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How's this for a curse ... the Nike World Cup Ad curse!

First off ... this was their ad 4 years ago:




You've got Drogba ... breaks his arm right before the Cup and can't get past the group stages. Cannavaro who had a pretty poor tournament and couldn't get past the group stages either. Ribery for France, who had an awful tournament. Rooney and Ronaldo both had a goal between them and lost in the first round of eliminations ... and finally there's Ronaldinho who couldn't even make the national team that year, and they lost in the quarters.

Heck, even Kobe Bryant shows up for one US game that year, and it's the only one they lost! (against Ghana), and Roger Federer missed his first Wimbledon final in a decade right after that ad.



So now there's THIS year's ad:



Let's go down the list of the main participants:

Ribery breaks his back, and can't even make the trip. Neither can Ibrahimovic because his team doesn't qualify.

Rooney and Ronaldo each muster a goal apiece and failed to get out of the group stages. Inestia and Spain got buried by the Dutch and never recovered.

Howard probably had one of the "better" performances, yet he still failed to keep a clean-sheet in 4 games and still lost the game where he set the record for most saves. Brazil made it into the quarter finals ... but then Neymar broke his back and Luiz let 7 go in against Germany. Not to mention ... Lebron's team got destroyed in the NBA Finals.

Yikes!

Quote:

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Just to put it in perspective ... If you give 7 points for one score (sort of like American football), the final score would of been 49-7. Last year's Super Bowl blowout was only 43-8.

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But if you do a simple ratio... the average number of goals scored per team during the World Cup prior to this game .95 goals per game per team..

the average number of points scored in the NFL playoffs last year was 23.1. So let's just round and say that's 3 touchdowns per game, per team...

So a simple ratio of .95/7=3/X... is the equivalent of an NFL team scoring 22 touchdowns in a game.. not 22 points, 22 touchdowns.

...AND they were the favorites as the host country too. Crazy!

What a match.

Watching the final games of the World Cup gave me an idea.

What if you just took the final 3 games of the NFL season. The Superbowl and the two conference championship games. If you just did a careful study of those games from history recent, say the last 16 years or so, I think you'd begin to see what these teams do excellent that got them there, and then if you made everyone on your team study those things intently, ALOT, constantly, and try to immitate them, then maybe your team would do better than 4 and freaking 12.

"I'm sure they already thought of that."

Really disappointed in how Brazil played. They're far too talented to get blown out like that. It would have been a lot worse had Germany not slowed down.

That said, I'm really looking forward to the final. Hopefully Argentina wins

It's a better story to me if Argentina wins. Argentina winning on Brazil soil will be good for bragging rights, Messi needs this win for his legacy, and I just don't like the German team (I respect them, and even thank them for letting the US only lose by 1 in the Group stage to help us advance, just don't like them).

With that being said, I want to see a great game on Sunday. I'd prefer a 2-1 or 3-2 game too. I'm down with PKs or a 1-0 game, I just think I want to see something different. Both teams scoring and pushing the ball.

I really think FIFA needs to rethink Extra Time and PKs as they stand today. I understand why they do it this way, but I think it needs some refinement. Extra Time seems so slow because all the guys are too tired to make anything happen. Maybe give them more subs? Reduce the guys on the field? Split the 30 minutes into three 10 min periods for more rest? Introduce a golden goal in ET?

I know it's very American of me to try changing soccer to fit my style, but I think our "new eyes" on the sport can help see through all the tradition that everyone is used to elsewhere.

They're already talking about adding a 4th sub for ET.

Yeah, I think they knew it was all over once Neymar got injured. But you still hope to see some fight in them. They're too talented to get beaten that badly.

I only saw highlights of that game, but I swear it seemed like Brazil was just standing around most of the time.. their goalkeeper was pissed..

jc

So far so good. Lots of chances.

FIFA will start getting a lot of heat for letting players stay in with concussions. That German player was out before he hit the ground and still looked lost 15 mins later.

Congrats Germany. I'm sure your wife is thrilled Swish!

Great match.

Does Germany get to keep the World Cup?
Graham Watson By Graham Watson


As German players posed with, kissed and hoisted one of the most coveted trophies in all of sports, it’s a fair assumption that many of the players had no idea their time with the historic 18-carat gem was running short.

After the celebration ends and the Germans board their plane, the trophy they worked so hard to achieve will be locked away and a gold-plated replica would be headed back to German soil.

It seems like one of the biggest teases in sports.

The feeling of lifting 13.61 pounds of 75 percent pure 18-carat gold and then watching that prized possession be taken and locked away for the next four years is heartbreaking, but Germany isn’t the first team to go through this loved-and-lost scenario. Since 1974, the winners of the World Cup have all walked away with replicas.

Why? Well, it’s because the trophy isn’t only coveted by the players, it’s also coveted by thieves.

In 2010, Cash4Gold, the world’s top public gold buyer, said the trophy was worth upwards of $10 million and its value continues to rise as the value of gold rises. Because of this, the trophy has been stolen twice and was once saved from thievery.

During World War II, Dr. Ottorino Barassi, the Italian vice-president of FIFA, hid the original trophy – the Jules Rimet Cup – in a shoebox under his bed to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis. However, all that work was for naught because in 1966, the trophy was stolen in England while on display at a public exhibition in London.

Seven days later, the stolen trophy was found by a dog named Pickles, who was relieving himself on a bush when his owner saw the trophy wrapped in newspaper.

In 1970, the Jules Rimet Cup went to Brazil – permanently – after it won its third World Cup. The trophy we know today replaced the Jules Rimet Cup and that prize was first handed out in 1974. However, thieves were still very much in love with the old version and in 1983, the trophy was stolen from the Brazilian Football Confederation headquarters in Rio de Janeiro and never recovered. Legend has it that it was melted down and sold.

So, understandably, FIFA has some trust issues when it comes to its fancy trophy and keeps it heavily guarded whenever it is on display, being celebrated with and even when it’s locked away for safe keeping.

But, each winner since 1974 has had its name engraved on the base of the real trophy. After Germany gets its engraving, there’s only room for three more names. It’s unknown what FIFA will do after it runs out of space in 2030 on what will be the 100th anniversary of the tournament.

So, Germany’s long-awaited rendezvous with the World Cup trophy lasted maybe a couple hours. Let’s hope they savored it.



Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter Follow @Yahoo_Graham

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Unless you're a 'professional' thief you probably don't have the means to fence something so famous. So then what? Pawnshop? Cash4Gold? Lol
Whoever ended up with it realized they had something that was invaluable. The moment they surfaced with it they were jail bound. So they ditched it when common sense set it. That's my take.

You could always melt it down... but you are right, unless you a big time thief you are not going to have the "network" it takes to find a buyer for something like that.

Now on to a more uplifting topic.. I see where some things in Europe are exactly the same as they are in the US.. rich athletes get the girls. Did anybody else see Mario Gotze's girlfriend?

I am not a soccer fan at all, but I found that game winning goal just sick! I was only tuned in because I saw online that it was probably going to penalty kicks (which I do find watchable). That goal being scored in extra time was pretty damn exciting. Here is a page of GIF's of that goal.

http://www.highlighthub.com/mario-gotze-scores-vs-argentina-gif/

It was an amazing goal.. to take it off your chest while on the run and direct it exactly in the direction you need it, while allowing it to come off your chest soft enough to not get away from you, then turning on it to kick into the far post corner of the net with the goalie leaning near corner is all fairly amazing... to do it in extra time of the world cup just makes it that much more amazing.