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It's hardly surprsing Mark Schwarzer speaks fluent German - he was born to German imigrants in Sydney, his sister lives in Germany, and he played for Kaiserslautern in the Bundesliga.

"My laptop internet connection and digital camera had stopped working leaving me as the chocolate teapot of this blog operation."
Poor you. I wish that you have better condition from now and do not suffer this way anymore.
This World Cup is indeed the world cup of Internet, blog and websites. In the
first week of World Cup 2006, World Cup's official website received
and after the second week it has become Over 2.5
billion page views. Visitors are spending more than 30 minutes in the website on
an average. That is way too cool.

Welcome to Hannover. Try to watch Spain vs. France at the Waterloo Platz or try the Biergarten there - sit under leafy trees and enjoy the game! And if you'd like to try a bit of the more refined cuisine and getting tired of "Wurst" - our best cooks are currently gathering at the Platz am Ballhof. Have fun there and taste some good food & wine...

Read more here:

I totally agree with your assessment but there is one damned good reason for the ARD you didn't mention: ...

By the way, the ZDF-Arena is no studio or so, it's set up on the open space of Sony Center (can I mention that name here? After all they're not an official sponsor of FIFA) at Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin, only a short walk from the Brandenburg Gate. Anybody can walk in there and party with them...

Boulahrouz bye, shame on you
go home, bye lorpa
everybody see you, jurk
Cris Ronaldo is a superstar

Heitinga without fairplay, a little pig in WC football

My Holand is different pa, oh pa

Cocu go home pinoquio!
Deco is great, ah,ahaha, A CHAMPION pinokio

and marc, oh marc van basten you are a bad person, uff, without caracter. it’s only a game, a important game, but a game. You deserve lose good strike in the past but bad person now

and time is now

bye
see you

P O R T U G A L in your dreams

En gre land? :)))

Cris Ronaldo, Figo, Maniche, Carvalho and many others, lusitania soul uff england

I think ZDF have a good idea here. It would be great to get a current or former referee in as a pundit for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. I think it would be fantastic to have them explain the thinking behind some of the decisions made by refs in the competition.

Cookster - just for info, we have 'referees' in football, not 'umpires'. They also exist in 'soccer'. Sports like cricket, tennis and hockey have 'umpires'. That said, you're right - you were robbed and it was gutting to watch :( Still, Viduka expressed it best - read the Australian match reaction in the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News sports pages...

Jon - good call about the referee pundits! I referee football here in Sweden and it drives me mad having to explain the rules to some players - "No you are NOT allowed to take out someone's legs from underneath them, especially not from behind and most certianly not right infront of me - that's why you get a yellow card!" Strangely though, being English, they seem to respect my analysis of the game a bit more - if only that would work for poor old Poll.....

Yes, having former referees in the studio would allow people an insight into the world of the ref. Whenever we do something right, no-one remembers. Whenever we do something wrong, not only does no-one forget, but it's also subjected to often mis-informed dissection live on air. Still, referees are human too, therefore capable of mistakes.

More importantly though, from my view, having 'the rules' explained from teh ref's viewpoint might, just MIGHT, encourage a few youngsters to play the game fairly from a young age right through their careers (that hasn't happened since the days of Gary 'Honest Guv' Lineker, heh!).

That said, that wuz never a penalty for the Italians. Honestly, one might be forgiven for suspecting that FIFA has a hidden agenda to ensure that all 4 semi-finalists are SEEDED teams.......upsets don't sell as much as sponsorship. *...X-Files theme...*

Does anyone have any idea whatsover what post 6 (above) is all about?

Can someone explain. I have read it a dozen times and can't make head nor tail of it.

@Fionn (#11)

uhm... maybe a gay poet trying to watch a football match? ;-)

Regarding post no. 6...methinks beer and typing don't mix very well

Re: Australia,

If you play for almost an entire half against 10 men and still in the end have less shots on goal, maybe it wasn't all the ref's fault? And the red card for Materazzi wasn't justified either. And Kewell was offside when he scored against Croatia etc...

I'm certainly not an Italy supporter, but I'm getting sooo fed up with people moaning about the poor referees when they had a) wrong decisions going for them and b) didn't play well enough to win the game anyway.

Jim,

Urs Meier typically defends the referee's decisions and often enough Klopp and Kerner both strongly disagree, rather arguing from the players' point of view. This isn't only very amusing because of their lax kind of moderation, it also makes the referee's dilemmas clear.

They also use a 3D computer animation system which is capable of rendering critical scenes for every angle and viewpoint. So you can see for yourself what the referee, an assistant, a goalkeeper etc. really saw (and what not). You can also "delete" individual persons who covered interesting details. It's very illumative...

Is anyone else annoyed with FIFA?

Firstly, the ref in the portugal vs holland game was terrible. The one that annoyed me most was when figo butted van bommel, the ref had his back to figo (means he did'nt see the incident).

How then could he have given a yellow card??!!??

Then later figo went down (cheating) & this time the ref sent of the dutch player!!!

FIFA - came out and did nothing & have not reprimanded Figo. He should be sent home in disgrace.

What does anyone else think of the world governnig body who should be promoting fair play?

ARD and ZDF are ok but do not forget that PREMIERE, Germany`s excellent pay-TV station is showing ALL World Cup matches LIVE and you can choose the language of the commentary, too.
They are the best station for me.
If PREMIRE is the best TV station in Germany then BILD have proved to be the foulest newspaper again.
BILD, Germany`s daily showed their true sentiments and lack of class today (Tueday) with a big picture of a vomting David Beckham during the Ecuador game...
the text said "David, are you throwing up because your team is playing that bad or because you have drunk too much English beer".
I think that wins first prize for the
lowest type of journalism and shows how much antipathy the Germans have for the English side. I know it and don`t tell me anything else.

