Agree with this. It's kicked off for me since the Brazil / N. Korea game. Every game since, bar the England / Algeria and Netherlands / Japan, has been great.

namloc1980

Let's face it....the first round of group games were pretty crap. But it has taken off now and hopefully we'll get some exciting knockout games.

An Citeog

darkman2 wrote: »

Anyone else really dissappointed with this tournament so far? With the exception of Argentina the games are so boring I just end up turning most of them off - which is unusual cause I love football. (maybe it's those horn things aswell)

Definately the most boring start to a World Cup in my short years. I don't think I can pick out a "good game" from any of the matches so far. Germany Austrailia was alright and as I said the Argentina games are watchable. I just watched the Dutch game - painfully bad.


And then we have the teams that have not showed up - France, England and Spain.....Brazil not great either. Hopefully when it gets to the knock outs it will improve. I doubt FIFA are happy so far!

We can't even get a laugh from England being potentially knocked out on Wednesday on a station like ITV because even they are saying England are sh*t basically!

What's your take on it so far?

They've only played 1 game each so far against very well organised defences. Give them a chance. Also, I really enjoyed USA-Slovenia yesterday and Greece-Nigeria was a decent contest aswell.

del88

Not that much diffrent then others at this stage....2 great game yesterday

Mr.Nice Guy

I've been disappointed by it. Expected more entertainment (goals). Maybe it's the ball?

Seems to be picking up a little bit but compared to Euro 2008 I find it very disappointing.

TangyZizzle

I thought Holland Japan this afternoon was quite good, Im not able to watch the Ghana Aus match, but from what I can gather from the Thread, it seems at least entertaining.

mike65

It could be worse, it could be Italia 90 or USA 94

timetogetfit

Most of the games have been like watching liverpool at home this season

jayteecork

I'm not a football fan at all but I decided to get pumped for this World Cup. Said I'd try and watch every game, and I have for the most part.

How is it that every game is dominated by negative, cheating prima donnas who attempt to strangle the life out of the game?

Why have FIFA got a bunch of extremely inconsistent referees for the world's biggest event?

The world's best strikers on 100K a week can seemingly do nothing except launch the ball into the stand!
Then an honest guy like Robert Green makes one mistake and he's hung, drawn, and quartered. (Think he should have been retained as he made a world class save in the second half against that black American striker who burned Carragher. He cancelled out his earlier mistake)
Whereas his teammates have made ten times as many mistakes and they weren't humiliated like he was.

Crazy game.

pickarooney

mike65 wrote: »

It could be worse, it could be Italia 90 or USA 94

I thought USA 94 was a cracking tournament. There were some brilliant games in teh knockout stages (Brazil, Holland, Romania, Argentina...). 2002 on the other hand, was painfully bad.

As for this one, it was intensely **** for a week, then picked up, but the last couple of games have been dire (haven't seen Aus-Gha).

Johnny Utah

Worst world cup ever. Terrible crowd atmosphere at the games, which is contributing to poor, uninspiring football on the pitch. Very disappointing world cup thus far imo.

Boskowski

I'll tell you after

Johnny Utah

mike65 wrote: »

It could be worse, it could be Italia 90 or USA 94

USA 94 was one of the best imo.

As for Italia 90; back passes were allowed back then!

mike65

2002 was bad as well, 78, 82 86 were all good as far as I remember esp '82, there were some cracking games.

West Germany 3 – 3 France was probably the best WC game I've seen. Brazil 1 - 1 France in 1986 was a cacker too.

jayteecork

There's certainly no characters anymore as well.

The money has ruined the game it seems.

Look at "Hero the offical film of the 1986 World Cup" the tournament was full of them - Maradona, Platini, Rumminege, Elkjaer, Rudi Voeller, etc.

gosplan

This is post is just a few days too late.

I was saying the same thing but the second round of matches bar England's and France's have been very entertaining.

In Nigeria/Greece you had a comeback following a red card and Greece had more shots than any other team in the whole tournament so far.

Yesterday's US game was awesome. So was Germany v Serbia, Argentina v Korea.

namloc1980

Tonight's Denmark-Cameroon game was a cracker.

Nozebleed

worst world cup i've seen. very dissapointing standard of football.

kippy

Tis hard to enjoy a world cup when you've no real emotional attachment to it.
It really does make a big difference when we're not in it.
There have been a few decent games but in general in these kinda tournaments the group games can be pants. The law of averages states that.
Think of the average Premier League season, outside of games in which the team you support are involved you dont actually watch that many full matches and the general percentages of "entertaining" matches in the league is relatively low, on a percentage level about the same as this WC.

