大象传媒

So the Italians aren't flocking in Berlin, huh ? Even after all those endearing articles by the German press ? How peculiar.

Does anyone consider that Rooney knows the words of the National Anthem? He seemed the only one never to sing the National Anthem. He stands there with a sullen look on his boyish face and never utters a word. He may be a talent but he has a lot to learn.
Shame on you Wayne.

Are you really saying you'd voluntarily sing the national anthem? I wouldn't- it's rubbish. Anyway, it's not the English National anthem is it- it's the British Anthem. Also- does anyone else think we got away with not getting Scolari all of a sudden? Do we really want to replace Sven with a man who's idea of a goal chasing substitution is to take of his only forward and bring on another midfielder?

Well done Germany in tonights game. Your future is bright. I just hope our overpaid, over rated poseurs watched this so called average team outplay Portugal.

Why am I not being allowed to post my response to Paul Armstrong's reaction to my comment in the 'Pease, Love and Understanding' thread?

First of all, congrats on surviving that thunderstorm!

Yes, I've been looking for some French and Italian fans in my hometown as well. But I think you're right about the international feeling for the finals. Everything is one huge party in Berlin right now, I hope that'll continue until tomorrow night. Enjoy the last day!

Ssssswwwwweeeeeeeeeet!
What a match!
Still love you Portugal!
See you around next time!
For tomorrow: Forca Italia!!!!

Forza FRANCIA -

Allez les Bleus -

Oh, & can we have a quick synopsis of what S Africa has in store (+ links, etc.) before we leave Germany for good? (Have to get organised ahead of time, you understand ;-))

Tonite was one of the best matches I have seen Portugal play. There was no real diving and stuff, at least not as much as during all the other matches. Even Ronaldo could show some of his technical beauty...

And it showed that a German B-team can beat Portugal with ease! But congratulations to the Portuguese! You have been great fans!

And here is my personal World Cup 2006 Best Fans Top 5, strictly from a Frankfurt resident's point of view:

5 France
4 Portugal
3 Australia
2 Netherlands
1 England

The French don't seem to like traveling to non-French speaking countries that much. But when they were in Frankfurt for their Quarter Final party with them was fantastic and given you spoke French you actually could make plenty of new friends. I'm invited to a free holiday somewhere in La Bretagne.

We had Portugal in town for one of their group matches and the Party down at the river was fantastic as well. Due to a lack of language skills on boths sides (I only speak English, French and Spanish apart from German) there was no real talking but it still was good.

Even though we only had a few Aussies in Frankfurt I still have to give them 3rd place simply because of Confed Cup last year, which was part of the 2006 world cup somehow.

This is gonna cost me my passport as it clearly states "We don't like the Cheese-Heads!" but I do need to admit that the Dutch were 2nd best party people in town! Of course communicating with them is rather easy as all of them speak at least English and most - actually it felt like 95% - speak German. I had a great night with them down by the river!

But the very, very best party night I had during WC 2006 was at its first weekend with our friends from England. I started with them on R枚mer Square around 10pm and the party went until around 5.30am! The Queue at the bar at all pubs in a 1 mile circle was at least around 1 hour! I'm not exaggerating! Beer was consumed by the Gallon!! Party was great and there was absolutely no aggressiveness, none of the stuff you hear on TV comes with English fans. They are great! I would love to personally welcome any Englishman and -woman in Frankfurt in the future!

THANKS FOR HAVING BEEN OUR GUESTS! YOU ALL WERE GREAT! PLEASE COME BACK SOON AGAIN!

what the hell is going on here at that 大象传媒????

Hundreds of thousands of people are celebrating in Germany and the World Cup is 'closed' for the 大象传媒 and ITV.

ITV had the promise of the best of todays game in the guide, but it was replaced by some other sh*t tv programme. Why????

Whereas in Germany there were people from all nations celebrating, with flags from Poland, Croatia, England, Australia and Brazil.

A massive celebration of football and we don't hear anything about it here.

What a gip.

A great festival of goodwill and good feelings and the 大象传媒 just ignores it because they are sulking about Ronaldo.

Get a grip... there is a real party going on!

Marcel Desailly:"I'm a bit disappointed about Italy. They don't really deserve to be in the World Cup final because they have shown only 45 minutes of good football, in the second half of their semi-final against Germany."

Who has he been watching over the last month?

What did Italy do differently in the second half against Germany compared to the first half?

And, when did France deserve to get to the Final after their first two games against Switzerland and South Korea. Yes, they beat two very good sides, Spain & Brazil on they way, but they haven't exactly been magic - except ZZ in the Brazil game!

I hope we can perform like we did for the whole 120 minutes against the hosts and beat the French.

And let's hope the its Azzurri of Italy are celebrating rather than le Bleaus of France later this evening!

Forza Italia!

to No 14 Carlo:

maybe Desailly was referring to Germany getting rid of the favourites Argentina for you, while you sorted out the serious contender 'Ukraine'... :)

just kidding, I think you are the favourites now and Desailly is just hyping his own team. What the hell do you expect him to do?

Looking forward to the final, good luck to both teams. Make it a good one.

Re post 4:
I believe that Rooney is part Irish and doesn't sing GSTQ for that reason. Aso Carragher and Neville.

To No 16 Belfegore:

Well, if you have hard and easy groups then the teams that won the hard groups will get to play against the teams that failed to win the easy groups... so maybe the "group of death" wasn't such a bad concept after all ;)

Looking to a great final !

