Big Question: What will be the Biggest News Story at the World Cup?

The big story will be how crappy Adidas’ shirts look in comparison to those from Nike and Puma–in Germany, no less!

How about who ever scores the 2000th goal of World Cup history. Who would it be????

Sepp Blatter caught with a hooker while gambling $2million of FIFA’s money on what Beckham’s new tattoo will be.
Front page of The Sun, June 9 2006.

It may be about violence. Let’s see who will break Ronaldinho’s legs.

By the way, I was watching the Villareal-Arsenal game and I was shocked by the violence the ref allowed in the field. There is no hope for Brazil if the refs keep allowing violence like that.

I predict that some violent team will win this year, no kidding.

I just hope Hooligans won´t be on the headlines.

I agree with the guy who talks about the breaking of Ronaldinho’s legs. For some reason this thought has been with me for a while. And the only reason I can think of is that what we are seeing is the emergence of the greatest player since Maradonna and perhaps Pele. We know that Pele was litterally “kicked” out of the WC in ‘66 when England went on to win. And we know also that Maradonna suffered terrible, terrible abuse from defenders during his prime–perhaps shortening his career and limiting his performances. I think that either consciously or unconsciously teams, managers and players may realize that Brazil will be untouchable with Ronaldinho in top form–and they may go after him. To see him “kicked” out of this coming World Cup could be the biggest story…

The penalties for harsh (and repeated) fouling are so much more strict and acknowledged that it would take a real team effort to keep fouling one player to the point that he could no longer continue. Of course, there are freak accidents that can happen and I hope that we see an injury free tournament (if only the Aussies could stay healthy before the bloody thing starts!).

I would be interested to hear Aaron’s (Referee’s Blog) opinion on these comments about Ronaldinho getting kicked out of the World Cup. Do referees recognise who players are and perhaps give them closer scrutiny (not necessarily preferential treatment) when they come under challenge? Or is the game too fast for that and you just have to make the call as you see it in that split second?

THE biggest story of the WC….Croatia wins it all!..They run through the tournament without conceading a goal, and beat Brazil in the final 4:0 (without breaking any legs). HUAH!

I’m curious which teams Euler and others think will be “violent”. I also watched the game last night and didn’t think the fouling was excessive in any way. Every game has its occassional hard tackle or miss-timed challenges, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. And if Ronaldinho didn’t have his legs broken playing through the Champions League why would he now have them broken in the World Cup? He’ll essentially be playing all the same players in the WC that he has played against for the last few years in the CL and nobody has ended his career yet. The harsh tackles come from the lower level teams who don’t have the talent to compete so they must resort to fouling. The WC is the best of the best so I don’t really see that happening.

Besides, tackling is part of the game and if you can’t ride a few challenges than you shouldn’t be playing at this level.

Warriors trounce English Lions. World stunned ;)