LucaAltieri

I prefer to think of it as carnival spirit.

Fixed.

Not fit enough/didn't "show enough" in the pre-tournament friendlies.

Fuck's sake. Costa Rica.

The devil is Italian.

Balotelli's positioning and running has been pretty good. Just a shame about the finishing.

Not offside there. Unlucky.

The only thing I know about Maryland is Stacy Kiebler. That's enough for me to know it's my second favorite state.

What have you seen to suggest they're not very good? Genuine question, I don't really take much interest in the qualifiers tbh. I think they were 1 win in 7 before the tournament and drew 1-1 with Luxembourg a week before the start with a full strength side, and 0-0 with Ireland the week before. They played a lot experimental formations in the build up though. They lack a bit pace but Italy are a pretty solid side at full strength I think. Confident they'll beat Uruguay and Costa Rica then? Italy have quality in every area of the pitch. They're capable of beating both of those sides. They won't though, seeing as they don't need to. Right. Not necessarily saying that they will beat them both. But if they don't it won't be because they're not good enough.

What have you seen to suggest they're not very good? Genuine question, I don't really take much interest in the qualifiers tbh. I think they were 1 win in 7 before the tournament and drew 1-1 with Luxembourg a week before the start with a full strength side, and 0-0 with Ireland the week before. They played a lot experimental formations in the build up though. They lack a bit pace but Italy are a pretty solid side at full strength I think. Confident they'll beat Uruguay and Costa Rica then? Italy have quality in every area of the pitch. They're capable of beating both of those sides.

Sacramento are about to have their attendances take a nose-dive. Just moving into a new stadium with a capacity of 8,000. http://uslpro.uslsoccer.com/home/818515.html

Nailed on.

Roy should have done better with his formation when making the subs. You could argue that Sterling coming off was for the best but we then lacked any real threat down the right hand side. Johnson was mostly on his own. Given what a limited player he is that's not a situation you want. Someone needed to drift out there, ideally Rooney or Lallana. Neither did. Sure enough, when we scored it was due to Sturridge drifting out to the right to help with build up. The problem with Sturridge doing it (and dropping deep) was that time and again we had no one in the box. Subs were ok, but our organization on the pitch afterwards was awful.

being right as usual luca. blame the players ffs Fyp.

I knew we'd score and pressure them late in the game. We turned it around and were all over them. As soon as we got level we deflated and let them back into it. Utter garbage. Time for the FA to spend some of their millions on a couple of sports psychologists. Shambolic end to the game.

Oh fuck off Gerrard.

Calling us on a foul throw? This ref must fucking hate England. Maybe was bitten by a corgi as a child?

And there it is. Now fuck off.

FFS, started this half terribly.

You what? When we get forwards we've barely an inch of space to turn in most of the time. True but we're still linking up relatively well. Not perfect by any means but we're attempting to be creative. When you play like that you're going to make mistakes and give the ball away but you do it in the hope that it pays off.

We're doing ok. When we get forward they struggle to get near us. Hence all the unpunished fouls. They can't keep that up for 90 minutes. We'll score.

We'll get back into this. As Uruguay tire we're going to be all over them. I'd have fancied us to be ahead in the first half too but the ref is fucking killing us.

Completely underserved. Hope we tear these filthy fuckers apart in the second half.

+1

This ref is having a nightmare.