[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

they really wanted to win and scored and early goal. all good. but then when the colombians tried to piece together their attack the brazilians started just fouling the fuck out of everyone. particularly james. and the ref let it happen and didn't pull any cards.

so then the colombians got pissed and started dishing out in return. the game became completely choppy. there was a foul every other minute. nobody could play. it was fucking horrible.

for a while the colombians lost their shit. almost got into a brawl. luckily they didn't (there'd be more of that later). but they couldn't get their shit together for most of their first half-- with the goal against them, the ref letting rough play happen, unable to make simple pass combinations due to fouls, they looked truly lost for a good while. like, deer before the headlights lost. unable to comprehend. they barely held.

eventualy by the end of the first half they got a grip and started functioning like the usual colombia. except that it was colombia in hell. fouls, fouls, fouls, from both sides, and the ref nothing. so it got progressively worse.

by the 60th minute there had been 40 fouls accounted for! that's one every 90 seconds! that's not counting the instances where the ref looked the other way. then there were some yellow cards but either too obvious or completely irrational-- e.g. thiago silva got in front of ospina while he was trying to serve the ball, or james who was at the receiving end of infinite kicks was booked for some very light shit, or julio cesar kicked a colombian inside the small area when the guy no longer had the ball and could have been a red but he got a yellow. unreal. and yet, the guy who broke neymar's vertebra didn't even get a foul against him-- ref gave the advantage but there was no card, nothing.

anyway, brazil won, and in balance they controlled the game, and maybe it was a fair score overall seeing how both played super dirty and brazil prevailed slightly in that system, inspite of losing neymar to the brutality of it all, but the way in which they did it was not the way i want to see a world champion win. it was awful. and the ref a completely useless shitbird opened the door to neymar getting his spine fucking broken. well, vertebra, damn, it's now the whole spine but he'll be healing for 4 weeks. i hope you get to watch a replay so you can see-- disgraceful. fuckem.

Thanks for that!

Refs are obviously terrified of making a controversial decision against Brazil. Whoever wins this won't have done it with much style. In terms of quality it's been a very scrappy wc so far. The remaining 4 all probably deserve to be there but I don't think any of them are having a particularly strong tournament so far.