oldtype

I'd take Deuce for no other reason than Don't Tread, man. I still can't get over it. Dempsey has to shoot a hip hop video with himself throwing 100$ bills to the camera. We need a deuce smiley.

I really can't stand being at work during the WC by the way I should fucking get a month off so I can do nothing but watch, think of, and talk about football all day. ...Although I guess that's pretty much what I'm doing now anyway.

That would never happen though. That's the wierdness. Because of the historic tension between the countries, it can't be anything else since they're happy to farm Brazilians to play for them. It's also simply the case that the Korean-Japanese players so far haven't been that good. The only one there could have been any sort of row over so far has been Chong Tae-se, and he burst on the scene after he had already declared for North Korea so there was very little anybody could do about it. Bloody shame that, what we could have done with him playing up front with Park in our front line It's just wierd, the guy has parents with South Korean passports, lived in Japan all his life, and chooses to play for North Korea.

I've actually been kind of amazed by that. I know, different situation and all, but if an ethnically Korean player ever played for Japan he'd be crucified in public opinion over here. Same time frame as the Poles BTW. Subjegation by the Japanese is over hundreds of years but obviously culmniated during WWII - similar timeline and yet there they are. no no no, subjugation by the Japanese was not over hundreds of years, probably over the course of half a century at most. It was just a case of their leaders being smart and opening doors to the west in the 19th century and our leaders being idiots and closing ourselves off. It kind of all went downhill from there but before that we were arguably in a much stronger position than Japan for most of our history. Sorry, sensetive issue

Podolski and Klose aren't "really" Polish though. Klose moved to Germany when he was six (after also probably spending more than 50% of their time before this in France where his father was playing football.), Podolski moved when he was two. How can you expect someone moving that young to have any real feelings toward a country they've only lived in for a very small amount of their life? Also Podolski's paternal family belonged to the German minority in Upper Silesia before they moved. FIFA can't go around telling people if they have proper citizenship or not. An Algerian moving to France at the age of two, could conceivably grow up identifying himself as an Algerian rather than a Frenchman for a number of racial, religious and social reasons. A Welsh child growing up in England from the same age is probably not going to have that sort of attachment to his place of birth. But who the f*** knows. You'll never be able to draw the line and I'm not sure why you'd want to. I don't want to draw a line. I'm fine with people representing the country they want to on most occasions. (The exception are the Brazilians and so on that change their nationality only to play at a tournament, not because they feel like they are more that nationality than Brazilian.) In general, I'd probably only want to implement a rule of having to declare a nation when you're young, or not allowing the "five year rule" (most countries have five years before you can become a citizen) to apply to International football. I agree, the real problem here is the five year rule, not the fact that players can choose which of their countries they want to play for. Also the grandfather rule. It might be a good idea to change it to being able to choose either your country of birth or your parent's country What if you like Podolski, only lived two years in your birth country and the rest of your life in another? Okay, never mind actually. England wouldn't be able to call upon the services of the mighty Shola either under my rule. It's obviously crap. It could be sorted by declaring your nation of choice by 18, and being able to choose from the country of your parents, your country of birth, or your country of citizenship. Would at least make it so you can't exploit the five year rule, which is the main problem. Grandparent rule need to go as well, as you said. Seems like a sensible idea, although i imagine it would be hell to keep track of all those "declarations of intent" from 18-year-olds across the world. I could imagine a lot of "yes he did/no he didn't" bickering matches between FAs breaking out since FIFA can't possibly keep track of every 18-year-old pro in the World. I can't stop myself from breaking up every time I see your avatar by the way. I just wish more people around me knew who Clint Dempsey was so I could show it to them.

Podolski and Klose aren't "really" Polish though. Klose moved to Germany when he was six (after also probably spending more than 50% of their time before this in France where his father was playing football.), Podolski moved when he was two. How can you expect someone moving that young to have any real feelings toward a country they've only lived in for a very small amount of their life? Also Podolski's paternal family belonged to the German minority in Upper Silesia before they moved. FIFA can't go around telling people if they have proper citizenship or not. An Algerian moving to France at the age of two, could conceivably grow up identifying himself as an Algerian rather than a Frenchman for a number of racial, religious and social reasons. A Welsh child growing up in England from the same age is probably not going to have that sort of attachment to his place of birth. But who the f*** knows. You'll never be able to draw the line and I'm not sure why you'd want to. I don't want to draw a line. I'm fine with people representing the country they want to on most occasions. (The exception are the Brazilians and so on that change their nationality only to play at a tournament, not because they feel like they are more that nationality than Brazilian.) In general, I'd probably only want to implement a rule of having to declare a nation when you're young, or not allowing the "five year rule" (most countries have five years before you can become a citizen) to apply to International football. I agree, the real problem here is the five year rule, not the fact that players can choose which of their countries they want to play for. Also the grandfather rule. It might be a good idea to change it to being able to choose either your country of birth or your parent's country What if you like Podolski, only lived two years in your birth country and the rest of your life in another? Okay, never mind actually. England wouldn't be able to call upon the services of the mighty Shola either under my rule. It's obviously crap.

