{"id":5624,"date":"2014-06-25T09:10:21","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T13:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=5624"},"modified":"2014-06-25T09:10:37","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T13:10:37","slug":"5624","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=5624","title":{"rendered":"Drinking from the World Cup: Day 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recapping Day 13:
\n<\/strong>The theme of the day was the end of eras, one very succesful and one not so much, for Italy and Ivory Coast.\u00a0 Poor Ivory Coast.\u00a0 Really their last shot to do something at a World Cup with this generation of top players, and they come up short again.\u00a0 This time in heartbreaking fashion, as they give up a penalty kick in the 93rd Minute that ousts them and moves boring Greece onto the knockout stage.\u00a0 The call could’ve gone either way, but it was one of those things where the player shouldn’t given the ref the opportunity to make the penalty call.\u00a0 This was the last World Cup for Drogba and Yaya Toure, and Gervinho and Kalou will be past 30 in the next Cup.<\/p>\n

For Italy, they go out in the Group stage for the second straight Cup, after winning in 2006.\u00a0 Of course the big story was Luis Suarez’s bite.\u00a0 In his defense, Chiellini looks like an incredibly annoying player to play against.\u00a0 In NOT his defense, I could say a million things.\u00a0 Mainly, uh, you’re an adult, don’t bite people?\u00a0 But also, he’s already had two huge punishments and firestorms of controversy over previous bites.\u00a0 How could he do it again and think he’d get away with it?\u00a0 He faked like he had just banged his mouth on the guy’s shoulder.\u00a0 He didn’t realize it’s the World Cup and there’s 50 high def cameras pointed at him at all times?\u00a0 I guess he just gets lost in competing and, for him, that means chomping down on the nearest piece of flesh.\u00a0 Very bizarre and very dumb.\u00a0 They haven’t announced it yet, but I can’t imagine we’ll see him play again in this tournament, which is a shame for Uruguay and fans of great soccer playing, because he can certainly provide it.<\/p>\n

Today’s Games:<\/strong>
\nNoon: Argentina vs. Nigeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina vs. Iran
\n4PM: France vs. Ecuador and Switzerland vs. Honduras<\/p>\n

Today’s Drink:
\n<\/strong>Diseno Torrontes. <\/em>We take a much needed step away from beer for this Argentinian white wine.\u00a0 We’ve been heavy on the European drinks, so it’s about time we spend some time with a South American product.\u00a0 After all, Europe has been a disappointment in this tournament, with Spain, Italy, England, and (most likely) Portugal all failing to get out of their groups.\u00a0 Meanwhile, every South American team is still alive, though it seems FIFA has screwed them over a bit by putting Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Colombia all in the same section of the bracket for the knockout stage, meaning those four of the six South American teams will battle it out for one semifinal spot.<\/p>\n

What’s At Stake:
\n<\/strong>The Group F games (noon) are probably the least interesting of this third series of games for any group.\u00a0 Argentina has advanced and just needs a draw to win the group, which they’ll want to do so they can avoid a hot French team in their next game.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Nigeria is almost assured to advance no matter what anyway.\u00a0 They take second in the group with draw, but even with a loss they’d be in decent shape because Iran would have to beat Bosnia, and they haven’t come close to scoring a goal yet, so that seems pretty unlikely.<\/p>\n

France hasn’t even officially advanced yet but they’ve basically won the group, with their massive goal differential of +6, and Honduras is still technically alive but their -4 differential with 0 points makes it unlikely.\u00a0 So the intrigue really comes on who can grab the most points today, Ecuador or Switzerland, with Ecuador up two in goal differential but facing a much tougher opponent.<\/p>\n

Before the tournament, I picked all six South American teams to advance out of the group stage.\u00a0 Five are now through.\u00a0 So I’ll stick with my prediction and bet on Ecuador to find a way.\u00a0 That way will very likely be through Enner Valencia, but don’t count out Felipe Caicedo, a strong and talented striker who has yet to find the back of the net in this tourney.\u00a0 We’ll see how many regular starters France uses against them, since they’ve all but won this group.\u00a0 Yohan Cabaye is already out after two yellows, and I doubt they’ll start Paul Pogba or Patrice Evra either, as they both have a yellow and they won’t want them to miss the next game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recapping Day 13: The theme of the day was the end of eras, one very succesful and one not so much, for Italy and Ivory Coast.\u00a0 Poor Ivory Coast.\u00a0 Really their last shot to do something at a World Cup … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5624"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624\/revisions\/5627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}