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Picture at the top, germany won and was on the left side 😉

I did a line up of all the bets you could have set based on the predictions of Paul for my Blog. Names in German but I think it is clear 😉

If you would’ve started with 100 €

Deutschland : Australien Quote 1,55 155,00 €

Deutschland : Serbien Quote 5,50 852,50 €

Deutschland : Ghana Quote 1,55 1.321,37 €

Deutschland : England Quote 2,87 3.792,34 €

Deutschland : Argentinien Quote 3,30 12.514,74 €

Deutschland : Spanien Quote 2,65 33.164,06 €

Spanien : Holland Quote 2,1 69.644,54 €

Not bad for an octopus.

Just to inform you, Löw will stay and the back injury could be become very serious in case of harsh tackle. As I said before, have a look to Buffon. Klose wants to play another season at Munich, records aren’t the most important thing in life.

Writing in capitals also doesn’t underline anything 😉

If they showed so much lack in respect why they won the game? Season starts in a month and I think that the health of the players is also important for the clubs. Butt played his last world cup so it was a nice chance for him to play a game. Don’t see the problem as they won 3:2. It was a pretty nice game and I think the team was a good match for Uruguay. Setting up Klose would be irresponsible as a back injury could be the end of his career (have a look at Buffon). It also was a nice chance for the players who sat the whole world cup on the bench and supported their team without any complain for not being part of the starting eleven.

I don’t know to who you actually talk in Germany, but I don’t think it was the majority. Everybody I talked to is curious to see the game. I expect a great game, Schweinsteiger and Özil are running for the golden ball, Klose needs a goal to get equal with Ronaldo and Müller runs for the best youngster. This will be a pretty nice game and I’m totally looking ahead to it. Don’t take comments the day after we lost to spain too serious, Germany is a football nation and as we have to wait another month till the league will start, this will be the last game to watch for a pretty long time.

In the European cup we won 3:1 against Portugal and that was also the game about the third place which was pretty entertaining.

They don’t need to play. Paul said Spain will be world champion and Germany will be third.

Germany lost 4 finals 😉 I don’t think that depression stacks, but nevertheless it would be a disaster for both teams.

I’m going with the Dutch. Two reason, many players from the Bundesliga in the team of our neighbors and for sure i want at least a little feeling of revenge after loosing two times to Spain in two major events.

I think that the dutch won’t be as passive as Germany was. We had to much respect and played way to defensive, they won’t do the same mistake as we did. With Van Bommel as the head of the defense, Robben in the midfield and a guy like Snejider in the offense the dutch have pretty good chances in my eyes. They just need to get control over the midfield, easy to say but hard to manage. Nevertheless I think they can do it.

But there will be another game for Germany too. Klose needs two goals to be the most successive scorer ever in world cup history and he will shoot at least one to equalize with Ronaldo. I think that game will be a joy to watch as the pressure is off the team.

I understand your point of view, my problem with changing the rules is, that since now nobody made a decent suggestion on how the rules should be changed. You easily can demand a change but without any better ideas it will be difficult. Also nobody respond to the argumentation against certain changes. I’m not saying that there can’t be improvements, but the ideas I heard so far wouldn’t bring the game any further.

I won’t respond to your conclusion that cheating is related to your cultural background as this is ridiculous. But I want to point out some things.

Every time you stop another player by a foul you break the rules. You stop him by a tackle you aren’t supposed to do. So you’re cheating. That is your perspective, fact. But tackles are part of the game you won’t deny it, would you? So everybody who tackles someone cheated on purpose, that is the main conclusion of your article.

I don’t know why you think that some things are worse than others. If a striker is running onto the goal and a defender destroys his legs just to save his team from a goal, it’s even worse then playing the ball with the hand. He accepts that the other player might gets injured for the whole tournament or season. You saw the foul by Kevin Prince Boateng at the FA Cup Final against Ballack? That tackle took the opportunity to play his last world cup as he won’t play the next one because he will be too old.

Isn’t that more cheating than saving your own team in a quarter final by playing the ball with your hand? Do you really think that things like these deserve a harder punishment than taking someones health to risk? I don’t think so.

But in my opinion you can break the rules. That is not a problem, you just have to face the consequences, which should be relativated to the thing you did. There is no harder punishment than a red card, you could get banned for 1 game or 10, but that doesn’t affect the actual game. There couldn’t be anything worse than being thrown off the field. So what’s your recommendation to prevent cheating? And where does cheating starts and where does it end? As I said, every time you break the rules you’re cheating, it doesn’t start when you play the ball with your hand.

