Puedes llevarme al Irán
y presentarme al Imán
pasearme por Teherán
y mandarme al frente de Iraq
puedes colgarme de los pies
y fusilarme también
cortarme las manos sin piedad
y llevarte a mi chica ye-yé

Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola
Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola
Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola más...

Sabes que no soy el Sha
pero en el nombre de Alá
te lo pido una vez más
no me toques la pirola jamás
en el desierto me verás
bailando el cha-cha-chá
soy un enemigo de Alá
no me gusta la rumba ni el jazz.

Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola
Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola
Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola más...

Sólo vine a comprar pan
a mí todo me sale mal
sólo vine a comprar pan
y me enseñasteis el Corán
en el desierto me verás
bailando el cha-cha-chá
soy un enemigo de Alá
no me gusta la rumba ni el jazz.

Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola
Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola
Ayatollah, no me toques la pirola más...

¡Ayatollah, mola!

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie soouuund...

ecuador vs senegal is pretty lively. and the senegalese supporters look awesome.

If the US can play the entire match like they did the first half against Iran, they may have a good chance to win it against the Dutch.
Hopefully the injuries will have recovered by then

Captain America sent a bunch of Iranians to forced labor or summary executions today. Not his fault, though; that's just how they roll in large parts of the Middle bloody East...

You really want LvG to finally retire, eh? :D

i doubt it, and the second half was a horror. going all defense at the end was an extremely risky bet. what saved us was the superior level of fitness and speed of american players. technically though, it was a clusterfuck.

our first half belonged to pulisic. he made plays, beat defenders, served balls, and scored by himself after weah missed like 20 chances given to him. without pulisic, we are lost.

so i'm fine if you put us out of our misery. what i did not want was to encourage the ayatollah's propaganda if we lost. that job is done, we can go home now and make room for the good teams that have technical quality and good tactics.

i almost fucking died today. we should have scored a second goal but absolutely couldn't. then it was running and hoping and running some more.

Apropos the (then upcoming) Iran vs USA game, AFP recently listed the most politically fraught matches in World Cup history. To summarize:

- Mussolini's 'Blackshirts': France v Italy, 1938
- Cold War battle: East Germany v West Germany, 1974
- Maradona's moment: England v Argentina, 1986
- Say it with flowers: Iran v USA, 1998
- An eagle lands: Switzerland v Serbia, 2018

congrats, kid!

i didn't watch your game but saw the news. well done.

None of these hold a candle to the Chile vs Soviet Union playoff in 1973, which isn't at the World Cup proper but is an insane story.

If you look at the videos from Federation Square in Melbourne, I'm one of the 8,000 people there. We were actually, genuinely the better team throughout the second half - bring on Argentina.

I don't want the Australians to win because they are all redneck racists.

compare to Argentina, whom a Chilean friend has described as "the Poland of Latin America". I have a bizarre years-long vendetta against them, and this match will be a great contributor.

Oh shit, and I forgot that! Goddamn...

I'm a sports fan, a raging leftist, and deeply invested in a few Chilean friends of mine; I'm actually halfway through writing a lengthy essay on this that I've mostly been using to slack off from uni work. I'll send it here sometime.

south korea won so uruguay failed to make it to round of 16 :(

only argentina and brazil left standing for conmebol

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well brazil was shit today and paid for it hahahaha

We'll see if there are any surprises left, because when you take a look at the round of 16 draw it looks pretty clear cut...

Japan v Croatia by far the most even looking of these; Portugal vs Switzerland could also be fun.

Deeply invested might be a mistake. Chileans are turds, mostly.

From Fareed Zakaria's newsletter:

Dutch TV was broadcasting this song on repeat this morning :D

pulisic almost started early :eek:

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well now reality sets in... depay makes us pay. or memphis, whatever...

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lol 2-0 at halftime. ouchie.

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eh, at least we scored. ok? no more false hopes. was glad to make it out of an easy group.

Oh you don't want to know how deep in it I'm getting. ;)

Anyway, two pretty expected results for today. Netherlands 3-1 over the United States was a fair result, the Dutch were unremarkable but pretty convincingly better.
Australia held their own against Argentina, one goal was Messi doing Messi shit and the other was appalling goalkeeping on our part. They won deservedly, but we pushed them...please can we keep this motivation up.