Podolski and Klose aren't "really" Polish though. Klose moved to Germany when he was six (after also probably spending more than 50% of their time before this in France where his father was playing football.), Podolski moved when he was two. How can you expect someone moving that young to have any real feelings toward a country they've only lived in for a very small amount of their life? Also Podolski's paternal family belonged to the German minority in Upper Silesia before they moved. FIFA can't go around telling people if they have proper citizenship or not. An Algerian moving to France at the age of two, could conceivably grow up identifying himself as an Algerian rather than a Frenchman for a number of racial, religious and social reasons. A Welsh child growing up in England from the same age is probably not going to have that sort of attachment to his place of birth. But who the f*** knows. You'll never be able to draw the line and I'm not sure why you'd want to. I don't want to draw a line. I'm fine with people representing the country they want to on most occasions. (The exception are the Brazilians and so on that change their nationality only to play at a tournament, not because they feel like they are more that nationality than Brazilian.) In general, I'd probably only want to implement a rule of having to declare a nation when you're young, or not allowing the "five year rule" (most countries have five years before you can become a citizen) to apply to International football. I agree, the real problem here is the five year rule, not the fact that players can choose which of their countries they want to play for. Also the grandfather rule. It might be a good idea to change it to being able to choose either your country of birth or your parent's country

I've actually been kind of amazed by that. I know, different situation and all, but if an ethnically Korean player ever played for Japan he'd be crucified in public opinion over here. Why would the said player care though, if he really saw himself as more Japanese than Korean then surely he'd just laugh at you? Fair enough I guess. I'd still hate his guts and hope our lads break his legs at the first opportunity though

I've actually been kind of amazed by that. I know, different situation and all, but if an ethnically Korean player ever played for Japan he'd be crucified in public opinion over here.

No need to apologise, World Cup talk is good. I don't know much about your team tbh but from the outset you could see a hammering was on the cards. It seems Verbeek is the opposite in managerial ability and tactical attitude to Guus Hiddink. Yeah, while it was obvious before the match that this looked like it would be a hammering, it also seems fairly clear that with a better manager even this version of Australia could be doing better. Verbeek isn't a bad manager per se... He's just overly cautious to a fault. Was terrible at putting away the weaker teams during his time with us because he never, ever takes risks going forward. Even if we're playing against Hong Kong or Vietnam.

Change of topic... Miroslav Klose is now just four goals away from becoming the World Cup's all time top scorer. Just imagine, a decade in the future somebody is going to be answering a trivia question: "The World Cup's all-time top scorer... Ronaldo and.... Miroslav Klose? "

Debate? It's just Parky being racist and throwing random insults around rather than trying to back up his viewpoint. Fail to see the racism tbh Might be the wrong word. Whatever it's called when you don't want anyone born anywhere else than your country representing your country, in whatever way. As long as they qualify through heritage it shouldn't matter where you are born.Cacau clearly has no Deutsch claret in him. As I've said, I'm against changing your nationality by the (in most countries) five year rule. I'm just not against people that have lived in a country for their entire life not being able to represent the country they want to, love, and identify themselves with because they weren't born there. Cacau and Tulio are the 2 worst offences imo. I thought you didn't mind parentage, I think Tulio is Japanese diaspora. He has a Japanese father, yeah. Japanese grandparent, no? Doesn't matter anyway, he's a cunt so he deserves all the stick he gets Anyway... You simply can't restrict a player's free choice because every individual case is different. For every Tulio or Cacau there are a lot of players who have legitimate choices to make between the country they were born in and the one they identify with. I was born in America and have American citizenship but if I was actually any good at football I would never willingly choose to play for the US national team. (no offense deuce! )

I've just discovered that leaving the window open for an hour has let literally a hundred mosquitos into my room. I fucking hate Korean summers. And I'm dangerously close to choosing the button option.

fuck, I'm feeling conflicted. Go to sleep now or watch the match and go to work on one hour of sleep and probably hit the button that starts world war 3. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2010/03/Do-not-press.jpg

That Australia lineup makes me feel very good about not staying up to watch this.

http://clien.career.co.kr/cs2/data/file/lecture/1276357441_POqVBDb5_ED999CEC84B1ED9994_EC9C88EB8F84EC9AB0_1.png Apparently if you cut out the 1k and 3k frequencies with your audio mixer you can drown out the Vuvuzela sound. Give a South Korean a computer and some excess time and he can figure out how to do anything

two awesome handballs today.

LOL, pelanty!

yay, more red cards.

What a w*****. A goal scoring w*****. OMFG just saw this for the first time. This is the funniest thing I've seen in ages. Dempsey's awkward expression

I don't understand this, the pace of the game is so fast yet there's no incision at all.

Thought the US v England match occasionally had some good football. South Korea too. Change your f***ing avatar, man.

This match looked exciting, but well.. Still no goals. This goddamn WC is allergic to goals

:lol: Lived up to the hype.

Watching these two matches side-by-side, how lucky are England to have Slovenia and Algeria instead of these two?