Football Fanats 2014 - The year of World Cup

[Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister]

Usrin, I hope you will earn 7 points within 2 hours! :-)

[CTG]

Go Belgium! Teach those morose nationalistic war-mongers a lesson on cultural integration and international cooperation.

You are a stupid western european. Russian nation is not equal to Putin.

[BonzaiJoe]

Looool, yes, I'm a stupid Western European. I'm brainwashed by my opinionated media and I have no idea about it because I never try to see all sides of a situation or do research in non-mainstream media.

Last year, I made an interview with Alexey Plutser-Sarno of the anti-regime activist group VOINA whose founder has been detained by the regime. I know not everybody in Russia likes Putin. However, when such a majority of the population supports the kind of policies he's pushing, that means I don't support their national team. I believe Russia is moving in a very bad direction politically, and so does Alexey and VOINA. I don't want Putin to win the PR victory of getting a great result at the World Cup with a team of players who all play in their own national league.

[CTG]

Looool, yes, I'm a stupid Western European. I'm brainwashed by my opinionated media and I have no idea about it because I never try to see all sides of a situation or do research in non-mainstream media.

Making a research from a safe and distant armchair won't give you a real picture about that world. You should live there first to complete a deep analysis about a certain nation. I'm sure that a significant mass of voters choose Putin, because they are afraid of the system - just like in the good old communism. It's not a joke: 30 years ago it was obligatory to vote (in most of the Eastern block countries), even if they had only a single party. Funny fact: >100% participation rates and >100% ratio victories were quite common, since all the elections were cheated - and they didn't even care about the absurdity of the screwed up manipulated data.

However, the Russian moral is really low and different from Europe with its endless corruption and strong post-communist dictatorial pattern. Since I'm involved in some Russian business cases, I'm disgusted by their general attitude, carrying all the annoying inheritage of USSR. But still, I can't hate their whole nation because of that. Maybe they are not "enlightened", but I don't think they are malicious.

I know, nobody cares about Eurovision song contest, but I have to bring up this example: when the Russian participants - two young girls - took the stage, the audience started to boo just because they are from Russia. Did they think those teenager chicks are responsible for the evil acts of their country? Is it really acceptable from the "democratic" and tolerant Western Europe? Imagine if it happened to an afroamerican artist - the whole media would cry about racism, even if booing was against the certain country's policy. Sometimes I feel the sofa experts of democracy are tolerant only to some chosen nations/groups.

[CTG]

Back to football, today's predictions:

Netherlands - Chile: the Oranje wants to prove their superiority, therefore they will give the maximum and outmatch the South Americans.

Spain - Australia: boring match of two disappointed teams. Spain should win to get back a little respect and self-confidence.

Cameroon - Brazil: the money-oriented monkeys should not be a hard opponent for such a strong home team (even if they played crappy versus Mexico).

Croatia - Mexico: both teams played well in the first two rounds, their power level seems to be more or less equal. Might be a good match finishing with a draw?

[Usrin]

I don't think that Alexey Plutser-Sarno and VOINA members would support the actual opponents of the Russians in sports, just because they are suppressed with the Russian government. So it's not a good way for showing your solidarity with them.

Many thousands of Hungarians fled from the Communist regime after the failed revolution in 1956 - and they went to cheer for the sportsmen of the (Communist) Hungary when they played in a Western country...

[BonzaiJoe]

I don't hate the entire Russian nation. I didn't hate the entire American nation during the era of George W. Bush either.
As for the booing at the grand prix, that was not fair to the two teenage girls. However, it was a strong signal sent from a lot of ordinary people to a regime (because of course everybody knew they were booing at the regime and not the girls). I'm not sure whether it was a good idea. I don't think your racism parallel is very relevant.
About living in a certain country in order to know about it, well, yes, that would be preferable. I don't think it's necessary in order to have an opinion about something. That is, I think Putin's politics is unacceptable no matter what. I'm not just talking about the invasion of Crimea. This is also about gay rights, political prisoners and mock elections.

It's true for all nations that a lot of good and ordinary people will be happy if their team wins the World Cup. By a utilitaristic logic we should all support Brazil because they have the greatest number of fans. But since we don't use this logic, we must use some other logic to determine who we support. I mix it with politics because it does have a considerable political effect.

[BonzaiJoe]

I think it would be a little different if Russia wasn't a kind of democratic state. How did you feel about North Korea in 2010?

About football, I dreamed that Brazil vs Cameroon ended in a 5-6 defeat for Brazil and that they were eliminated from the cup (which couldn't happen in reality because they'd have a better goal difference than Mexico...).

[CTG]

How did you feel about North Korea in 2010?

I was only laughing, 'cause they were super weak.

[CTG]

Go Belgium! Teach those morose nationalistic war-mongers a lesson on cultural integration and international cooperation.

You are a stupid western european. Russian nation is not equal to Putin.

Btw it was a useless argument, since I was supporting Belgium, too.

[BonzaiJoe]

Go Belgium! Teach those morose nationalistic war-mongers a lesson on cultural integration and international cooperation.

You are a stupid western european. Russian nation is not equal to Putin.

Btw it was a useless argument, since I was supporting Belgium, too.

Why were you supporting Belgium, then?

[CTG]

'cause beer is better than vodka.

(check my country preferences, Belgium is the first, Russia is "only" 7th)

[CTG]

31 Algeria
Terrorists.

32 South Korea
Remember 2002.

Yesterday's match was probably the most uninteresting duel for me in World Cups' history...

[Usrin]

I'm afraid that Akoss Poo doesn't want to show us the standings after Group Stage 2. (Hm... why???)
Anyway, I don't want you the miss this information.

Pos User                P  W  D  L  F  A  GD   Bonus Points
1   Usrin              29  1 13 15 17 68 -51    10    26
2   Nacho Santivañez   32  3 12 17 44 59 -15    4     25
3   Alan Rotoi         29  3 12 14 41 67 -26    4     25
4   Duplode            32  2 14 16 40 68 -28    2     22
5   AkossTheBiggestPoo 32  3 10 19 34 75 -41    2     21
6   MasterCTG          32  3  9 20 43 68 -25    2     20
7   Bonzai Joe         32  3  8 21 47 74 -27    2     19

[CTG]

I'm afraid that Akoss Poo doesn't want to show us the standings after Group Stage 2. (Hm... why???)
Anyway, I don't want you the miss this information.

Pos User                P  W  D  L  F  A  GD   Bonus Points
1   Usrin              29  1 13 15 17 68 -51    10    26
2   Nacho Santivañez   32  3 12 17 44 59 -15    4     25
3   Alan Rotoi         29  3 12 14 41 67 -26    4     25
4   Duplode            32  2 14 16 40 68 -28    2     22
5   AkossTheBiggestPoo 32  3 10 19 34 75 -41    2     21
6   MasterCTG          32  3  9 20 43 68 -25    2     20
7   Bonzai Joe         32  3  8 21 47 74 -27    2     19

Because they were cheating in the second round! EVERYBODY! Else, Akoss would still lead any kind of prediction game!