Yikes... How deep in it are we talking about? Jeffrey Toobin deep?

luis enrique a complete wastrel ruined it for spain with his bad tiki taka schemes with no alternative.

morocco meanwhile made the best of the situation, had a well deserved win for character and effort, even when featuring lesser individual talents.

great team effort, great morale, great spirit. japan showed the way and morocco learned well.

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and now portugal's better individual quality showing, no cronaldo necessary. the swiss do try, but...

Good thing I haven't placed any bets on this bonkers Cup.

As for Cristiano Ronaldo Reagan, he rots the mind.

i didn't understand the "rots the mind" part, but anyway, 6-1 quite a massacre in the end. what a nice team. thw totl opposite of spain.

Spain's statistics vs Morocco:

- 77% ball posession
- 1,019 passes (!)
- 1 shot on target

The Dark Side of Tiki-Taka.

i saw a bit of the press conference with luis enrique where the deluded fuck made the claim that he had "dominated" against morocco and he was happy with his team and they had carried out his theory etc



what an utter moron

Place your bets and lose! :D

brazil beats croatia seems clear to me. not only in personnel, but croatia will arrive burnt out from the previous long match.

i favor argentina's chances over the netherlands, but i don't know really. it might go to overtime and penalties and then who knows.

france should beat england in the end. probably within regulation time. not easily, but good goalscorers on both sides.

portugal should beat morocco, it has superior talent up and down and the manager is not a dumb twat. morocco has been full of surprises though, but i think this is when they run out of luck.

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if i were into bets i would bet a for a brazil france final which ought to be glorious football. a france portugal semifinal could be a real beauty as well. i like portugal. not cristiano, but portugal.

on the other bracket for me it depends on richarlison because that other guy who missed like 20 shots, oooooffff....,

whoever makes it to the final, i see france as having a deeper bench. pity benzema did not make it. but champs twice in a row why not.

I hope the "gift link" below works for everyone here; otherwise I'll have to copy/format/paste the whole thing:

Why doesn’t Argentina have more Black players in the World Cup?

Argentina is far more diverse than many people realize — but the myth that it is a White nation has persisted

ETA: More Black players? How about any?

haha, interesting subject but that has nothing to do with the football, does it?

i mean sarmiento & co. were a bunch of shitbirds but how do you get a football team out or that 170 or so years later.... no idea

interesting topic but bad headline i guess, they try to cram it into the world cup somehow hahahha.

now let's talk about argentina's foreign debt and the world cup. they've defaulted 4 times since 1980 :D

brazil keeps pounding at the door but nothing

croatia well planted on the defense... and holding on to the ball with boring passes when they have it

this game could go either way? 0-0 and penalties?

brazil needs to score or it will pay

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too many goddamn yellow cards

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fffffffffffffffrustration...

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GOL!!! AT LAST!!!!

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fffffffff, again

How Croatia got away with that I don't know, lousy defending by Brazil for the equaliser.

it went according to their plan. this was their endgame all along. except for that pesky neymar that almost derailed it.

i lost one and won one :confused:

Crazy fucking game, absolutely glorious. I'm all on for an Argentina v England final, that would rule.

the Dutch are now ranked three times in the top 5 of World Cup matches with most cards:


20 - Nederland - Portugal (2006)
18 - Germany- Kameroen (2002)
17 - Nederland - Argentina (2022)
15 - Nederland - Spain (2010)
12 - Senegal - Uruguay (2002)

There's even confusion about the amount of cards, in another article it is mentioned that the amount was 19 including bench players and coaches:
Nederland: Timber, Weghorst, Depay, Berghuis, Van Dijk, Bergwijn, Dumfries, Lang, Dumfries (second yellow and thus red)
Argentina: Acuña, Samuel (assistent-coach) Romero, Li. Martínez, Paredes, Scaloni (trainer), Messi, Otamendi, Montiel, Pezzella.



Anyway, the Argentines deservedly won, even though Messi should have gotten a yellow card as well for that hands ball

When the Afro population adds up to 0.37% I wonder why there's none in the team. The numbers couldn't possibly add up, could they.

There is a significantly larger demographic of Asians in Argentina but why bother mentioning them when there's a specific enervated narrative to push.
She could easily work for the BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjhxYXtDkl0