BillSaysThis

You’ve seen how the English dance, right? Think mosh pit. Compare that to the grace and control of samba.

In the 70th minute, Brazil makes their first substitution, removing the offense of Ronaldo for an extra defensive midfielder, Edilson. England had subbed in Kieran Dyer for Trevor Sinclair five minutes before.

You wouldn’t think England had the extra man the way the game has gone in the last 15 minutes. They’ve pushed too many long balls too far. Their shots are going high every time. Brazil is defending the corners or England is fouling before the ball comes in to end the opportunity. Time for another sub?

The game is stopped for a minute as Rivaldo recovers from a Sol Campbell finger in the eye. Rivlado is now tied with teammate Ronaldo and German sensation Klose for the tournament lead with five goals, by the way.

And Ronaldinho will miss the next game should his team win.

How can Sven Goran Erickson just sit on the England bench, calm, elbows on knees, chin in hands?

From the 58th minute, Brazil will be playing with 10 men. Ronaldinho put an elbow across the face of Danny Mills and kicked him as well. Brazilian players are milling around, arguing and it takes the bad boy over 90 seconds to start walking off the field. Is this the break England needs? And does this mean that, if Brazil keeps the lead, that one of their top players will be disqualified for the semifinals?

Brazil jumps out 2-0 in the 50th minute with a beautiful direct free kick by Ronaldinho from about 32 yards that just lofted in over the head of Seaman, who was caught just a couple of yeards too far off his line! Is Seaman’s back still hurting from that jump in the first half?

No! Rivaldo ties the match off a Ronaldinho run well into injury time. Seaman made a valiant attempt with a dive to his right but the ball was too well placed. Chalk this against Beckham, who had pushed way into the Brazilian half and couldn’t get back to help stop the counterattack. And perhaps the other England defenders who were weary and thinking it was time for the referee’s whistle.

Interesting to me: no cards, yellow or red, in the half and although there have been a reasonable number of fouls I haven’t seen any really rough play. No one acually did anything worthy of a card.

Remember, although teams scoring first in this tournament are 33W-8T-13L, that Brazil went down early against Turkey and still ended up with the win.

English keeper David Seaman makes a great jumping save to shut down a Brazilian offesnive push but he comes down over the top of Sol Campbell and has big trouble getting up. The England trainer comes up and works his lower back before play resumes; that was probably two+ minutes of extra time right there. England is now keeping six men back as a line to make sure they go in at the half with the lead.

But two minutes later, David Beckham is on the goround, holding his right foot, perhaps stubbing his toe defending aginst Ronaldo, not too serious though he has to be carried off for treatment. Beckham is quickly back on and right away takes a hard foul but gets right up. Just to show us his foot is fine, Beckham launches two kick blasts, one blocked and one over the top.

Liverpool bad boy Michael Owen, who did so well against Germany in January, puts the Englanders on the board first with a sweet one on one off his right foot in the 23rd minute!

10 minutes to kickoff – World Cup Blog: Follow the Action: Predictions, Gentlemen

Oh I am curious now – who has me on their Freshblogs Watchlist, inquiring minds want to know!

Dammit! ESPN has switched which of their networks will show tonight’s World Cup quarterfinal matches from ESPN2 to ESPN. Of course they did this too late for Tivo to update the program guide and make sure I get them recorded. But Tivo must have gotten a lot of heat for this earlier in the tournament since they posted instructions for setting the recordings up manually. Due to Tivo’s stupid use of frames and other inadvised page protection settings, I can’t link to their instruction page; if you need them, go to their home page and click on Customer Support, then the headline/announcement is towards the top of the Support page.

Oh do I hate this!

Go USA!!!

All the world over, people decry American cultural domination. France, especially, since they make mostly crappy films and music these days. But look at today’s development in Italy: RAI mulls filing lawsuit. Here we have the Italian TV network getting out the lawyers to possibly sue FIFA (the governing body for world soccer) because bad referring lead to the claimed early exit of the Italian team from the World Cup, causing the network to potentially lose serious lira from lower viewership. Are the Italians being overly influenced by America’s overwhelming dependence on lawyers to solve all problems?

FIFA president Sepp Blatter in an interview with an Italian newspaper said that Italy should stop being such bad losers.

And add this to your calculation: the South Korean player who scored the winning goal against Italy has been dropped from the Italian club for which he played because, according to the club’s president, he betrayed Italian football. WTF? Was he supposed to not play his best for his country just because his club is in the country of his opponents?

I think you know the answer.

“This is driving me insane and making me curse. Why oh why do you have to hurt me like this?”

I am so, so sad that poor little Blogger has done this damage to your psyche! Or is it possible that someone is taking their blog just a little too seriously?

