World Football Thread V

[child of Thor]

I cant believe Denmark has done worse than England, sometimes justice is hard to come by

[Winston]

Thanks for the sympathies guys. This is the first time since 1994 that we miss either the Euro or World Cup, but in hindsight a record of 6 wins, 4 ties and 2 defeats just isn't good enough.. In reality, the away tie with Georgia a while back sealed our fate more than tonight's results.

We'll hope we can be cheering for Norway & Sweden this time around. Pretend it's cross country skiing or hockey.

[duke o' york]

England score. Et alors?

[Zopperoni]

Poland score.

[germanos]

Holland 0, Macedonia 0

[Spiffor]

France 3 - Cyprus 0 at midtime.

Pretty good game. The French strated too fast, too furious, and didn't get anything done until the 29th minute (when Zidane scored the first goal). Cyprus nearly scored as well.

If not for Djibril Cissé and his unability to score on 3 occasions (including 2 perfect ones), we'd already have quite a comfortable advance

Do your worst, Switzerland!

[Spiffor]

YAY! France won 4-0 while Switzerland ended up tied against Eire.

France is #1! (in the group)

[Footie Mad]

So the playoff teams are, if i'm getting it right now.

Spain.
Norway.
Switzerland.
Slovakia.
Czech Republic.
Turkey.

Might be some interesting matches there.

[duke o' york]

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=footballNews&storyID=URI:urn:newsml:reuters.com:20051012:MTFH93029_2005-10-12_20-40-54_L12215108:1

Correct.

The seedings are on the page linked to above.

[Winston]

Congrats to the newly qualified teams, not least Sweden and (hopefully) Norway.

So, at #14 on FIFA's September 2005 ranking, Denmark is the highest ranked country in the world not to qualify or get to the play-offs.

[Spiffor]

I don't understand. What's the use of goal average if all playoff teams have to meet each other?

[Winston]

What do you mean, goal average? The teams in the play-offs won't all meet, there will be a draw on Friday to determine who meets who in 2 matches, home and away.

[Footie Mad]

Could be Czechs against Slovaks, that would be a bit special I must say.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Winston
What do you mean, goal average? The teams in the play-offs won't all meet, there will be a draw on Friday to determine who meets who in 2 matches, home and away.

There was a big obsession in France about goal-average during this match. They said that, if France wanted to be sure to be qualified (even in case of a Swiss victory), it had to score 5 more goals than Cyprus.

Why is it so important to score so many goals, if France would have had to play in the playoffs regrdless?

[Dauphin]

In France's case they would have been tied on points with Switzerland (had Switzerland won) and so goal difference would have been used to separate who went through as top team, and who went to the playoffs.

Before today's games France had an inferior goal difference to Switzerland, so goals against Cyprus may have proved important.