Actually you can't just walk into the ZDF Arena in the Sony Centre. You have to pay for tickets unfortunately. Apparently they cost forty euros a pop for the Germany-Sweden match on Saturday.

Message 6 is clearly written by a Portugeese fan, and he is clearly setting, or rather trying to set a few things wrong, or at least firmly crooked about the Dutch players. No matter, ignorance is bliss when it comes to cheating isnt it?

Axel - I would love to see that!
Harry - try to understand something.....there are four officials watching the play. If an assistant referee sees an incident taking place then he or she is capable of informing the main referee. In the Figo incident it's just possible that the referee saw enough of a confrontation to justify awarding a yellow card. Had the headbutt been seen in the clear light of day then yes it should have been red. Also remember that the Dutch player seemed to take a few seconds before realising he'd been 'headbutted'.....Finally, the Figo/van Brommel incident - this was as much Figo's fault as it was anyone else's! He made banquet out of the incident as it was and successfully fooled people into believing it was a serious incident, which produced the second yellow. An incorrect decision maybe, but based on what the referee saw and his interpretation of Bommel's intention

@#16: Aledrinker, I'm sorry about that 'report'. The BILD-Zeitung is obviously trying to stir up anti-English sentiments in order to make profit on that. I still don't think it's representative for the average German fans.

Try singing post 6 to the tune of Sergio Mendes' "Mas Que Nada", and it starts to work.

It was the music the that famous Nike airport ad with the Brazilian team in 1998. Currently being used on a Black-eyed peas song.

If it's consoling to you, I just wrote a complaint e-mail to BILD regarding that report. You can do the same

I am a fan of good football , I saw Holland playing in the past and Dutch people are not like that, theyre normally polite and gentleman´s, I`m Portuguese living in Spain now and I have got a lot of Dutch friends and we saw the game together, we all agree that the referee was a disaster and that Mr. van Basten encoraged their players to behave like that, disgracefully!!go home Van Basten and let a real coach take care of the wonderfull Dutch team,Obrigado!!

I am a fan of good football , I saw Holland playing in the past and Dutch people are not like that, theyre normally polite and gentleman´s, I`m Portuguese living in Spain now and I have got a lot of Dutch friends and we saw the game together, we all agree that the referee was a disaster and that Mr. van Basten encoraged their players to behave like that, disgracefully!!go home Van Basten and let a real coach take care of the wonderfull Dutch team,Obrigado!!

Aledrinker,

yes, Bild is Germany's worst national newspaper, usually likened to The Sun. I read neither of these tabloids but I am tempted to think that Bild is somewhat less militant than the Sun, other than that...

The article you mentioned (https://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/sport/wm2006/aktuell/06/27/beckham-brechen-gruende/beckham-brechen-gruende.html)
is more a piece of satire in line with other comedy accompanying the world cup.

After a rather neutral report of what happened Bild played with four theories of the 'true' cause of David Brechham ("Vomitham") puking:
1. He puked over his team's performance,
2. He fell pregnant being a metrosexual (or his wive is pregnant again and he is suffering with her);
3. He thought of his wive's credit card bill;
4. He drank too much English beer (not popular in Germany).

Anyway, I don't think this article is meant to stir up emotions against the English as it merely makes fun of a celeb, in the usual ways. A joke based on bodily fluids very much resembles the style of Bild and is indicative of the maturity and intellectual standard of its target audience.

@Aledrinker

Yes, BILD journalists always sneer at Beckham and the English team. So they do at the Brasilian, Polish, Dutch, Swedish, Swiss, American etc., too. At the moment, according to BILD, Kliensmann & Co. are playing the world's finest football. Three months or so ago, they called the German team "Gurkentruppe" (lame duck team) and sabotaged his efforts and new ideas.

And now for the antipathy (just using Google and pasting three entries for this childish concern):

Stern.de:
German Womens poll: World Cup's sexiest players, actual votes

1. Christiano Ronaldo, Portugal
2. David Beckham, England
3. Michael Ballack, Deutschland

Deutsche Welle.de:

"World Cup Dream Team - The women and men of DW-WORLD.DE bring you a very subjective squad of the Cup's sexiest players."

"David Beckham: What's left to say about David Beckham? He's seriously rich, extremely tattooed, and -- well -- rather sexy. He's 31, comes from England and plays soccer (currently for Real Madrid.) He's married to a former pop star by the name of Victoria, with whom he has three children. England player Ashley Cole (left) didn't quite make the DW-WORLD.DE dream team, but we thought we might throw him in for kicks, anyway."

Focus.de presentation of the 32 teams:

Three Lions: Viele Super-Stars in Team England. Die englische Nationalmannschaft ist mit internationalen Größen gespickt. Besonders im Mittelfeld trifft sich die Creme de la Creme.

You know the meaning of "Super-Stars", "internationale Größen" and "Creme de la Creme"?

Messages 23 and 24 - what are the chances of two people with the same name posting exactly the same post on the same blog? Spooky.

So what ;-)

When you get back to England, get hold of an old analog satellite box and an old Sky dish, and tune them to the still active Astra satellite. You will able to get all those TV channels you have grown to love whilst in Germany. You will also be able to maintain the fluency in German which you have acquired on your trip. Other benefits: lots of music, from decent live gigs (you would have caught sight of Nena in concert on her recent comeback tour!)to totally banal Teutonic singalong stuff: and you get free access to lots of Champions League and EUFA cup coverage, plus Bundesliga games.

Regards,
James