For the fourth consecutive World Cup, the winning country will speak a romance language. Only four times ever has a non-romance language-speaking team won the championship.
So, the guy who has France in my World Cup betting pool has offered me a 50-50 split of the pot.
If Italy win I get $325
If Italy lose I get $35
A 50-50 split is $180.
Tempting…I will have to watch the replay of the France game for guidance. If anyone has any views, I would welcome them
I dunno, Italy’s been un-scored-upon (apart from that own goal against the USA) and France seems to still be having problems generating offense. (Four shots on goal yesterday, including the Zidane penalty kick.)
I guess maybe it depends on how badly you need the money. If it’s me, I think I’d probably just let it ride…I just don’t see how France is going to break down the Italian defense.
Does English count as a Romance language? It’s substantially Romance.
Not by a long shot. It has a lot of Latinate and French vocab (mostly technical terms, jargon, and academic frippery), but the vast, vast majority of words spoken in everyday life are of Germanic origin. While it’s lost its inflections, the grammar is still quite Germanic, as is the phonology (our trusty “th” sound). And grammarian silliness aside, Germanically ending sentences with prepositions is still the natural thing to do.
Schweinsteiger should have played.
Man, glad I wasn’t drinking something when I read that. With my German language skills still in their infancy, I looked at that name and thought “pig climber”. Man, gotta wonder what a guy did way back when to get stuck with that moniker…
So, the guy who has France in my World Cup betting pool has offered me a 50-50 split of the pot.
If Italy win I get $325
If Italy lose I get $35
A 50-50 split is $180.
Tempting…I will have to watch the replay of the France game for guidance. If anyone has any views, I would welcome them
I’d take the money. Italy have a good defense, but no pace at the back, and Thierry Henry is very liable to expose them. And I don’t really see Italy hurting France. With Vieira and Makalele protecting the back four, they won’t be able to run through the midfield like they did against the Frings-less Germany, and there won’t be space off the striker(s) for Totti to work in. And I think Lilian Thuram should be an easy match for Luca Toni - Thuram is creaking these days, but he’s still an ox and Toni doesn’t have the pace that would hurt him.
There’s a lot of question marks about this France team, but I think they match up very well against Italy. Even with Camorano on the pitch, Italy’s gameplan is still to try and pick the lock through the middle, and I just don’t think you can do that to France. I think France are going to win this one.
However, your buddy has come out and offered you 50-50. That makes me think he reckons Italy will win. Try for a 60-40 split.
I think italy has a better chance winning this than france. For one, france has won two games, by my reckoning, on a pk. They’ve only looked good offensively in one game. Italy has yet to allow an opponent’s goal. Italy, when they score, score on shots that are quite tricky, and it’s well established that barthez is teh sukc. At the very least, I see this final going to pks, where I think italy has an advantage.
I’m picking Italy too, but it’d be worth going with TwoAlous’ suggestion just to see how close he’ll go to 60-40 or even higher. Italy are favorites after all.
I have agreed a 65:35 split, so there’s still some interest in winning but also a decent guaranteed profit for the loser.
Do you mean the winner takes 65%? Or that he’s agreed to you taking 65% of the pot regardless of the result?
The odds are Italy at 4/5 to win and France 11/10. (For those unfamiliar with this betting system: first number is what you win if you place the second number as the stake.) This is for the overall winners, regardless of score after normal or extra time.
Tradesports has Italy as a 57-43 favorite. I prefer using Tradesports to casino-style odds, because it is a market and the prices represent what people are actually willing to pay for both sides of the bet.
My question is what Materazzi could have possibly said to Zidane to set him off like that. I have to think it was something about his wife/mother/child/ethnicity/religion. Which is not to excuse Zidane for losing his cool at the worst possible time, but I think time will eventually tell that Materazzi knew his team was second best when the teams had all their best players on the pitch and that he had to provoke a foolish act from Zidane to give Italy a chance. Hell, France still had the better of play down a man.
I also really thought Vieira’s injury hurt France a lot.
I don’t think Materazzi said anything out of the ordinary to Zidane. There are lots of insults bandied around on a football pitch. My take:
Materazzi was jostling Zidane in the penalty area, and it looks like he grabbed his nipple. Zidane had been coming in for heavy treatment from the Italians all match, and he is known for having something of a short fuse. Materazzi is pretty much a thug, and he’d been kicking Zidane around all night. So I think this was just the last straw, especially because Zidane was clearly in a great amount of pain from his shoulder. So, as they walked back down the pitch after the set piece, Zidane deliberately stayed close to Materazzi, waiting for the referee to turn his back. When he did, Zidane headbutted him. Unfortunately for Zidane, the fourth official saw what the referee didn’t.
This kind of nastiness in the penalty area happens quite a lot. Two famous examples:
Oh, that didn’t work. But do a google image search for “Paul Gascoigne” “Vinnie Jones” and you’ll get the first incident. Do a google image search for “hand full of valderrama” and you’ll get the second.
I doubt the fourth official saw anything. I’d bet that they all saw it on the replay inside the stadium, and then pretended to talk it over in order to make it look like someone saw something live.
I tried to post earlier, but my stupid cable is acting up.
Basically, france made a huge mistake by not playing for the win even when down a man, because it was obvious that italy was going to win any shootout, though the end result was closer than I would have imagined. barthez had no chance of stopping any shot, but buffon had shown that he could.
If Materazzi did say something racist, then he should be punished, despite the fact right now Materazzi is my new soccer role model for the moment.
Racism is a serious issue within soccer, i mean you’ve got fans in Europe throwing Bananas and making monkey noises at Black players. Which is just downright pathetic.
All that being said, if I could get a player of Zidane’s quality sent off, I’d say whatever low nasty racist sexist homophobic ############## comment that needed.
I got a large angry Belgian man who was about 5 times better than I am to take a yellow (should have been sent off) to take a Yellow because I told him to “cry me river.” Imagine what would have happened had i had prior knowledge that Belgians hate being referred to as Dutch. I so would have told him to go back to Holland.
There’s a subtle difference between “Being a racist ######### fan by exercising your racism at a soccer game because you think it’s fun to humiliate people” and “Saying racist things despite throwing away all your integrity as a human being just to win a soccer game.”
