HAHAHA..............I called it (before the game)

Very odd to have someone on a commentating team, who clearly despises a player on one of the teams

But hey, at least Murphy was always a classy footballer himself (sarcasm alert in overdrive)

i've realised anyone can park the bus.

Well that's praise for an effective manager who has raised the performance level of his team beyond what was expected.


Nobody can ever guarantee goals against bus-parking. You can guarantee shots on target but you can't cater for a GK playing out of his skin or hitting the woodwork three times - and tonight, whether they went in or not was is down to luck. It could just as easily have been 2 or 3-0 to Netherlands (or even 1-0 to CR!).

Both Brazil and Costa Rica play a form of 'anti-football', but because the former did something great 40 years ago, and the latter are plucky underdogs from a poor country, that seems to be okay by everyone.

Mourinho has never succeeded in his entire career without obliterating the opposition with money and/or having an existing squad of expensive talent at his disposal from day one - the epitome of the chequebook manager. He has never turned a club around from the doldrums and built anything or brought through untried youth to any degree - it's all about him and not the future of the club. He's destroyed good players more often than he's coached rough diamonds to be stars.

He's always gone to clubs where the odds were stacked in his favour and there was already a foundation for success - IIRC he's only ever improved a club's position by one or two places since he began his managerial career. Mancini was 1'000% correct to point out that Mourinho succeeded on the back of his work at Inter. The only two occasions he didn't have a massive competitive advantage over his main rival or rivals - at Real and his second spell at Chelsea - he's failed.

He was extraordinarily lucky to win both his Champions League titles. Critical decisions went incorrectly in his favour - for example against Manchester United in his first winning campaign and against Barcelona in his second. In his win with Porto he was doubly lucky in that an excellent Milan side had one of those bizarre days and surrendered a 4-0 aggregate lead to Deportivo, allowing Mourinho to face a relatively weak team in the Semis. As for the final - well Monaco were simply appalling.

The idea that the media are against Mourinho is ridiculous. He gets such an easy ride here it's untrue - ridiculous documentaries, fawning over his "Special One" self-promoting antics and so on. The media in Spain and Italy - not to mention the public - are far less sucked in by the myth than they are here.

On top of all that is his odious behaviour - egotistical self-promotion, slagging off the St. John's ambulance Brigade and physically attacking an opposition coach to name but three examples. If I never see him duping the gullible with ostentatious note-taking on the sidelines to make himself look like Rinus Michels again it'll be too soon.

Anyway this is way off - topic, so I'll leave this for another time and another thread.

Not by me. I'm a brazilophile - I collect Brazilian music, used to sell Brazilian goods DJed at Latin/Brazilian clubs and always had a dream to live there. Like everyone else of a certain age I grew up revering their football teams, but since they've become more and more fuctional from the nineties onwards I've had less and less regard for them. I'm certainly not supporting them this time.

Costa Rica haven't consistently parked the bus - they've played some good football earlier on, but I'm certainly glad we won't see any more of the tactics we saw tonight.

To be fair to Moyes - neither would 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of managers.

Krul knew about it (only just before the game started), the other goalkeeper didn't.



Well yeah, you guys (and Italy and Uruguay) really send them packing with like 4-0, right Or did Costa Rica only concede one (penalty) goal in regular time? Which one is it?

As a Dutchman, this thread is a right laugh. Cav is sending his best regards, by the way

Wow if you put a bet on it, you could have made a fortune. You posted that on Saturday.

Tim Krul, what a ****.

Ref should have booked him for his silly bugger mind games straight away. Hope the Dutch lose in the SF just for that.

Krul should have been carded.

I guess now it's ok for a keeper to shout and scream in a penalty takers face just before the kick is taken.

Awful awful sportsmanship and I now hope the Netherlands and Newcastle lose every game he plays in.

With 1 min left, how did he know the ball would go out of play to bring a sub on?

Hoped to get lucky I guess!

It worked (like the bad sportsmanship) so the Dutch won't care.

Good penalties by them but great effort by Costa Rica again.

Well, you certainly appear to have studied his career in some depth. I'll give you that. But I can't help feeling that you must have some kind of irrational dislike for the man not to give him any credit at all for his achievements.
I don't think he had a fortune to spend at Porto ? After that he was at big clubs with plenty of money, that's just the way of modern managerial game. What was he supposed to do, look around for offers from struggling clubs ?
It's also a bit rich to quote Mancini. He blew his chances with the wealthiest club in the PL because of his dreadful man-management skills. Of course, he now claims to have been "betrayed" and wants to to take credit for "building" Man City into the team they are today. He seems like a guy with a chip on both shoulders.
Anyway, as you say, it's off-topic. Perhaps we'll continue this discussion at some other time.

According to a laws site I was reading, it is actually permissible to make the sub after the whistle and before the penalties commence.

What would have been funny was if Krul had conceded in those few seconds.

Agreed.

Oh get down off that soapbox, it's not as if we haven't seen it before many many times. If it were England now through to a WC semi-final, all people would be saying is that the result is all that counts.
I would say that the reason England will never achieve in either the EC or WC is because we don't have that win at all costs mentality.

Loving all the faux outrage on display. Won't somebody please think of the children?

It's no worse than some of the "sledging" in cricket, or other things that go unpunished during the course of play in many sports. But that's not done so blatantly in front of hundreds of millions, in the biggest sporting tournament in the world.
It soured the moment in my opinion. Krul will doubtless be a hero to many, but his sense of sportmanship stinks as far as I'm concerned.

Klaxon for massive overreaction alert needed.

The ref could have booked him,

Should Lehmann have been carded for his mental games during penalties (the note trick ). Penalties are mind games and the one with the strongest nerves wins. Maybe England should actually take on board what winners are doing instead of constantly being outraged about the smallest of things whilst taking the first plane home?

Absolutely.

I get penalties are mind games, but players should respect the limits when gamesmanship moves to bad sportsman ship.

The ref should have carded krul the first time he did this.

Yes, keepers are allowed to dance across their line without coming off the line. I find that acceptable.

What is not acceptable is shouting and screaming obscenities in the kickers face prior to the kick.

This is not an over-reaction, it is a simple statement of fact. Its unsporting behavior and should have earned a yellow.

How do you know what he was saying? Krul said in interview he told the players he knew which way they were going to shoot. In fairness, he always jumped the right way.

I am glad LVG is coming to United soon. We need some balls.