The world cup is a long ways away and a lot can happen between now and then. Someone could get hurt and miss the cup or suffer a terrible loss in form, or some guys who suck now could get markedly better before next summer. But if the world Cup started today, which guys would [...]

The news is in. The top 30 nominees for the Ballon D’or have been announced. Check it out here.

Just a reminder that we have one game left in World Cup qualifying against Cyprus, a game that counts for absolutely nothing. We’re top of the group no matter what happens, and I fully expect Lippi to experiment with players and lineups. He might as well, because a loss here with all new guys in [...]

One game. One more win and we are through to South Africa without having to worry about playoffs. One more match: a convincing enough display will keep the critics off Lippi for a while, at least until the call ups for next year come out. But even more importantly, a win against the strongest team [...]

I’d be thrilled.

In a lot of ways, this is the most important game remaining in our qualifying campaign. To see what I mean, look at the current standings in our group (credit Wiki):

I feel like I give Lippi a pretty decent amount of slack. I call him out for not calling up players that I feel would improve the NT, but overall I feel like he knows the technical side of the game (though it took him what, almost a year to go back to the 4-4-2?). [...]

It’s starting to become a familiar story. We play a team in a WCQ that we should easily beat. We stumble/luck our way to a victory. We’re all left with a sour flavor in our mouths.
Full writeup on the game.
To answer the question in the title, yes- a victory has felt like this in nearly [...]

Just a few choice quotes from our great tactician: