Second favourite national team

[RoosTah]

I'm guessing it's southern hemisphere.

 

[Big Ewis]

Another thing I like about Australia is that their games are real battles, you can never be 100% sure how it will end. While ABs are very predictable (they win 99% of their games). Aussies have a winning percentage and very even defeats against South Africa and England, you can never be sure who will win between: "England vs Australia" or "South Africa vs Australia". They try to play the style of rugby that I amuses me and their games are always real battles, they will never guarantee a result, they can lose against Samoa or Scotland at home and a week later can beat the British Lions, Boks or ABs, they are almost as unpredictable as the French but Aussies usually play better than them. Sorry @Big Ewis

you really brought me all the way here with that notification thing for this shiitty paragraph to read for context and at the end Australia are better than France ? Man I'm...hmmm, my stomach hurts a bit.

 

[rusty_lock]

NZ are my second favorite. They simply are the best and they are a joy to watch. Whether they win to much for some people or not is immaterial to me, the spectacle they always put on is a treat.

Argentina are also a favorite of mine. I think what they have done to reach the heights that they have with what is essentially an amateur domestic competition has been outstanding. It gives me hope that maybe one day Canada could do that too.

 

[SeloShop]

Got to be Southern Hemisphere. Australia are good, but for the spectacle and occasion, it has to be New Zealand.

 

[petite]

NZ because of the coolest outfit in any sport + hacka + they are the best + they come from this litlle cute country.
second would be fiji. specially decades ago when they had this awsome style with treir strange basketball- like passing. incredibly skillfull and unique way of palyng the game. now they addapeted to more normal style but they still have some amazing moments of beautifull running rugby

 

[Bazzy]

Wales, Ireland as a close third.

Think England will be last on my list.

 

[Shaggy]

Ummmn .... Canada, I like the way they play the game ... and I like the fans

 

[Da Grappla]

Anyone against All Blacks. They're so superior...the USA Basketball of Rugby. I can't stand them.

When AB are not on the field...France would be the least favourite, then England.

And above all, Argentina in my heart. Because of blood, family, friendship (the staff of my former and current team is all argentine) cultural and sentimental ties. Their final championship upset against Australia, with a barely professional squad on the pitch against a full pro Super 15 team. I'm always a Jaguareté (a jaguar, the actual animal displayed on the shield, not a puma) at heart. Always was, and always we'll be.

Italy are others I like.

When seeing Italy or Argentina, specially Argentina, I wonder why we, Spain, couldn't be like them.

I also would like to see Georgia and Romania performing against Tier 1 Europe at last.

 

[Jaguares]

Think England will be last on my list.

:lol:

 

[iINDOMINUSxx]

:lol:

remember watching that, best advert ever.

 

[Big Ewis]

^ haha, very good !! It's light, it's funny, it doesn't look like an ad for the end of the world or the second coming of Christ. Good ad.

 

[SimonG]

The black shirt of NZ is second only to the yellow jersey of Brazil in iconic status in international sport..so just as Brazil are most peoples second team in football the same applies to NZ in Rugby. People respect the best. NZ are even more unique to Brazil though in that in much of the world football is a religion whereas it's just NZ for Rugby so they stand out that bit more...grannies knowing about player positions etc. Kiwis know the game in ways none of us could comprehend.

Never did get a NZ jersey (would have got a number 11 if I had)...did get a Brazil number 9 with Ronaldo.

 

[Big Ewis]

yeah about that, Brazil for football and NZ for Rugby, isn't it fair to say the AB are more dominant at their craft than Brazil at theirs ? I know the AB only won 2 WC out of 7, but then there's all the rest. Brazil hasn't been utterly unbeatable at football as much as the AB's in Rugby I reckon. I've almost no knowledge of football, and this I don't say as an embarrassed Rugby fan, I mean literally almost none at all. But still I know Italy's won a lot of WC's, Argentina, Chehhhmany...so there isn't as much of a monopoly it seems.

In fact, here's a question: out of all the main team sports in the world, which nation is the most dominant at a given sport ? USA at basketball and a fairly close second NZ at Rugby I'd say.

