-TSS-

The main reason why soccer hasn't caught on in North-America is because NA has a saturated sporting-scene and any newcomers would be deemed as intruders and soccer is for most North-Americans (excluding Mexicans of course) a foreign sport.

Btw, how is it at the tennis-tournaments if raIn stops play for one day is the ticket for the match still valid the next day?

I think you misunderstood me. I said that only the final should be replayed if it is a draw after 120 minutes. I'd leave the qualifying as it is regarding penalties but there is one anomaly about the aggregate-matches. Namely, there is the away-goal rule if the aggregate is a draw. For example if two matches end 1-1 and 0-0 the winner is the one who scores the away goal. If the second match goes to extra-time its away team has 30 more minutes to get the away goal. For example if the first match ends 0-0 and the second match goes to extra-time at 0-0 and in the extra-time the away team goes ahead 1-0 the home-team must score twice. Not logical. I guess it would be the worst nightmare for FIFA if for the third time in a row there was an all-European final. Therefore, if Germany wins tomorrow then Holland won't only have Argentina as their opponents but also the referee.

I agree that if the final-match ends in a draw after 120 minutes there should at least be a replay 3 days later instead of penalties. If the replay also ends in a draw then have penalties. I can understand that the other knock-out matches can not be replayed because that would mess the schedule but replaying the final would only make the tournament last 3 days longer. I don't think the FA's of the countries in the final would go bankrupt if they had to cancel airline-tickets.

As an addition to the previous comment I must say that NATO should have been disbanded the same moment the Warsaw Pact was.

Over 1% of our population are Russian and that is going to rise and many eastern towns would be shrinking if it weren't for the Russian tourists bringing in money. Having said that, Russians just are unlikeable. I'm not looking at the things through any 1939-1944 glasses but from the modern view and the Russians are still unlikeable. Certainly preferable to Somalis though.

This topic crops up every four years. It is important for FIFA to promote the game in the USA and it is catching on as an event every four years as fun to watch but otherwise after the tournament is over people revert to the US-sports. It's a cultural thing really. Even though the USA and Canada are young countries they are not that young that they wouldn't have had time to develop their own sporting cultures. In the USA the sporting-field is rather saturated with the big three in form of American football, basketball and baseball reigning supreme with hockey trailing behind. Soccer could challenge hockey as the fourth most popular sport but realistically speaking that's it. In Canada nothing can challenge the position of hockey as the most popular spectator sport. In that sense Canada and Finland are alike.

Holland are currently just woeful against Costa-Rica. It good be a sensation in the making.

One must admire Roger Federer as he's still going strong. I would make a comparison between him and Björn Borg who completely lost interest in the sport and disappeared after he was knocked off the position as the best player in the world. Not Federer. He's no longer number one but still top-class.

Actually it is quite a shame if such a piss porr team as the current Brazilian side are going to win the world cup. However, they are one step closer after they defeated Colombia. Friday could be named as the foinding of paper-tigers as both France and Colombia were hyped to no end before both faced their exit in the quarter-finals. Brazil or Argentina will win because the tournament is in South-America and it is against the natural order of things that any other than South-American wins when the tournament is in South-America or in Concacaf.

It is one of the stellar-positions of international football that France just cant beat Germany in a major tournament. Another such position is that Europeans dont win the world cup in South-America. It just doesnt happen.

Japan's population today is approximately 127m. It has been estimated that by the year 2050 it will have shrunk to 90-95m of whom 40% will be 65 years of age or older. It goes without saying that with such a population-structure any society is doomed to collapse. What can Japan then do to avoid a demographic disaster? Certainly not open its doors to third world immigrants in hope that they would fill the gap left behind when the older people retire. Experience from Europe has showed that to be unworkable. Besides, unlike Western-Europe and North-America Japan is not at all an attractive destination for outsiders to move in. Its culture is way too different and introverted.

In the modern world the countries the size of Japan are even expected to have a high profile role in the world, which is a code-word for meddling in other countries' affairs. If a big country prefered to keep to itself it would be castigated by the international community for failing to "act its size".

It is quite intersting to notice the rise of eastern-European tennis in the last 25 years after the end of the cold war. Before that there was Czechoslovakia with Ivan Lendl and Jan Kodes but otherwise it seems that tennis was viewed as a western sport and not given official attention. Moreover, I think Russians publicly pretended to dislike the sport but in private really liked it very much. That is the only conclusion to how many Russian stars cropped up, both male and female, after the end of the cold war.

If any adult men take that virgin-claptrap seriously it means they are seriously retarded.

"Muslims everywhere, whoever is capable of performing hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State, then let him do so, because hijrah to the land of Islam is obligatory," For once I can agree with a muslim-leader; I wouldn't object one little bit if muslims emigrated from Europe into their islamic paradise-country.

The director of the broadcasting always picks the cutest girls from each teams' supporters. Somehow they only pick males when showing Algerian supporters. I really really wonder why that is.

I've noticed that in the Anglophone countries there is even some romanticism surrounding WW II. After all, the war was about fighting a tyranny and freeing nations from under dictatorship when as WW I has been seen as a futile tragedy and mostly about greedy leaders of collapsing countries fighting over meaningless plots of land but yet getting hundreds of thopusands of people killed. Hence it has become a custom to celebrate November 11th as the remembrance-day and a day reminding of insanity of war. Of course, in reality the end result of WW II was to replace one set of dictatorship with another for half of Europe.

Mexico played very foolishly against Holland. If you are one up against the Dutch it is not clever to give them the initiative and just hope that you can defend until the end. Mexico didn't play like this in their earlier games, not even against Brazil, and were very good.

I hope that "Mehiko" wins just because their coach is so enthusiastic.

I hope Costa Rica's fairytale continues. I know one shouldn't mix politics and sports but as Costa Rica meets Greece it is impossible not to dislike the Greeks given the euro-crisis. That country has cost a fortune to every Western-European tax-payer. But that's enough about politics. I sincerely hope that Costa Rica wins for the sake of themselves.

There you see; I'm just illiterate about baseball as an average American is about soccer.

I must admit I have no clue what that New York Yankees-analogy means but I gather they are some very hated team in baseball. Is it because they are from the biggest city or are there some other reasons for disliking them?

CONCACAF and CONMEBOL are different football-federations but in the strict geographic sense America is one continent. Sub-divisions into North-, Central- and South-America does not change that fact. It is similar to as Asia being consisted of oriental Asia, the Middle-East and South-Asia. Besides, returning to football again, the Central-American teams come from your federation.

Drug-cartels I mean. Bloody iPhone thinks it can read my mind.