FIFA Confederations Cup 2013 - Official Discussion Thread

[minionofmidas]

If Tahiti does not win I shall consider the Confederations Cup an unnecessary failure of a tournament.

[minionofmidas]

If Tahiti does not win I shall consider the Confederations Cup an unnecessary failure of a tournament.

Ding ding ding! Surprised it took so long but there it is: your first message of ironic support for Tahiti!

Really? The first one? Oh dear. I guess I forgot to include a message of support when I discussed how they got to the CC in the first place.

[minionofmidas]

I have searched for it, and indeed I did not. I guess I'll have to put something in my sig to make up for it.

[minionofmidas]

Why does Tahiti have a team?  Does each piece of French Polynesia compete separately?  Wouldn't they be a stronger team if they competed together?

It's actually the team of all of French Polynesia. Over two thirds of whose population live on Tahiti, and I doubt much football is played on many of the smaller islands. It's just called Tahiti for historical reasons; it has existed since the 1950s. New Caledonia has a team of its own since 2004; none of the other remaining French colonies has a team.

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Tahiti's only current player good enough to play in major European leagues, Marama Vahirua, moved to France at age 18 and actually played for France's U-21 but never the first team. Only now, ten years later and on account of the Confed Cup did they draft him back into the Tahitian squad. His cousing Pascal Vahirua did play for France in the early 90s. Similarly Christian Karembeu (of the 98 and 2000 tournament-winning French squad) is a New Caledonian. (Summary: "yes".)

[minionofmidas]

Footballing colors, in real countries, are quite as long-established as national flags, and changing them arouses deep passions. This includes club colors.
Germany still play in the White and Black of the Prussian flag. And though they flirted with other colors (red, dark gray) their secondary color has traditionally been and is now once again green - based on the emblem of the German footballing association, which always has been green for reasons nobody now remembers. *shrugs*

The green-white-red tricolor of Italy was originally the flag of the Napoleonic era Cisalpine Republic and based on the uniform of the Milanese city guard (and the design of the French tricolor, no doubt). It was recycled, as a flag of a future revolutionary Habsburg-free Italy during the revolution of 1848, and adorned with the previous flag of Piemont-Sardinia and a blue border for its ruling house became the flag of PS in 1851 (a very clear declaration of intent that!)



This remained the flag after Piemont-Sardinia conquered virtually all of Italy and renamed itself in 1859-61. The shield in the middle was only removed in 1946, and by then, of course, footballing colors were long established - Italy have played in blue since 1911 (except in their 1938 world cup win, incidentally, when they played in Fascist all black.)

[minionofmidas]

Most of the time when that happens, they play for a better country's youth team and then when it's clear that they won't get in that country's senior team they pick their second country, which is understandable. You see it a lot with the German youth teams, where a lot of players then go on to play for Turkey or America or Iran or whatever. Lots of African immigrants in France too who grow up in France, play with their youth teams, but aren't good enough for the French team so they play for Senegal or something.

Initially, anybody could play for whatever country's citizenship he held. After a wave of players switching countries for money in the late 50s and early 60s (especially South Americans playing for Italy or Spain), switching teams was banned completely for forty years. This caused an ugly rush for young talent in the 90s, as you can imagine, with for instance Turkish and German national team representatives talking to 13 and 14 year old German-born ethnic-Turkish kids irrespective of current citizenship status to convince them to PLAY once FOR US and thus become ineligible to the other side for ever.
Hence why the rules were relaxed in 2004. Switching is now possible, but only once during your career and only on certain conditions (which have since been finetuned a couple of times).

[minionofmidas]

You're painfully ignorant.

I'm painfully ignorant because I didn't know that the House of Savoy's (which I've only barely even heard of anyway) official color is blue?  Or because I didn't realize that Italy's soccer team would chose its uniform color based on that, rather than the color of its flag?

You're painfully ignorant because your questions prove you assumed the Italian team essentially just picked a color out of a hat. Assumed it had no meaning ("like the U.S. picking purple"). You said you figured the team would pick their national colors which means you assumed blue most certainly couldn't be the national color.

No. The notion that there might conceivably be some reason for it that he could not fathom - and thus that they didn't just pick it out of a hat even though that's how it must seem to anyone unaware of the history behind - was implicit in the question.

