Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Brazil vs. U.S. (soccer)

Anyone watching the game?

It's on ESPN 2 now (3:00 PM CDT, 4:00 PM EDT).

They're actually using an American football field repainted for soccer. The grass seems awfully dry.

malu

I didn't watch it, no, but I was interested in how the match ended. So I checked out the homepage of USA Today. There was nothing on the first page, where Roger Federer's victory at the U.S. Open was the top story, followed by a story about senator Craig of Idaho. So I went to the sports section. There was nothing among the headlines on the sports page. So I went to the the soccer section, and there it was, ranked as number five in importance of the soccer stories.

Whew! Given the absolutely minimal U.S. interest in soccer (which the rest of the world calls "football"), it's pretty amazing that the U.S. team was beaten by Brazil, one of the best teams in the world, by no more than 4-2. And the match was played in Brazil, too.

Anyway, in Europe the interest in football - eh, I guess I should say soccer - is crazy. In Sweden the only thing that generates anything like the same interest is ice hockey. In the rest of Europe, I don't know what can compete with soccer.

Ann

Actually, the match was in Chicago.

And the game wasn't THAT good. It was interesting to watch through ESPN with U.S. commentators. All they kept saying was how *fantastic* Ronaldinho is, and how *marvelous* the Brazilian plays were. What about the U.S. players? They scored two goals, and the first one of the game was theirs. One of Brazil's goal was pure luck (it hit one of the U.S. players and went in).

malu

Well, I'm Brazilian and watched it here. We're not that happy about the new team. After the last World Cup fiasco the team has a new coach and many guys who were never part of the team before.

Ronaldinho was very criticized for his great performance outside the national team, but not so great acting when wearing the yellow shirt.

But we can't forget that football (I can't call it soccer, sorry)is also luck, as much as discipline and talent. It's not a rare fact to see great teams losing to others not so good at the moment. we have an excellent example. The national team from 1982 was considered as good as the legendary one from 1970 (Pelé, Carlos Alberto, Rivelino...) but we lost a match against Italy and that's a defeat that no Brazilian can forget.

We didn't get the game here, but I kind of expect that. Football here mean rugby league, rugby union of Aussie Rules (and it really irks me that people call it football what part of carrying a ball across a line to score can be termed as football?)

When Australia got into the world cup last year only then did I see a great interest and really if it hadn't been for that soccer would still be really obscure here. Even given our performance last year soccer is still really obscure here.

I haven't seen the new team play, but it seems to be a pressure thing. Everyone expects Brazil to do well given that they have won so many world cups, but every team has their good days and bad days. I've seen quite a few international friendlies and they are as a match in whole really boring, because they arent really playing like it was a final or anything they tend to just play to play.