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oh dear! i know it's at altitude but the argentina keeper appears to be god awful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfUpC7yh74

I was about to make some comment about Argentina keepers always being shit but fuck me! That is like an outfield player ending up in nets and not working out that he can use his hands.

A bit of thin air doesn't make you play like a complete blind twat.

Well done Diego for supporting Boliva's right to play high up. He must have been high up himself whne he picked Carrizo in goal.

Blimey, even I'm a better keeper than that.

I saw this earlier by chance (was linked to the England highlights on youtube), to be fair to the keeper, his defence doesn't help much. But he was awful :/ .

These odd results occur in the South American qualifiers quite often. However, the South American group will always conclude with Argentina and Brazil getting to the World Cup Finals.

I think I read some hoo-haa recently about the bigger clubs complaining about the altitude teams and wanting to switch venues. 

Putting aside how much difference it makes does anyone know how many of the “altitude sides” actually play their domestic football week-in week-out at altitude?

I would imagine certainly the talented players in these sides ply their trades in the larger Saaaaaaaaaaaaarf American leagues but I wonder if these characters are just as affected if at all when they return for International duty having been un-acclimatised for a long period of time?

The Argentine Nicky Hammond ladies and gentleman.

The bolivian isn't much better. I actually laughed out loud at how shit that goal was.

Argentina lost 6-1? I don't Bolivia!

Oh dear :)

all of the bolivians play in the bolivian league, so they are acclimatised. Argentina and Brazilian federations tried to get FIFA to stop all games at altitude (namely Bolivia in la Paz and Ecudor in Quito) but initially after a small ban the games have now been allowed to return. The south american qualifiers are much closer this year than normal due to teams such as Venuzala getting rather good compared to previous years, however argentina havent let in 6 goals for about 50 odd years.

In regards to the keepers they are shit, but the ball does fly all over the fucking place when played at the altitiude of le paz and quito.

Nice.

The South American qualifying is too easy for the top teams. They have 5 teams in the top 32 world rankings and get 4.5 qualifying places to the World Cup. In Europe we have 21 teams in the top 32 and only 13 qualifying places.

Takes the piss if you ask me, especially as a disproportionate amount of the money generated by the World Cup comes from Europe (50% of the TV income for example). About time we stood up to the rest of FIFA and get them to sort it out or tell them to fuck off. We could cope without them (I reckon the European Championship is a far better tournament football quality wise than the World Cup) but they'd be fucked without our involvement.

Fully agree on that. FIFA would be screwed without European money.

yeah fuck the rest of the world, fuck them all, who needs a world cup. in fact who needs football outside the premiership, thats where all the money is, yeah fucking shitty teams like swindon. fuck them.

Yeah. I'm with mex. Infact I was going to make a similar post. Infact, less teams from Europe and S.America, and more from Asia and Africa. Surely part of the world cup remit is to encourage football around the world.

Or we could just replace the worldcup with a supersized champions league. International football is shit anyway.

I'm all in favour of encouraging football around the world, but trying to do so by putting shit teams in to the World Cup ahead of decent teams isn't the way to go about it. If it was, they'd be doing a lot better but now than they are.

Same goes for them giving the World Cup to South Africa, chances are that it is going to be a disaster. Which is solely due to FIFA trying to force the development of football in other countries rather than working to develop it.

On what basis is it going to be a disaster?  Any evidence for this?  I really think us in Europe need to widen our horizons a little bit.  Football is a global sport and the World Cup must reflect this - 13 European clubs is generous.  It's not (shock, horror, stop the presses) always all about the money.

couldnt have put it better myself doore.

Stadiums might not be finished, likely power cuts out due to shortage of electricity, high crime rates, poor transport system / network, poor basic infrastructure etc. I don't have a problem with the World Cup being hosted in other countries around the world, but South Africa just wasn't ready for it and it was forced through too soon.


Why is 13 teams generous? There are more countries in Europe and more higher rated teams, so why not a proportionate number of places at the World Cup? Its not just about the money and I never said it was, my biggest problem is that you end up with lots of shit teams at the World Cup at the expense of decent teams.

At present the European Championship is a better tournament all round than the World Cup, that isn't right and they need to do something about it. Maybe expanding the size of the World Cup would do the trick, to 48 or even 64 countries? I like the idea of 48 teams, with an additional preliminary group round for the 32 lowest ranked teams - the top two from each group going through to another group round with the top 16 ranked teams.