brutal

Moments like these are why you don't lay down injured before 90 min mark

Also that was a beyond impressive showing by the guys, a free goal early hurt them badly but all in all we dominated them

Nice 2:6 goals :^)

FUCK

This is why we can't have nice things.

wp portugal. anyone know why goal differential matters more than head-to-head? seems ridiculous to me, although maybe just because if it were the other way around we'd be basically ensured a knockout round spot..

That goal was heart-breaking

oh my fucking god

Classic ronaldo, fuck around the whole game and do nothing, then put in a perfect cross to score in the last 5 seconds. WP to both teams.

That fucking game.

If it wasn't by GD, players would just stop caring midway through the match. GD stops that. Look at France vs the Switz. The game could have easily been 5-0+ and would have been if GD didn't mean shit. Ended 5-2 because they played the full 90+ min.

everyone is playing the same teams, so goal differential sums up how well a particular team played in a group. If one team loses head to head but has a better goal differential, then they played better against their other opponents than the team which beat them, which means just as much as a head to head win/loss if that makes sense. Thats my take anyway

Tomorrow against the Netherlands, won't say nothing but it'll be a really hard game.

C-H-I! CHI!!! L-E! LE!!! CHI-CHI-CHI LE-LE-LE VIVA CHILE!!!

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/groups/group=255945/index.html

there you can see the current points of each team in the group.

the two teams with the most points advances to the next round and the other two teams go home. a victory grants a team 3 points, a draw gives 1 and a loss gives 0. given that each team has only one more match to play, if portugal wins their match and USA loses theirs then each team will have 4 points and the decision of who is going to advance to the next round is going to be made based on the goal difference. it works kind of in the same way it does in esea to advance teams to playoffs based on their rounds for and rounds against if several teams have the same win/losses numbers

Klinsmann is German-American. Klinsmann and Jogi are dear friends under similar pressures to qualify.

If that game ends 0-0 there will be HOWLING from Portugal and Ghana.

Reaction to Portugal's goal with 15 seconds left.

Was crazy though at the beginning, Portugal scored a goal within 5 minutes, and their defense is really good.

Very good match, still sad about that 2-2 though. :(

I understand how it works: my point is just that if it were like this:
1. points
2. head to head
3. goal differential
4. goals total

instead of

1. points
2. goal differential
3. goals total
4. head to head

Then we (USA) would be hard-pressed to not make it: we have 4 points, Germany 4, Ghana 1, Portugal 1. Assuming USA loses to Germany (can't see this not happening), this is what could happen if it worked like I outlined above. (If Ghana v. Portugal is a tie, obviously neither advances). If Ghana won and head to head mattered more than goal differential USA would advance. Since we tied portugal, either of the two situations above ends up being decided by goal differential so it's irrelevant for my example.

As it currently works, we, USA, could very likely be tied for points with Ghana and lose out goal differential even though we beat them in a head to head which seems to me a little weird.

This is a good point, but, by the same token, goal differential also means that teams can throw games to ensure certain opponents advance, West Germany and Austria actually famously did this in 1982 to eliminate Algeria.

I guess, but there's also the fact that there are different styles of football: right now goals total matters more than head to head too. If, for example, there were a team that played all out football and had very high scoring games, they'd have a significant advantage over a team they tied if they both had the same goal differential.

The current system just devalues head to head to literally nothing more than a coin flip when in other sports head to head is decisive: my high school baseball team wouldn't have made playoffs if run differential were a thing instead of head to head.

sorry 4 essay, got 3 long responses so its not my fault ok.

USA is having all these great games this World Cup. Top notch football!

well at least this way the last games still matter. If head/head was decisive, Ghana would already be knocked out.

edit: i'm dumb. Nevermind

i think your team is better than ours from what i've seen so far
should be a fun game

If it was done H2H, then Ghana would already be out of the tournament as they lost to the US, tied Germany, and could only get a max of 4 points. They would only be able to move on if they beat Germany's GD at that point, which is +4 to their -1. With GD, everyone has to fight (unless, of course, USA and Germany decide to just chill it out with a tie), but if one of them won, that would leave one team on the other match completely fucked. Example, lets say Germany wins. Ghana now cannot advance no matter how much they beat Portugal by because they can't match Germany's points and USA has the H2H. That is why GD is used after points.

Ref in mexico v crotia game misses the most obvious hand ball ever. Mexico has been getting screwed over by the refs

Mexico wow

http://www.clickhole.com/article/every-way-us-can-advance-world-cup-359

big fan of #5

Good game dutch team, I wished the referee was more experienced because he skipped a lot of remarkable situations that would have made the match way more interesting and would have probably influenced in a more even score. Now we must beat the brazilians to keep climbing.

gg Italy

thank you based GODin

Suarez nommin' all the footballers

wtf././/////////............

Off to the airport you go Italy!

I'm still salty about 2006...