World Cup 2002

[h.]

Congrats Martino! Germany is in the final again, for what? The eighth time! Who do you want to face? Do the Turks have a chance?

[mccutcheon]

That was me posting Martino. What do girls know about football. As they say in Wisconsin, 'Just kidding' h.

[martino]

thanks!!!





it'll be brazil-germany, just like i betted, or my name is fred.

and brazil will win 1:0, i think.

[mccutcheon]

Shit, I'm already starting to get post World Cup blues. Where did the time go? And to be honest I couldn't keep up the lack of sleep and have missed more matches than I care to admit. And now it's almost over!!!! What am I going to do with my life now? Read a book? See a movie? Go to a gig? Have sex? How boring!

[Sloth]

Wimbledon?

[mccutcheon]

I hurt myself in the first round of the French Open so I have to sit this Wimbeldon out.

[Sloth]

I am going to check out Wimbledon tomorrow. Anna is really getting it over here. The press has been so mean to her. They keep mentioning that she sucks and has lost in the first round 10 times this year. Which begs the question why are they interviewing her at all? I guess that proves female tennis has nothing to do with tennis. I know you have the hots for the Williams' sisters McCutcheon, but I think they are unshaggable. Never date a girl that could kick your ass in a fight, I say.

Well its Brazil and Turkey in an hour and a half. Go Turkey! You are the spoiler of the tournement. Can you imagine a Turkey-Germany final? Too bad they will lose badly 3-0.

[martino]

just took my car to have the radiator welded, and the guy there, an evil-looking, fully-tatooed animal of a man, said in a timid voice: "i'm kinda glad turkey didn't win, there'd be violence in the streets in case of a turkey-germany endgame", to which i replied, "naw man, there'd only be violence if germany lost", and he smiled and agreed.

[mccutcheon]

Funny. In the World Cup of upsets it comes down to Brazil-Germany. Same old same old. Brazil has been in the finals the last three times. Germany has been in the finals eight times. Where do my loyalties lie? I would have to say Germany. I know I once had a hot passion (as if there is any onther kind) of romance with a Brazilian girl who couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Portugeues- and all we did is fuck fuck fuck and she called me 'blue eyes' and I called her 'gorgeous' and my blue eyes and her dark nipples attached to perfect full breasts- oh we had a treat, a feast all right, but in other parts of my life I have lived in Germany, lived with a German girl in Paris for a few years, went out with Pax Acidus Julia for a couple of years- who is German and have had a great time getting drunk and screwed with Germans my whole life. I have been drunker with Germans and have slept with more Germans than any other country (German girls are easy ya know) So sod the football, it comes down to living, and I've lived better with Germans. I've never even been to Brazil (except once) and by the way Brazilians are cry babbies and Martino is German.

[mccutcheon]

This the kind of shit I post after too much booze, not enough sleep for a month and my team loses. It's just a goddamn game afterall. Or isn't it?

[martino]

well, it just shows what booze does to you. you drink too much and then you end up liking the fucking krauts...

no but seriously, i think your words were very kindly spoken mc, and i appreciated them.

i know all about disliking germans -- after all, i have to live with them every day. in the uk, in france (in fact in just about anywhere in western europe) you can talk about the charm of the working class but over here most people are utterly charmless. they are rude, they are fat, they dress badly, they don't read books, they believe in facial hair. they believe in the ridiculous concept of natural behavior -- in fact, nature (as opposed to the latin concept of civilization) is king over here.

they can't talk! i mean fuck it, three guys on the turkish national team speak in a more polished and expressive german than most members of the german team!

its ok in the cities though and it's easy to have a great time, any time in frankfurt, cologne, berlin, hamburg, munich, you name it, but provincial germany, as represented by soccer tourists, as represented by german pensioners-in-socks-and-sandals in the US: it's fucking useless.

so you be for whichever country you want to be mc. surprisingly, the brazil-germany game will be the first such endgame ever. i am for the team that plays better soccer and i think it will be brazil, but in this cup of surprises, you never know.

[mccutcheon]

Fucking goodbye Marquez! Ya fucking cunt!

Rafael Marquez of Mexico has been banned for four matches for head-butting after being sent off in the second round match against the United States at the World Cup. Fifa also slapped a £3,500 fine on Marquez, who plays his club football in France with Monaco. (Yeah I know that Monaco isn't in France, but I'm not going to explain everything about football to the American punters who are so confused already.) He was dismissed near the end of the 2-0 defeat by the US for his illegal challenge on Cobi Jones.

[mccutcheon]

Ronaldo is eating a discreet lunch in the Brazilian training room when McCutcheon meets up with him again.

Mc- Hi again.

R- You again.

Mc- So, you got another goal. You now lead the tournament with six.

R- Yeah, I'm playing very well.

Mc- To me it seemed you just toe jammed the ball and got lucky, if you hadn't knocked Rustu on the head at the end of the first half I don't think it would have gone in.

R- But it did go in. That's football.

Mc- Why did you come out later in the game?

R- I still hurt a lot and knew we were going to win, so…

Mc- Now you are in the final. The third time in a row.

R- Yes.

Mc- Do you think you'll lose 3-0 again?

R- No!

