Football

Old enough to watch it?
No?

**TEH RULEZ **

I.e. you can't count it.

you make **TEH RULEZ ** up as you go along i.e. if you've seen it on video it counts.

Sorry. TEH RULEZ:

**If you weren't old enough to watch it first time around, you can't count it. **
I was old enough for 82, just, but didn't watch it. I don't wax lyrical about the 82 brazil team.

Now, '86 France...

I seem to remember 90 featured a lot of diminutive wizards.

Off top of my head:
Hassler, Brolin, Maradona, Hagi, Houghton, Baggio

Hagi, what a player, I saw him play at the Nou Camp once at the end of his career, such great passing ability.

Favourite "Easterns":
Hagi
Stoitchkov
Vassily Rats

Wow. Is this really what you think of Arsenal?

:D

Tongue firmly in cheek.

Best World Cup ever was Argentina 1978 because I remember my Mum buying me a really cool jumper that I wore every single day. I still remember it so clearly. Was around the time I started supporting the mighty Liverpool too :)

the niggly efficient german team that won it in 90 or the fabulous failure of brazil in 82.

Germany. Klinsmann is a god.

Italia 90 was the best World Cup ever. FACT.

+1.

Apart from the Seoul Olympics this was the first football tournament I watched, great memories.

1990: It was West Germany actually.
#pedant

Spain '82. Still got the official record and Pannini sticker book. Football was shit tho, not that I really remember.

Favourite "Easterns":
Hagi
Stoitchkov
Vassily Rats

Skuhravý, Dumitrescu, Stojković, Bokic, Prosinecki etc. that Yugoslavia side had some quality players in it.

Euro '88 was pretty special too.

I'm old enough to remember the only time you saw foreigns, was when a world cup came round, and in relation to the RULEZ. I breakz them everyday as I follow Juventus cause Platini and Boniek used to play for them, Marseille because of the hunchback of geordieland Waddle's anguish when they were duped out of the european cup by red star belgrade, Barca mainly because of Romario, and Hagi, and Stoichkov, and Ronaldo (the first one) and Koemans - Ronald, and the de Boer twins, Ajax, because of the original - to me anyway youth team of Finidi George, Seedorf, Davids, Overmars, and Kluivert, Sampdoria because of Football Italia and Gianluca Vialli, Deportivo La Coruna, because of Bebeto, Hamburg, because of Keegan, PSG because of Rai and Ronaldinho and Okocha.
I could go on, but I won't...
Italia 90 was a great world cup, upsets and tension from the off, that holland/germany match had so much vitriol in it, and I did Germany a disservice, they had a great world cup, took teams apart, beat us in the semi's (which I can never forgive or forget) and then played such negative tentative football in the final it coloured my whole perception of that tournament..

1990: It was West Germany actually.
#pedant

While they did play as West Germany, there weren't any East German players in the team until later in the year, and reunifation wasn't technically completed until October, the reality it was already well underway, during the tournament many legal and economic unification policies came into effect, such as the East Germans using the Deutchmark.

As such the country as a whole supported the West German team, the east as well as the west.

#evenmoreofapedant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u96T3rnHRM&feature=related

Back to the alternate reality.

YouTube - Gol De Brolin vs Brasil (Italia 90)

Thomas Brolin when he was good.

I.e. not when he was at Leeds or Palace.

Possibly the most overweight player to step on the pitch when he was at Palace and I include Neville Southall in this.

tl;dr
i'm a plastic

.

90 was seriously crap. The best World Cup that I saw was 82. The first game of football that made me cry was played in that WC. France vs West Germany. If there was ever a football game that proved the non-existence of a just, merciful deity, it was that game.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bka-sSgADwE"]YouTube
- France Vs West Germany in World Cup 1982[/ame]

Both the semis were amazing, and the final wasn't bad either.

Schumacher put Batiston in hospital with broken ribs and a broken jaw(I think?). Decision by the ref:

Just a goal kick!

90 was seriously crap.
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bka-sSgADwE"][/URL
]

Prediction time.

Saturday, 26 February 2011

Aston Villa v Blackburn 2-1
Everton v Sunderland 1-1
Newcastle v Bolton 1-2
Wigan v Man Utd 0-2
Wolverhampton v Blackpool 2-2
Sunday, 27 February 2011
West Ham v Liverpool 2-1
Man City v Fulham 3-0

Monday, 28 February 2011
Stoke v West Brom 1-2

Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Chelsea v Man Utd 5-1

that schumacher "tackle" has never left me, and as much as you lot go on about this ref or that ref being shocking, that was truly the worst abdication of responsibility by a ref I've ever seen..

82 could have been the greatest world cup ever, even with how it ended up its top two/three, but imagine if we'd had a brazil/france final. My god, football might never have been the same.

somewhere there's a really good article by either alex bellos, or tim vickers about how the defeat of the 82 brazil squad changed the way brazil played forever and ushered in a new pragmatism, culminating in the dull as ditchwater (relatively) 94 world cup winning squad, and the ones that came after. If Brazil had won it in 82, imagine the run of fast, all out attacking brazil squads that would have come after..

Prediction time.

Saturday, 26 February 2011

Aston Villa v Blackburn 0-0
Everton v Sunderland 1-0
Newcastle v Bolton 1-0
Wigan v Man Utd 0-3
Wolverhampton v Blackpool 1-0
Sunday, 27 February 2011
West Ham v Liverpool 1-3
Man City v Fulham 2-1

ARSENAL v BIRMINGHAM 0-1

Monday, 28 February 2011
Stoke v West Brom 1-1

Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Chelsea v Man Utd 1-3

Schumacher put Batiston in hospital with broken ribs and a broken jaw(I think?). Decision by the ref:

Just a goal kick!

Knocked out some of his teeth as well. If you watch the replay, you can quite clearly see that he has been knocked completely unconscious.

1982 was dull for most of the qualification stages then blossomed later. Italia 90 was full of goals, incidents and upset from the start and only tailed off at the very end with the dull semi-final between Italy and Argentina and a crap final (although the third/fourth play off game was a cracker).

1982 was dull for most of the qualification stages then blossomed later. Italia 90 was full of goals, incidents and upset from the start and only tailed off at the very end with the dull semi-final between Italy and Argentina and a crap final (although the third/fourth play off game was a cracker).

It's matter of opinion, obviously, but the 90 final was much, much, much worse than 2010 final. The final 3 games of 82 were just fantastic, and that's how a world cup should be.