However, he most certainly is painfully ignorant for having "barely even heard" of the House of Savoy.

[minionofmidas]

Harry asked if there was  "some kind of awesome reason" for the color choice. That means he thought the answer might be no, in which case he found it entirely possible that it was picked randomly.

You would, if you could not conceive what the reason might possibly be.

Eh. He's an American Football fan. We should not hold such sad individuals to a high standard.

[minionofmidas]

I, too, am an American Football fan, Lewis. 

Hence why I'm expecting so little of you.

(but I hope you meant an American football fan.)

[minionofmidas]

Tahiti score! Wow!

Partytime!

[minionofmidas]

1-1. Spain are content scoring once. Tahiti save their goal for very late this time. (One can dream...)

[minionofmidas]

80% is the highest 'possession rate' recorded that I could find evidence for in a few minutes searching, not counting these two evident errors.

Barca lost a CL game with almost that level of possession this year, of course (to Celtic, in the group stage).

[minionofmidas]

If that really happened, they'd definitely give it to somewhere in the Americas. (Remember 1986?)

[minionofmidas]

Checking stats, Tahiti did have a single shot on goal in the match. Anybody know whether that was an actual chance to score?
Also, Spain made do with just 62% possession.

[minionofmidas]

I didn't see it, but possession stats alone are not much of an indicator how a game actually went. Having the ball 60odd% of the time in a smashing win is a very different ballgame than having it 60odd% of the time in a game in which you were behind for a considerable stretch - these stats sometimes amass because the one side is content defending the result and the other can't think of what to do, thus passing between defenders a lot. Succesful tackles stats tend to correlate with winners far more (and very rarely hit as high as 60% - basically anything over 55% is a game you have no business not winning. I didn't find that number for this game.)
The even higher shares up to 80% that occasionally occur in the CL, the Premiership and the Primera División (but not, ever, in the Bundesliga and the Serie A, where the actual difference in quality between the 3rd from top and the 3rd from bottom tends to be less) presumably can happen only when you're totally outclassing your opponent and playing in a style related to the Spanish national team's and are behind and facing an opposition stonewall anyways.

[minionofmidas]

If that really happened, they'd definitely give it to somewhere in the Americas. (Remember 1986?)

Of course. I think they'd aim to take the games out of South America and with Mexico surely not in the running, I don't see how they'd go to any country other than the U.S.

I just realized you were talking about the US and not Italy the first time around when you said "we".
Silly me.

[minionofmidas]

Definitely it's envy, Phil. It's pretty clear when you mention "arrogance". Rivalry it's OK, but you go a step further.

No, he just takes it very seriously. Which is bound up with his overall character.

Seeing the Italian-Spanish rivalry in action is always hilarious because for some strange reason the rest of Europe is barely aware of it.

[minionofmidas]

It should have been 2010 - Germany really played the best football, and could have beaten Spain (unlike the 2008 Euro final, when Spain was definitely better, and had played superbly throughout the whole competition). Most likely, we will have to wait for the next tournament hosted by Italy ..

I do think the quality of the German team is beyond it's ca. 2011 peak now. Certainly the attractiveness of their play is as well.

[minionofmidas]

The latter. I'm hazy about where exactly I'd put the peak though.

[minionofmidas]

So Uruguay to win in Brazil again in 2014. Excellent.

Again? That would be so frigging hilarious.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, I wonder what they'll do for timing when the World Cup comes around. 2002 was brutal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cup_2014

So the final will be on at a reasonable(ish) time over here, 9pm.

[minionofmidas]

In Germany, the final was watched by some 2 million people, which is quite a lot considering the timing.
I don't think staying up until midnight is much of an issue here.

If the final is begun at midnight, of course, that's staying up til 2am. Ooh, some people want to watch the celebrations afterwards too. They stay up til 3.

Not a problem for consenting adults unless they need to get up at 5, of course. But World Cup time is when kids who don't even know the rules yet have a constitutional right to be watching as much as is feasible, and certainly the final.

I woke up in the middle of the night so many times in 2002

Oh yeah, those morning games back in the day... you're right, those would have been dead-middle-of-night games for Americans. They did try to move as many as possible of the most interesting games to the latest slots...

[minionofmidas]

Also, they are in a ridiculously wrong time zone so staying up late is just self-defense, and they have long noon breaks.