Its also fairly difficult to call this one of the worst WC's every without having watched all of the previous ones, I doubt theres anyone here who has done that, especially in the early days when channels only covered a few matches outside of their own countries.
Perhaps we are bombarded too much with live soccer - we've become bored unless something outside of the ordinary happens.

Drag00n79

jayteecork wrote: »

Look at "Hero the offical film of the 1986 World Cup" the tournament was full of them - Maradona, Platini, Rumminege, Elkjaer, Rudi Voeller, etc.

Brilliant film

dartbhoy

The start last week produced poor and disappointing games but the standard is improving,Slovenia v USA was a cracker yesterday and Cameroon v Denmark tonight was probably the best game of the tournament so far. The worst World Cup ever held was in 2002 in my opinion.

SM01

As per a few other comments on here I found the first round of games dreadfully dreary stuff to watch then the Brazil V N. Korea game seemed to kick-start the competition and there's been a good improvement in the games. Denmark and Cameroon just there was quality.

Maybe it's just me being influenced by the media focus on the ball but I've never seen so many shots fly so high over the bar.

Mr.Nice Guy

Cameroon/Denmark was more like it.

PogMoThoin

There's definitely an issue with the ball. I've never seen so many professional players just power the ball over the bar. Its affecting the goal scoring

darkman2

jayteecork wrote: »

There's certainly no characters anymore as well.

Actually I disagree - Maradonna is the most entertaining person in the World Cup by a mile.

ziggy

This post has been deleted.

Overature

im loving it, i like seeing most of the top teams do crap so that others can step up and do well

namloc1980

PogMoThoin wrote: »

There's definitely an issue with the ball. I've never seen so many professional players just power the ball over the bar. Its affecting the goal scoring

+1. Most of the players are finding it almost impossible to keep the ball down, when it's struck it just keeps rising and rising. They were saying on BBC earlier that because all the panels are bonded together there is very little air resistance to help the ball dip etc.

falan

darkman2 wrote: »

Actually I disagree - Maradonna is the most entertaining person in the World Cup by a mile.

A world cup wouldn't be a world cup without maradonna making the headlines in one way or another. Also great to watch on the sidelines. I thought it was funny when he said that "pele should go back to the museum"...

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/story/_/id/5292403/ce/us/argentina-coach-diego-maradona-tells-pele-go-back-museum&cc=5739?ver=global

Mr Alan

there is a horrible tendency wit modern football fans for them to think everything is 'the worst ever' or 'the best ever'. Stupid tabloid sensationalism has become so much part of the game that people have forgotten there is any sort of middle ground.

SlickRic

obviously nobody remembers 1990.

yes, we were emotionally invested in it.

but bar Cameroon hatcheting the entire Argie team in the first game, i barely remember a game in the tournament.

now that was a bad World Cup.

Mr Alan

i'm actually really enjoying it so far, some cracking games already with lots more to come.

SlickRic

Mr Alan wrote: »

i'm actually really enjoying it so far, some cracking games already with lots more to come.

the second round of games in particular have barely had a bad game, bar today's Holland v Japan, and England v Algeria.

kippy

The ****ing ball thing is starting to get "old" now.
http://www.soccer-fans-info.com/history-of-soccer-balls.html
Theres always complaints about them.

You know what, if it wasnt for the greed of adidadas/nike or whoever make the balls for these events, standard balls would have been in use since the mid 90's.

Shanotheslayer

Mr Alan wrote: »

i'm actually really enjoying it so far, some cracking games already with lots more to come.

Agree.


Tbh, people saying the games are sh!te etc. The first round as most of the pundits have said was to ''not lose your first game''.

So teams were very solid on the defence, and rightly fúcking so. If I was the Switzerland manager and my first game was againts spain, I would make sure my back 4 were solid and tight and too try catch Spain on the break.They did exactly that.

Other games of course, had great defence, and the people not noticing this it strikes me as they wont goal fests. Of course goal fests are great, but considering the pressure on some of these lads and keeping the back row tight and organized, impressive to me tbh.

bonerm

I still think 1998 was the worst World Cup I've seen (from 1990-2010). A lot of one sided games (Arg 5-0 Jam, Hol 5-0 Sko , Spa 6-1 Bul), rubbish football (Scotland , Norway etc) and under performing favourites (England. Spain , Germany , Brazil ... who might as well have picked their ladies team for the final). It all added up to a cocktail of shíte.

RichTea

It's turned very good all of a sudden. Was quite disappointed with the first round of fixtures until Germany v Australia turned up and saved the day. The quality has been great for the last while now, actually much better than the last one and 2002.

CorkMan

Spain drumming Honduras 6-7 nil would go down well.