World Cup 2010

I think England is gonna win hands down.

93_confirmed wrote:

Here's another site with decent streams: http://atdhe.net/watchtv.html

T-minus 4 hours until USA/England kickoff - I'm so excited and nervous for it. Still taking USA 3-2.

Excellent, thanks! Living in fly-over country and espn3 steaming doesn't work for any of our ISP's. Most of espn3's list of participating ISP's for my zip code don't actually offer service here, go figure.

Tanglebones wrote:

Nigeria's been incredibly lucky so far, to only be losing by 1. They've been outplayed by Argentina badly.

If you're familiar with the italian soccer team's recent history (or Greece's EM 2004 performance), being outplayed doesn't mean you're going to lose.

Tanglebones wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
LilCodger wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

And I have the US to beat England, I have a feeling the English are under too much pressure to perform.

Where's the pressure sensor on the US team these days? Are they in "screw it no one cares anyway" mode or are they still "if we do well soccer might actually be popular"?

They haven't been in our media much, but I sense that they just want to play soccer and do their best, which I think is good.

And it's amazing that even an 'unpopular' sport in the US can still have a lot of followers. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in this thread, but the largest overseas fan contingent is from America.

America is great at youth soccer engagement, but we tend to lose interest at the professional and college levels, since the quality of play and advertising are pretty poor. I married into a family of fans :)

Adult soccer is exploding in popularity. Two years ago, in a town of 50,000, we had about 14 teams for summer rec league. This year we're pushing 24 teams. My uncle lives in Corvallis Oregon, similar size, and they have adult soccer almost year round and enough people to do age brackets up to 50. Seems to me that a lot of us who grew up playing soccer are continuing. Talking with folks in the summer league, they're excited for World Cup and would probably follow it a lot more if it had more TV coverage in the US.

Man, it could go 2 for Argentina or a tie any moment now. Nice game.

Pirate Bob wrote:

Adult soccer is exploding in popularity. Two years ago, in a town of 50,000, we had about 14 teams for summer rec league. This year we're pushing 24 teams. My uncle lives in Corvallis Oregon, similar size, and they have adult soccer almost year round and enough people to do age brackets up to 50. Seems to me that a lot of us who grew up playing soccer are continuing. Talking with folks in the summer league, they're excited for World Cup and would probably follow it a lot more if it had more TV coverage in the US.

To illustrate your point, an interesting little piece about American fans at the World Cup.

Tanglebones wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
LilCodger wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

And I have the US to beat England, I have a feeling the English are under too much pressure to perform.

Where's the pressure sensor on the US team these days? Are they in "screw it no one cares anyway" mode or are they still "if we do well soccer might actually be popular"?

They haven't been in our media much, but I sense that they just want to play soccer and do their best, which I think is good.

And it's amazing that even an 'unpopular' sport in the US can still have a lot of followers. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in this thread, but the largest overseas fan contingent is from America.

America is great at youth soccer engagement, but we tend to lose interest at the professional and college levels, since the quality of play and advertising are pretty poor. I married into a family of fans :)

I honestly think that the disconnect between soccer's percieved popularity and its actual popularity in the US is due to media bias and media coverage. I know the MLS is growing steadily and on a far safer path than the defunct NASL (and ABC screwed the NASL, no two ways about that, though they claim it wasn't their fault, but showing games in the '70s and '80s on TV on Saturday afternoons? Yikes). In fact, we're finally seeing that the MLS is actually producing some decent players and building their own academies for their youth development, which is where its at. This way, we can be like West Ham, who can give away our brilliant youth for pennies on the dollar to other teams

I don't really think the American's defense is absolutely as terrible as everyone believes, especially since Howard cleans up messes pretty well. We can only hope to see the Spector and DeMerit that we know can play, not the ones that have been playing lately.

BlackSheep wrote:

I don't really think the American's defense is absolutely as terrible as everyone believes, especially since Howard cleans up messes pretty well. We can only hope to see the Spector and DeMerit that we know can play, not the ones that have been playing lately.

You don't become the world's number 14 side by sucking. England is 8, only six places above your guys.

