World Cup 2010 is down to four teams, two of which play on Tuesday in the tournament’s first semifinal. Uruguay, the surprise of the tournament, takes on a Netherlands team coming off their victory over the competition’s favorites.
To talk about that match as well as answer some of the feedback we got from our Luis Suárez discussion, I welcome Kartik Krishnaiyer and Laurence McKenna to this edition of the World Cup Buzz Podcast.
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Easy win for the Netherlands here, no Suarez hehe
I wish Uruguay had Suarez but you still have to play 90 minutes so we shall see. I pick Uruguay by 1.0
Yes we still have to play 90 minutes, but the way the Dutch are playing coming of a victory over Brazil will push them even harder to win this world cup. No Uruguay will not win from the Dutch, but it will not be an easy game, no game in this world cup was easy for any team, although, the Germans seem to cruise really well. I am hoping for a rematch of the 1974 world cup Holland – Germany, maybe we finally get our revenge for that dreadful 2-1 loss.
Good podcast, as have been the whole WC series you guys have done. Really enhanced my WC experience this time around.
That said, I’m getting a little annoyed with Farley’s Milton Friedman routine vis-a-vis the Suarez handball. What’s so hard to get about the view that, (a) yes, the ‘professional foul’ served the purpose it was intended to serve (being, likely, to buy Uruguay exactly one add’l game in the tournament) and yet still to manage and insistence that (b) this–as with many a clutch ‘professional foul’–was the act of a poor sportsman and a morally underwhelming jerk.
Not sure why Farley so vehemently insists a commitment to a professional culture of fair play and sportsmanship is such a public bad. Naive? Inefficient? Whatever.
The sport–like all sports–is a game played overwhelmingly by children. A basic truth that gets lost in all the hooplah and money. Especially, I suspect, in the case of analytic entrail-readers like Farley (who’s entrail-reading I generally appreciate quite a lot!).
Accepting RF’s full-bladder whiz on grown people’s having any legitimate interest in fair play for its own sake, the ‘Chicago School’ approach to sportsmanship (i.e. ‘coffee is for closers’, and culture-of-fair-play arguments are sooo un-serious) does, at a minimum, real damage to some basic goals of the youth game. I think that matters.
Talking the fair play talk is not a fool’s errand.