@ Armando

The Italians won't come to Berlin, because the German press humiliated them? Come on, think about what your press still writes about German "panzer" - why do still spend thousands of Germans their holidays in Bella Italia? Get real!

IMHO the Italians are mostly TV-Fans. Look how emtpty the Stadio Delle Alpi is often, when Juve plays in the Champions League.

Berlin is gone to witness a great Spagati dinner with French wine! It is worth it how ever as English fans are gone home the final will be a lot silence riden! 3Cheers for all footballers around the world!

@ Flo

I don't know the context, but generally speaking "panzer" is not a derogatory term, rather the other way round - it is commonly used to describe something that is sturdy, strong, well built, invincible, and it is not necessarily applied to Germans. For example I'd love to be able to say that my Fiat Punto is built like a panzer, which unfortunately is not the case :)

As for the Italian being avid TV-watchers, you do have a point here. But again, I doubt that after reading the latest crop of articles many Italians felt the sudden urge to cancel their vacation in the Maldives and book in the Ruhr instead, or let's say go out and buy a BMW - which is a shame, because I do have German friends and I do know that they deserve much better than being represented by the likes of Der Spiegel, Bild and Die Zeit.

Also, and think I've posted it somewhere else: a lot of people here was expecting Germany to play dirty in the semifinal - it would have been relatively easy to provoke Gattuso or some other carded player into being sent off, or just go for the legs and cry "cheat" the whole time as other, which lesser teams have been known to do. To their credit the German team didn't do anything like that, instead they choose to play a fair and honorable game, and this has been really appreciated over here - yesterday most of the people I know was rooting for Germany, even if they did that in front of their TV while eating non-boycotted pizza ;).

So it is not like we are at war or something - any beef we may have is just with the worst part of the German press, and even that will be forgotten in a couple of weeks. Italians aren't good at holding grudges anyway, so let's celebrate a awesome World Cup :)

Did anyone else notice last night in Germany v. Portugal that the medics did not make an appearance on the field once? Apologies if this comment has been made somewhere already, but it seems incredibly interesting given what everyone has been noting about diving and players attempting to get one another sent off.

I see two possible explanations. One, the game was less aggressive because it was only a third place match. This doesn't make much sense if you actually watched the game. There were yellow cards, harsh tackles and certainly a spot or two of diving. But no one stayed down for long. Not long enough for the medical staff to make a single appearance. The second possibility is that no one stayed down for treatment because every player wanted to stay on that pitch as long as possible. After all, any world cup game means something, even if it's only about pride.

I'm not sure about a larger meaning to all this, but I think it does lend quite a lot of support to the skeptics camp that most injuries are feigned efforts to win sympathy and cards. The most debilitating injury of this tournament came when Michael Owen tore his knee ligaments with an unlucky plant of the foot. No one was around him.

For all the numerous visits of the "DOC"s there were, of course, some genuine injuries. But I think last night validates the point that if players feel that playing in the game is even more important than winning the game, the difference can in some sense be measured by how willing they are to stay on the pitch every minute. Maybe that's what football, especially at the international level, used to be like. I have no idea. But I hope there's a way to make it like that again.

You say there are no french or Italian fans in Berlin.I am not surprised, I have been trying to get a flight from England since tuesday,and other than paying British airways 拢 500 for the pleasure,every other flight i'm told is full.Two very frustrated italian fans will be watching at home tonight.
Forza Italia !!!

I think there will be a lot of especially Italian fans appearing from out of nowhere because almost every German city has a large Italian community. They will be going to Berlin today and leaving on the same evening.

As for the "pizza-boycoting" nonsense: I think many people have misunderstood a poor effort to be funny by "Bild" (remember, this is the German equivalent to The Sun). There was simply a too easy possibility to play with stereotypes at hand, so they had to use it.

The "parasites" incident was even more misguided: Usually "Spiegel" is a quite reliable German magazine. They wanted to do a tongue in cheek commentary and it went wrong. That's about it.

Believe me, most Germans see Italy as a beautiful, if sometimes a bit disorganized country full of good-humoured people. In my hometown literally thousands of Italians were celebrating Italy's late goals against Germany. Nobody blamed them, nobody started a fight, even though being thrown out had hurt a lot.

Fly to Hamburg and get the ICE. Way cheaper.

On players feigning injury:
I noticed in one of the Czech games that Nedved and one of his team-mates ran full tilt into each other - usually collisions lead to the full medical attention, but Nedved just jumped up and played on. Maybe players are taught to stay down because you're more likely to get a foul, or a card for the other team, or have the ref stop play and thus prevent an opposition attack, or less cynically because even a slight injury can momentarily reduce a player's effectiveness for what could be a crucial tackle or run or interception or whatever.
Anyway, the result is to break the flow of the game all the time, and maybe the refs shouldn't let the trainers on so often. There was a Mexican ref who showed the way here: a quick glance to check the player down wasn't seriously injured, and play on...

You are right harlequin79 #19, the third place play-off between Germany and Portugal had the least amount of diving I think of any match I have watched in this World Cup.
There also wasn't much time added on after the first and second halves and as you rightly pointed out we didn't see stretchers coming on the pitch nor did we see players clutching their faces as if they have been hit in the face or something.
This is how all the matches should have been played but I think the pressure to win at all costs causes all the simulation and play acting. Its something FIFA should tackle going forward by possibly suspending cheating players after reviewing the games on video but some of action has to action or else it will only become worse.