Google Quote of the Day
Perhaps a little childish of me, but meh:
"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised." - Dorothy Parker
I once met a yank from Yale or Harvard. From her stories, I wouldn't be surprised either.
In other news, I'm just recovering from Monday's bouldering session and a gruelling hour of squash on Tuesday. I have supervisor meetings on Fridays, and he's going to kick my lazy arse. And rightly so.
Lastly, do you think there's any political planning of the World Cup team groups? For example: the US is not in the same group as, I don't know, Iran. Then again, it is the world game. It transcends all else.
"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised." - Dorothy Parker
I once met a yank from Yale or Harvard. From her stories, I wouldn't be surprised either.
In other news, I'm just recovering from Monday's bouldering session and a gruelling hour of squash on Tuesday. I have supervisor meetings on Fridays, and he's going to kick my lazy arse. And rightly so.
Lastly, do you think there's any political planning of the World Cup team groups? For example: the US is not in the same group as, I don't know, Iran. Then again, it is the world game. It transcends all else.
posted by Engels at 12:45 pm
11 Comments:
The groups for the Soccer World Cup are drawn randomly.
Don't you remember the big hooplah when we ended up in Brazil's group?
I suspected so but they could have drawn a couple of times... Chuffa whinged that England had such a difficult line up last time while Germany had an comparatively easy one.
It was drawn, they chose 8 seeds, which were supposedly the top 8 teams, although they didn't pick them by the FIFA rankings. Then they were split into 8 groups. The rest of the teams were put into 3 pools of 8 teams, trying to keep nations from similar areas together, so all the Asian teams together, all African together etc. This was so they wouldn't have say Japan and Korea in the same group, get them into different groups, So each group has a diverse range of teams from around the world.
So they picked 1 ball at a time from the 1st pool, it went into Group A, then B, so on. The position they were in that group (spot 1 was the seed, 2, 3 and 4 for the rest) was also randomly choosen.
Then some random guy found the pieces of paper with the names of the country's (that were inside the balls) on them in a bin outside wherever the draw was held, and put them all up individually on ebay. What a champion.
I don't think this makes sense, but I saw it done live on SBS a few months ago. Riviting TV!!!
Ah, I see, I think...
USA and Iran were in the same group at France 98, and everyone made a lot of noise about the unifying power of football, haha.
The seedings are arbitrary nonsense. How, say, Spain can be seeded escapes me, except that the Western European countries with the largest potential viewing audiences always seem to receive relatively easy groups, as does the host nation. (I like to pretend it's all fixed, like the Italians do, so I've something to blame when Holland is eliminated.)
Judging by some of the Iranian babes in the audience of those games, I'd give them a "unifying experience" any day of the week.
As seen here: http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=2688#comments
and here
http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=2689#comments
Never thought you'd see Iranians with Israeli flags in your hat, didya, Engels?
There was a big commotion in Argentina when they were picked in the 'group of death' because as Pele picked the ball before he looked he called it as Argentina.
OMG witchcraft!
I have an Aussie friend living in the UK with an Iranian fellow. He tried to convince my friend that Iran is becoming liberal and showed him a photo of some Iranian women with visible, wait for it, arms. Scandalous.
Actually, Grogs maybe able to confirm my retelling of the story?
This would probably be the same Iranian friend of Mr Grogs in which he sent me a text message from the Iranians house at 8am in the morning on Tuesday (AEST) stating he was completely stoned and listening to some crazy buddhist music...
The very same, I imagine.
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