Showing posts with label Playoffs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Playoffs. Show all posts

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Got to go for Iceland, unless you're Croatian

Iceland are bidding to become the smallest nation to reach the World Cup finals when they hosts the first leg of their play-off against Croatia in Reykjavik tomorrow.
And now that there's another Icelander among the Geezer family (welcome Max, Iceland is fine, Arsenal won't be tolerated), it's hard not to back them.
Swedish coach Lars Lagerback has taken the island nation, with a population just over 300,000, to the the brink of Brazil 2014, and the chance to reach a major tournament for the first time in their history.
Iceland had won 5 of their group games, including successes over Norway and Slovenia, and are unbeaten in their past four, including a 4-4 draw at group winners Switzerland.
Despite Iceland's vast improvement, Croatia remain favorites to progress, but have a few coaching issues after Igor Stimac stood down following a 2-0 defeat in their final World Cup qualifier against Scotland last month.
Plus, Iceland have Eidur 'Goody' Gudjohnson. How could you nowt like this guy? He played for Chelsea (so that's one reason), but always seemed to enjoy the game and got to play for the national team with his Dad - that's good enough for me!


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

World Cup playoffs and commentator eliminations

Lots to be excited about today.

There's a Japan v Ghana friendly, Lithuania v Liechtenstein and a few other real humdingers.

In other news, there are plenty of games that could decide who we will see in Brazil next summer - if only they had a playoff between Alexi Lalas and Mark Lawrenson so that we wouldn't have to see both of them talking about the World Cup. Hopefully Tommy Smyth has already been eliminated as the Faroe Islands of football announcers - it's not in the Ol' Onion Bag for you Tommy, you bell end.

The US v Mexico, Ukraine v England, Armenia v Denmark, Italy v Czech Republic - can't wait for it all to start. I'm almost as excited as this fella...