So TI.....are you by any chance excited that France lost? I'm just curious. I'm getting some mixed vibes here.

haha France...
South Korea vs Nigeria might have been one of the matches of the tournament. During the 90 minutes that ensued, Greece, Nigeria and South Korea took turns at 2nd place in their group behind Argentina depending on the goals. I don't know if any group has had it that crazy in this World Cup so far.
The US REALLY should be at 1W 1D 0L at this point but the referee ruled out the winning goal for the US against Slovenia for unknown reasons. Hopefully the USMNT can pull off a win against Algeria... with a draw it'll depend on England vs Slovenia.
USA USA USA USA USA

Interesting rules by the way.

England and the US need a win to go through for certain.

If England and the US both draw then the teams will be equal on points and goal average. However, USA will go through on the basis of scoring more goals unless England draw by 3 or more goals than the US.

If England draw by 2 more goals than the US, the US and England pick lots since both teams will be equal on every measure (not joking)

note d) to g) are irrelevant here since they drew 1-1. c) is the killer!

The ranking of each team in each group will be determined as follows:
a) greatest number of points obtained in all group matches;
b) goal difference in all group matches;
c) greatest number of goals scored in all group matches.
If two or more teams are equal on the basis of the above three criteria, their rankings will be determined as follows:
d) greatest number of points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned;
e) goal difference resulting from the group matches between the teams concerned;
f) greater number of goals scored in all group matches between the teams concerned;
g) drawing of lots by the FIFA Organising Committee.

http://fredericiana.com/2010/06/16/f...breaker-rules/

Table Here

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/standings/index.html

1-0. So far so good, but not counting chickens. I understand the French team were flying back economy class. Perhaps if England don't win we should make them walk.

Gosh that was nailbiting, England and US both win and go through. England played much better than last time and were dominant but Slovenia still had several chances at levelling it. US win the group due to the number of goals rule. They will play the runners up of this mob and England the winners.

GHA-GER
AUS-SRB

Not much to choose between GHA, GER, and SRB on current form, but Germany have the Pedigree (sodding hell no penalties) so I guess we might be playing them. Both games start tonight 19:30 UK (BST) time.

The US - Algeria match was one of the most intense matches of the World Cup.
Fully deserved for the USMNT. If they didn't go through, it would have been highway robbery. They had all sorts of referee calls go against them and their spirit and determination pulled them through eventually.
USA 1-0 Referees.

FIFA officials can kiss my red, white, and blue ASS! Even with the refs against us, we still managed to pull out the victory. We should've CONVINCINGLY won our group, but instead, it was "just the goal differential." First Edu was robbed, then Dempsey lost his goal! FIFA really needs to either reevaluate their officials performance or reevaluate the way they choose officials for the Cup.

I've constructed a freeze frame of the dissallowed goal here and placed a few markers to help.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49723546@N05/4730199004/




You can measure the dimensions. ie distance between white line and foot or knee/divided by distance between white lines in each case.

Bear in mind the following offside rule

"any part of his head, body or feet is nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent (the last opponent typically being the goalkeeper). The arms are not included in this definition. This is taken to mean that any part of the attacking player named in this decision has to be past the part of the second-last defender closest to his goal line (excluding the arms) and past the part of the ball closest to the defenders' goal line.

This might also be relevent, but not considered this since I suspect offside rules are additive not instead of.

Gaining an advantage by being in an offside position - Playing the ball after the ball has rebounded off the goal, the goalkeeper, or any opponent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside...ation_football)

I think we can agree after viewing this how difficult the officials job really are!

This type of video analysis would be even more useful in football than tennis in my opinion since in the latter case the game could be continued whilst a group of officials can assess the dispute, and the goal added or subtracted several minutes later.

When in doubt, the decision should be in favor of the attacker.
But it seems that when it's the US playing, that law of football is being ignored on a regular basis.
Either way, the US had the character to fight to the end and eventually win that match. Unlike some overpaid, long haired European types who get their butts kicked by a harder working "weaker" side and then b1tch, moan and ask FIFA to change the rules.