Also I want to add that there is a review after every game. And if you i.e. smack someone on the field you will be punished afterwards. That’s nothing new and it happens a lot.

“There are football schools in the world that teach players to dive.”

That’s true but in a different way. The player were taught on getting in situations where the defender has to play a foul. That’s a small difference but an important. Ever been to a football school in Europe or you just read those things on message boards?

I won’t start arguing that whole culture thing, but make sure that this never backfires on your team. There are eleven individuals on the field, they play for their countries but they don’t represent them. Also a small difference.

And at least, what do you think should happen to a player like Suarez? Should he been hung in the middle of the country as an example of how to treat cheaters? I say it again, he broke a rule in a football game, he didn’t start a war.

The Players are getting paid millions at their clubs not for playing in the national team.

The Suarez incident is really not a big deal to me. You can consider it cheating if you want, for me cheating is something different. The goal by Maradona at the 86 cup, that was cheating. He scored a goal with his hand and told everyone it was his head. Suarez broke a rule and was punished for it. Where is the big deal. Ghana had there chance by scoring the penalty, they didn’t took it. They had another chance by winning the penalty shoot out and they failes.

And yes the Lampard goal should’ve count, but also England had another half time to score. The question is, where do you want to start investigating. It could be a missgiven throw in which leads to a goal. Everything counts on the field, do you want to review every corner, every throw in? That’s just ridicoulus, but if you’re going to start this whole investigating thing it will go further and further. Anyone will feel cheated one time and the next level is there. At the end you pause the game every minute to review the last decision.

I didn’t say on any comment that I like how that world cup turned out, but we have to send better refs instead a ref from every country. The referee from Spain who gave 11 Cards in one game also did a miserable job in the league, why is someone like this judging a world cup game? Send better refs and don’t change the rules. And if there are only referees from five or six countries, who cares?

And yes, this is the biggest sport event in the world. But it’s just a sport event. Incorrect decisions are part of this cup since it was introduced and I don’t know why you are so confident that there won’t be any more wrong decisions when you change the rules.

You don’t need to get personal, we’re just talking about a game 😉

Paul only uses his power on German games. 🙂

Maybe I’ll start writing articles on the German Bundesliga when it starts in August. The interest seem to be rising since the world cup, also I may can improve my English skills a bit with some articles. Also I want to have a look at cricket, never saw a game in my lifetime so I give it a chance.

I like this side a lot since the behavior here is nice and people actually have nice discussions. One thing that brought the world cup to me.

“Dom, so you are one of those dim witted people that cannot see anything wrong with a law that gives the advantage to the offender and see nothing wrong with cheating? Is cheating something that you do to get through in life?”

First of all, we’re talking about football and not about my life. I think it’s a big difference between taking a dive in a football game or i.e. cheating your wife. So, no,

But when you’re talking about real life examples, you want to build up cameras in every place to watch over your head? Little bit of clockwork orange? I can’t understand why people can’t accept that there are human beings on the field who are doing mistakes. Even with video technology you’ll have wrong decisions all over the place. So why over complicating the game?

Just don’t take football too serious. Surely it’s awfull when your team loses based on a wrong decision, but does that affect your life in any way? In the next week another game will come and the one in which you lose is forgotten. Theirs really too much drama about that whole rule thing. I watch football for my whole life, sometimes it gives me thrills, sometimes I’m sad and sometimes I’m mad about the refs decision, but that’s what football is about. If you’re making a clear sport out of it, without shades of grey and every situation is black and white, I don’t know if I want to go to the stadium every week. It would be boring.

As I said in another commentary:

The better team won. I’m close to tears but nevertheless we have to admit that the Spaniards played the better football today. We didn’t play offensive enough, we had too much respect but in 4 years maybe the day of our young team will come. I cross the fingers for both finalist to win their first world cup. I’m disappointed but I’m full of respect for my team.

The better team won. I’m close to tears but nevertheless we have to admit that the Spaniards played the better football today. We didn’t play offensive enough, we had too much respect but in 4 years maybe the day of our young team will come. I cross the fingers for both finalist to win their first world cup. I’m disappointed but I’m full of respect for my team.

I’m totally against the most of the changes you want to make. No offence, but most of em would bring the sport down.

