Italy 2 Germany 0

Bring on the final….

So proud to be an italian

HOW BRAVE ARE WE AUSSIES, SEE CRONULLA, 500 AGAINST 1, VERY BRAVE
The truth is there is good and bad everywhere I am sick and tired of people from all nations always critising others (sport or war) some people aren’t so lucky like you or me. They have no food and here we are ripping into each other over rubbish!

We will never prove we are better then others, deep down we know most people across the world are the same.
Try and beat the Hopi at enduring on foot!

All the best mate!
Gian

DIVIDE ET IMPERA
into
DIVIDE AND RULE.

Maybe it means:

HEY GUYS, LET’S DIVE AND
HAVE THE UMPIRE ON OUR SIDe

http://www.footballfansfortruth.us/archives/001515.html

FOR fans, it is the greatest show on earth. Yet anyone watching the World Cup must be wondering: how can such exquisite skills by the players coexist with such incompetence by referees supposed to be the best in the world?

It’s not just Australians asking that. All over the world, fans are asking how “the beautiful game” can allow its results to be decided by such random officiating.

The Americans, who had the tough luck to get German dentist Markus Merk as referee for their deciding match against Ghana, are fuming. Never mind that Merk awarded 32 fouls their way as against only 16 to Ghana — matching the record he set a round earlier between Australia and Brazil. What made them mad was that Ghana scored the winning goal from a penalty kick that neutrals agreed was undeserved.

The Koreans too are fuming. In their final match against Switzerland, referee Horacio Elizondo awarded 20 fouls against them as against eight for them, ignored a Swiss handball in the penalty area, and overruled the linesman’s offside call to allow a Swiss goal.

The Tunisians are just as livid. They were eliminated after referee Carlos Amarilla decided Ukraine’s star striker Andriy Shevchenko had been tripped and awarded him a penalty kick, from which he scored the lone goal of the match. The video replay suggested that in fact Shevchenko tripped over his own feet.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Game after game has been decided not by the skills of the two teams, but by refereeing decisions at critical moments.

The beautiful game has a problem. In no sport on earth are more matches decided by the chance fate of refereeing decisions. If the ref sees a critical decision your way, you win. If he sees it the other team’s way, you lose.

Sure, random decisions can decide the outcome in any sport. But in soccer they matter far more often, because it is such a low-scoring game that one goal often decides the result.

And what makes soccer such a low-scoring game is primarily the offside rule. By preventing forwards from playing forward, it limits teams to a handful of scoring opportunities. So forwards become professional actors, divers in search of penalties, and the result of the entire match frequently depends on how the ref judges those critical moments.

On many a winter day standing on the sidelines of a soccer field, heart rising and falling as decisions went one way or the other, I found myself contrasting FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, with the much-maligned AFL.

The AFL might get a lot of smaller decisions wrong, as it did last week, but it has got a lot of the big ones right. It has been willing to innovate, and that has allowed the game to evolve to a higher level.

The AFL was right to replace one umpire with two, and now three. That relieves umpires of the pressure of having to call every decision on the field, and reduced the number of umpiring errors. That also reduced their influence on the outcome, and made for a better game.

It was right to allow players to take time out on the bench, then return to the field. That makes for a higher-quality game, gives coaches more flexibility, and gives spectators a better game to watch.

It was right to impose a salary cap and egalitarian draft rules so that clubs at the bottom can pick themselves up. In the past 20 years, most AFL teams have won a premiership. In UK soccer, by contrast, Manchester United has won eight of the last 14 championships, while in Italy, Juventus has won seven of the last 12.

In soccer, none of these innovations is possible. It may be the world game, but in this area of the world, Europe rules. And that means the balance between tradition and innovation leans heavily towards tradition.

And towards money. For months Italy has been rocked by an unfolding scandal over clubs and referees fixing matches so they could make money by punting on unexpected outcomes. It culminated last week when Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio were all charged over allegations of match-fixing, illegal betting on results, and manipulation of referee assignments.

It is not that FIFA’s rules never change. One charitable explanation of the refereeing at this World Cup is that it has now sent referees out with a mission to crack down on unsporting tackles, and some teams had not got the message. But go back through video replays of the matches, and that explanation is hard to accept.

What you see on the screen is a different problem: whether consciously or not, the referees are treating the top teams with kid gloves, while dealing harshly with outsiders such as Australia and the African teams.

By the end of the first round last weekend, the eight seeded teams had collected a net surplus of 101 fouls: that is, 101 more fouls awarded in their favour than against them. Italy alone had a net foul count of 26 in its favour, Brazil 19, Spain 18, Argentina 16 and so on. Yet Australia had 30 more fouls called against it than for it, Ghana 36, and Tunisia 26.

The core problem of soccer, however, is not referee bias, but referee overload and rules that make them too often the arbiters of who wins the match. It would help if there were two referees, so fewer decisions are called from way behind the play, and the pressure on refs is eased. It would help if, at top level, a video referee could intervene on decisions involving penalties and goals.

But the beautiful game should go further. Whether by scrapping the offside rule, or enlarging the net, it should allow more goals, so matches depend less on the referees, and more on the way the teams play the game.

P.S. for all of you coming on this blog to say that grosso dived, go take some lessons in soccer or even just look up the rules onthe FIFA website and go chat with the other countries, cause we are more than sick of hearing from you. This is a soccer blog. Not a blog for fairweather fans who watch 10 games every 4 years. I dont mean to be mean but this is ridiculous and out of hand…

Now to more important things!
Sleep well Azzurri! and I wish you the best for domani!

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/worldcup2006/features/italy.html