Mc- Is Ronaldinho going play with you? I mean I know he plays for my team PSG and I like him on the pitch, but he always seemed like someone you wanted to punch in the face with his floppy hair and buck toothed smile. Ronaldinho is just an exotic way to say Ronald, a real geek name. Doesn't he seem more like a nerd than a world class playboy footballer.

R- Yeah I think Big Phil will put him back in. And yeah he is a cunt. He hits on my wife all the time. Still, the idiot can dribble the ball, he has got that control.

Mc- Stupid haircut by the way.

R- It's Latin fashion.

[mccutcheon]

Well I must say that this is the most entertaining 3rd place match I have ever seen. I love the way S. Korea played this World Cup, and they didn't win today and took fourth place and really didn't play that well but that shouldn't take away from the whole tournament. Shukur finally came up with a goal, the fastest ever recorded in a World Cup at 10 seconds into the match. I don't see that record falling anytime soon. And then throughout the match both Turkey and S. Korea did well to keep up the pace and Rustu proved how good a goalie he really is.


Now for the final: 3:30 am kickoff. will the three R's do it? will my buddy Ronaldo be the Brazial hereo? will Germany's defense ever contain the three R's? is it possiabe for Kahn to record another shutout? wait and see......

[mccutcheon]

Whenever an American sports team wins it all they always claim to be the greatest in the world. Look at the American Football Super Bowl, the basketball NBA Championship or the Baseball World Series- which only takes place in the two cities involved and only ever in two countries- The USA and sometimes Canada.

Sure it's great they win, and they really are the best in the world at these sports so American broadcasters, coaches and players always pour on the accolades such as ‘World Champion' or ‘Greatest Team in the World'. But in reality they are not competing against the world. And only a relatively small amount of American punters give a toss, anyway. The final of The World Cup will be televised and watched by 1.5 billion people around the planet.

So I say, whoever wins the match is the real World Champion, the Greatest Team on Earth- because basically The World Cup, unlike The World Series, lives up to it's name sake.


The World Cup final between Germany and Brazil on Sunday will be watched by 1.5 billion giving it the biggest audience in television history, its Swiss broadcasters said.

"1.5 billion is the expectation for the final match -- accumulated for the 64 matches we expect more than 40 billion spectators," said Host Broadcast Services' (HBS) chief executive Francis Tellier on Saturday.

The figure -- around one in four of the planet's population -- is easily the largest ever viewership for a single TV program, according to HBS.

HBS is wholly-owned by KirchSports, a Swiss subsidiary of insolvent German media company KirchMedia, and was set up in 1999 to provide 200 of the world's broadcasters with television pictures of the World Cups in 2002 and in 2006.

The company is employing 2,800 directors, cameramen, technicians and other staff to cover the 2002 World Cup being co-hosted in Korea and Japan -- far more than it will need in Germany in four years.

"Basically, it's three times the workload, it's three times the budget," said Tellier.

"You have one World Cup in Korea, one World Cup in Japan and then once you have organized these two World Cups you have to organise a third one which is a unified World Cup to make sure that for the audience it looks like one single World Cup."

The total budget for HBS to cover this World Cup is around 200 million Swiss Francs of which 70 percent is being spent on equipment rental and wages.

The scale of the operation is staggering; over 2,000 kilometers of cable -- more than enough to link Seoul with Tokyo -- have been laid, 800 tons of equipment have been shifted into stadiums and broadcast centers, 260 cameras and 2800 television monitors have been in operation and facilities have been provided for up to 1,000 match commentators.

The broadcast compound at the Yokohama International stadium was abuzz with anticipation on Saturday as HBS prepared for the show-stopping finale to their four-week marathon.

Huge drums of cable whirred as technicians put the finishing touches to the wiring while Steadicam operators readied their backbreaking equipment and the harnesses they use to ease the load.

Twenty-three cameras will be trained on Sunday's match between Brazil and Germany, including the 'in-goal' camera that has debuted in 2002.

If the final is marred by any of the controversy over refereeing or play-acting that has colored the tournament so far, banks of state-of-the-art digital slow-motion machines will replay the action over and over again to either enraged or ecstatic audiences in Brasilia or Berlin.

The man casting the spotlight on the brilliance and the blunders on the pitch on Sunday is TV director Volker Weicker, a 25-year veteran of live directing.

Weicker will be selecting the images, graphics and slow-motions provided by his handpicked team of cameramen and engineers, mixing them into the programme that will go out to the world.

Weicker says he is aware of the millions if not billions of people watching his work but is too busy in the intense control room atmosphere to worry about making a mistake himself.

"If you think about the pressure you'll probably get into trouble so I don't think about it. I just do my job," he said.

"It's a soccer match first of all. It's the final and I'm very happy and glad and proud to be picked to do that but I just do what I do normally -- just doing my work," he says.

Weicker, a German, was picked to do the final from a pool of soccer-specialist German, French and British directors long before the German national team made it to Yokohama.

The majority of his cameramen also hail from Germany but Weicker says audiences in Brazil need not fear unbalanced coverage on their television screens.

"The heart is going to surely beat with one team but they are all professionals as I try to be -- we want to have fun as well as the players have fun on the pitch," he said.

"We want to produce a good final. It won't be subjective in what we pick to show from the pitch," he said.