It's either an inferiority complex, or attempted distraction. Going around saying "We suck, we suck" when it seems untrue.

So 3 out of 4 on predictions so far. Stupid host country not losing is all that screwed me up.

Although I haven't got a score right yet. Yeah I expected Argentina to get a couple more goals today. Oh well.

Under 2 hours til US-England. I picked a 2-2 tie in the Yahoo thing. Honestly that's wishful thinking. I just want US to do well. Sure, I beat England in FIFA Online last night, 2-1, but I'm not expecting that.

Messi was awesome as usual. Pelon was a mess. I don't even think he distributed the ball very well at all.

And you could totally tell Maradona wanted to play. I've never seen a coach touch the ball as much as he did.

Can't wait. Bocanegra gets a corner kick header.

If you guys think the USA aren't going to be thrashed, you must be high.

So you may have seen Ian Poulter's (PGA pro) comments on twitter? Maybe not. But he said something like England vs. USA in soccer is just like USA vs. England in basketball. Not a chance.

But on Sportscenter just now they had an update. He claimed that if the USA won today he would play golf naked next week.

Stele wrote:

He claimed that if the USA won today he would play golf naked next week. :shock:

So if England loses, we all lose.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

US fans at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium. NSFW Language

IMAGE(http://www.celluloid-dreams.de/content/images/kritiken-filmbilder/team-america-world-police/team-america-world-police-1.jpg)

I think England will win. But, soccer is gaining in populalarity in the US and Canada. So who knows, there might be some surprises.

Are you kidding me? All of the games are on espn360 except for the only game most Americans care about! F*ck you espn.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Are you kidding me? All of the games are on espn360 except for the only game most Americans care about! F*ck you espn.

That's because it's on ABC - there should be a livestream from their website somewhere

LilCodger wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

And I have the US to beat England, I have a feeling the English are under too much pressure to perform.

Where's the pressure sensor on the US team these days? Are they in "screw it no one cares anyway" mode or are they still "if we do well soccer might actually be popular"?

We're expected to at least get out of the group - especially since this is considered our most favorable WC draw in history. I'll be disappointed with anything less than making the quarterfinals. 9 of our starting 11 play or have recently played in top international leagues so the experience against top competition is there. Also, we did pretty well in the last few friendlies and I think as a whole, we have the will, chemistry, and ability to make it as far as we did in 02.

An interesting note about the popularity of soccer in the USA: we have the most WC tickets purchased of any nation participating in the cup. Sure, we are one of the wealthier nations, but the fact that we choose to spend so much money to watch soccer overseas says a lot about the state of the sport in our country. I think soccer will begin to gain popularity exponentially once we get the WC back in the states. It's looking like 2018 at this point.

EDIT: As for the comment on ESPN 360, ESPN got outbid or the rights to the England/USA game. Try one of the streams that were listed: I use ATDHE.

Awesome WC murals that were posted in a thread in Everything Else. Pretty wicked!

Tanglebones wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

Are you kidding me? All of the games are on espn360 except for the only game most Americans care about! F*ck you espn.

That's because it's on ABC - there should be a livestream from their website somewhere

ABC and ESPN, essentially, the same network.

93_confirmed wrote:

Try one of the streams that were listed: I use ATDHE.

I can't believe there is a streaming website that actually works on a mac. Most of them require installing some kind of exe file.

Ahahahaha.
Haha.
Crappy defending FTW.

Well, crap.

Everybody must be really gutted right now. Americans are losing, English fans for once can't complain about anything and can't whine about Heskey who got an assist. That must feel really awful.

One day the US team might figure out that when they play Dempsey at forward, he scores, and they win games...

AHAHAHAH.

Better. Much better.

::cough, cough::

USA!

I hope that someone recorded slow-mo replay of Beckham's face they've showed after the goal and will upload it to YouTube.

Missed most of the first 45 minutes, but looking good so far. What did I miss?

VDOWhoNeedsDD wrote:

If you guys think the USA aren't going to be thrashed, you must be high.

Hope you enjoyed the goal at the 40 minute mark!

My brother and I totally freaked out celebrating.