I know, I know! The guy just wants faster service, to move up in the queue ahead of users who filed problem reports before he did, so he’s trying to show us how badly he needs help. Of course, given the backlog and my recent start at tackling it, this particular request was filed three weeks. Somehow the user seemed to get past his insanity and even solve his own problem (probably he just waited it out, a little time seems to cure many Blogger ills) since he’s posted numerous times since then.

Darrell Hammond, where are you when we need your Clinton voiceover talent?

Forgetting history – Howard Feinberg reminds us that 9/11 was not the first act of Arab terrorism on American soil–the first was Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Robert Kennedy for his support of Israel 34 years ago!

Just cause she is so wonderful, has such a terrific heart, look what I got today in addition to a midweek visit from herself:

  

Put it on the list – ‘Reinventing the Bazaar’: Designing Markets seems like an amazing book on modern econmies and economics

Bad, very bad – New scientific reports on emerging flu strains warn of serious consequences as variants of the Hong Kong flu pop up in China.

Well, no one on the face of the earth following the tournament would have picked this group. But here we are, with two matches beginning late Thursday night (PST) and two more late Friday to get to the final four. Germany, Brazil, England, and Spain, no big surprises in that group; South Korea, Turkey, Senegal, and USA, not a single one was given a chance to reach this stage. Short and sweet, here are my predictions in order that the matches will be played:

Quarterfinals

• England-Brazil: Best game of the tournament, make it Brazil in OT 2-1 or 3-2, though I’ll be rooting for the Brits
  

• Germany-USA: 2-1 Germany, making me cry, happy as I am that our boys got so far–just wait and see how well we do at Germany 2006!
  

• Spain-South Korea: The co-hosts continue an amazing run, 1-0 or 2-1 over Spain
  

• Senegal-Turkey: No clue really but give it to Senegal because they beat France and ought to have the crowd on their side since the Turks put Japan out

Semifinals

• Germany-South Korea: The dream is over, just barely, and I expect to see a number of the South Koreans in MLS and some top European leagues
  

• Brazil-Senegal: Samba rules and the Africans can’t dance fast enough, so the Brazilians make their third straight appareance in the Finals

Third Place

• South Korea-Senegal: No question the home side (this game is to be played in Korea) will be the ones with juice left in the tank

Finals

• Germany-Brazil: So hard to pick this one, so many good players on each side, both with great scorers and playmakers; it has to come down to the goalkeepers, Kahn and Marcos and their key defenders and therefore to Germany, with Brazil again falling one game short and the Germans their fourth trophy.

Notes

• Backup pick: If England can find their way past Brazil, I’ll take them over Senegal and Germany to win the whole deal. They match up well against the Germans and beat them badly just a few months back in a friendly.
  

• The Math: Just coincidence, sure, but the German team seem due for the trophy. They won previously in 1954, 1974, and 1990; that is, 20 years apart, then 16, and this time would be 12. If they win watch out in 2010!
  

• Automatic: For the first time, in the next Cup only the host nation will get an automatic bid when until now the defending champ got one too. A German win on the 30th would resolve that.

If you’re asking, the answer is yeah! Chris Rock, Anthony Hopkins, you say to yourself, “That’s a strange pair.” Sure it’s been done before, think Eddie Murphy with Nick Nolte (the bud says think Murphy with Dan Ackroyd), but Bad Company does it good. Sure the basic plot is hokey and sometimes predictable but what did you expect?

For my $9, the key here is the script by Jason Richman and Michael Browning. Neither has written anything of substance that’s been produced before (6 Days, 7 Nights doesn’t count for shit in my book) and to hit one out of the ballpark like this is rather surprising. There were lots of little things, mainly in the script, that give me this feeling, extra bits that one doesn’t expect in a big bang summer action movie. Props to director Joel Schumacher too (Falling Down with Michael Douglas, the Clooney/O’Donnell Batman & Robin) for getting the goods from Hopkins and Rock, the car chase though high grass, allowing Rock to come up with his own material where appropriate (such as when he tells off CIA honcho played by John Slattery for talking down to him); would you ever have guessed that Schumacher started his Hollywood career as a costume designer?

Some knockout eye candy too: Garcelle Beauvais (NYPD Blue) shows us her extremely fine body in shower and lingerie scenes, even if the scenes don’t do much to move the plot along. Okay, they do give context for another attempt on Rock’s life, another chance for Hopkin’s and team to shoot off their guns. Much of the movie is set in and around Prague and we get some beautiful visuals from the historic buildings, cityscape, and countryside too.

There are lots of laughs, lots of action, lots of technology to back up the actors–this is a Jerry Bruckheimer film (Blackhawk Down and Pearl Harbor, to give you some idea). The movie cost a lot of money to produce, though not nearly as much as Pearl Harbor, which is good because it isn’t doing too well at the box office, but you do see it on screen.

Recommended for action fans