First of all you have to think about the lower leagues which can’t provide more referees or video technology. For the highest league of a country it surely would be no problem to provide with video technology but would that be a blessing?

A compromise would be the best in my opinion. Give the manager the chance to throw a flag like you do in American football i.e. But you can only throw it 2 times a game. If you do so, the manager will only do it in a very critical situation and you don’t have to review every situation that might be wrong. The speed would be taken out of the game, also you don’t have a clock that is running like in Ice hockey, if you review every situation you can play 120 minutes. The sport just isn’t made for things like this.

I’m also against an harder punishment for players like Suarez. If he did the same in the 20th minute of the game, 10 games ban would be totally above the line. If Ghana shot the goal from the penalty nobody would be asking for a stricter rule. He didn’t break someone leg, he just played the ball with his hand, come on everybody at his position would’ve done the exact same thing. I think the punishment was totally ok.

You would have 7 referees on the field with your system, that’s totally to much. People do fail, that’s in our nature and if you look back in the history of football there always have been eclatant calls. Hand of god Maradona who shot a goal with his hand or the wembley goal which was equalized this year. In my opinion that’s not bad for the sport, it just adds emotions no other sport has. We can discuss about it and we could feel good or bad. If everything would be punished the right way the sport would definitely lose a huge amount of his flair.

I’m watching a min. of 3 games a week when the season is running in germay. I’m at the press conferences of 3 major clubs in germany and things like these keep the game alive. I don’t think that it would be good to make the sport “cleaner”

Leave it as it is, maybe do some small adjustment, but don’t change the rules in general. That’s really not necassary.

Don’t forget, on the final of the European Cup where Germany played Spain as well, Paul said Germany would win. He just wants to confuse you 😉

Don’t give all the credit to Löw. For sure he is the head coach and in this function he’s for sure responsible for a huge part of the success. But as the whole worldcup, also the tactical side, is teamwork. Löw works in association with the university for sports in Cologne. Under the lead of Urs Siegenthaler every team which Germany played is analyzed by 40 students. After that a data file with all the informations which are relevant are given to the team. Also every player gets his own file with explicit advice on how to play against the next opponent. It’s not just Löw, it’s the whole system of teamwork which brings the success at the moment.

I’m really excited about the game against Spain, but also I won’t bet on a win. For sure the German team did an outstanding word so far but you have to think from game to game. Just because we smashed Argentina and England doesn’t mean we’re able to do the same with Spain. I’m optimistic, but nothing more. Good thing is that the national team does the same. They stay on the ground and keep the focus. If they keep their minds free and concentrated they can achieve everything, but football is more then just tactics and physical fitness. Anything can happen, an early goal, a red card, a penalty or something like that could bring the team in an awkward position. I don’t know if they’re able to handle it, but I keep my fingers crossed. We have some really good boys out there with the will to win, in two days we’ll know if they can.

Adding this rule will be kind of complicated, it’s not basketball where 2 points are easy equaled. With that kind of game you could also ruin a game. I think the chance of a penalty is quite enough. Nevertheless you’ll need video prove and chip in the ball to tell if it would’ve hit the net. Not every hand ball is quite as clear as the one of Suarez. I like clear rules even it seems a bit unfair from time to time, but everything hits back. Look at the Wembley goal which was equaled 44 years later. That’s one of the things I love about football.

What exactly would the extra time rule bring to the game? Why you want to let them run even more when they have a 90 minute game behind them? The number of injuries will raise and it won’t make the game any quicker as the field will remain the same dimension, don’t see any advantage out of that.

You can’t compare it to the situation in which Henry was. Henry scored a goal and the ref didn’t saw it. Suarez prevented a goal, saw red and Ghana became a penalty. He sacrificed his own world cup for the good of the team, also he got punished by the red card. For sure it was a bad thing for Ghana but we wouldn’t discuss this issue if he played volleyball in the tenth minute. Ghana had it on the food and if you’re not able to score a penalty in a world cup quarterfinal which can lead your team to victory you may didn’t deserve to win.

You can’t tell if it was the right thing to do, he made a decision and got the consequences. I don’t see any unfair acting, when a striker is on his way to the goal and is stopped by a rough tackle in front of the goal by a defender, it’s the exact same thing. He’ll be send off and the other team gets their penalty. Part of the game and behind closed doors, I love it. It adds some emotion to the games.