 

[Jaguares]

The black shirt of NZ is second only to the yellow jersey of Brazil in iconic status in international sport..so just as Brazil are most peoples second team in football the same applies to NZ in Rugby. People respect the best. NZ are even more unique to Brazil though in that in much of the world football is a religion whereas it's just NZ for Rugby so they stand out that bit more...grannies knowing about player positions etc. Kiwis know the game in ways none of us could comprehend.

Never did get a NZ jersey (would have got a number 11 if I had)...did get a Brazil number 9 with Ronaldo.

It's funny that you are talking about Brazil when they have stopped practicing an offensive game since 1982, their last team that played an offensive game, "Jogo Bonito" is dead. :lol:

http://observer.com/2014/07/the-ugly-game/

The Ugly Game

Why Brazilian Football Has Been Crying Since 1990

Last Friday, the Nike marketing myth of Brazil’s enduring “jogo bonito†was brutally, finally and thankfully put to bed. As the home team viciously hacked, chopped and bullied a much more talented and beautiful Colombian opponent, the football world looked on in horror at the depraved low the once formidable Brazilians had reached in their desperate quest to not lose at home. Sadly, the brilliant, fragile Neymar paid the greatest price for his team’s ugly play.

This is hardly new. Brazil stopped playing pretty after 1990, when their flamboyant eye-turning team game smashed head first into the cagey, machiavellian football of Dr. Carlos Salvador Bilardo (with a hand from Diego Maradona and Claudio Paul Caniggia) This final wake-up call from “los hermanos†would mark a turning point in the Brazilian national team.

Brazil was desperate for a ***le going into that 1990 World Cup in Italy. Their last conquestâ€"and last trip to the finalâ€"had come 20 years prior with one of the most dazzling national sides to ever play the game. That vaunted 1970 seleção heralded a golden era of global football not just in Brazil, but the world over. From Johan Cruyff’s total football in Holland, Cesar Luis Menotti’s flowing Argentina sides, and of course Brazil’s eye-popping jogo bonito. These were teams that played a freewheeling, aesthetics-first game that overwhelmed opponents with relentless talent, flair and wonderful hairstyles.

The first World Cup of the next decade, Spain 1982, ushered in a new wave of tactical, cynical football. Argentina, the defending champions, trotted out to high expectations with the world’s best player, Diego Maradona, and a host of international-caliber stars like Ossie Ardiles and Mario Kempes. Brazil, which had performed superbly at the previous cup, fielded a superlative squad stocked with wizards like Zico, Socrates and Falcao. Both South American dazzlers ran smack into an unheralded, Italian team playing not to loseâ€"a winning strategy in grueling yet short tournaments like the World Cup. The Italians compensated for their lack of game-changing talent with game-numbing catenaccio enforced with shin-splintering precision by hitmen like Claudio Gentile. FIFA referees would, of course, require several more years to catch on.

By the time the wonderful Brazilians had crashed out to the European side, the message was clear.The bureaucrats had taken over the art gallery. Aesthetics were out. Winning at any cost was in. Following their 1982 first round fiasco, Argentina’s flowing Menottistas would cede to Bilardistas, the country’s own, wilier version of Italian catenaccio. Brazil, curiouslyâ€"perhaps stubbornlyâ€"held on to its signature jogo bonito far longer in spite of mounting evidence that the world around it had changed.

But how had it changed?

For Dr. Bilardo, the recipe was simple. Whereas Cruyff’s Holland famously employed all players in every facet of the gameâ€"with defenders attacking and attackers defendingâ€"and Menotti’s sides built play from the back, through retina-pleasing, creative midfielders to languid goal hungry forwards, Bilardo viewed the world much more pragmatically. Labor would be divided. Ten workers + one genius CEO up front. Maradona y 10 más. (Translation: Maradona + 10 other dudes).

It worked. With a team made up mostly of hard-working nobodies all playing in the service of one game-deciding superstar, Argentina conquered the next cup at Mexico 1986. The formula would be tweaked for the 1990 cup, with Argentina fielding a team of nine working class laborers, plus two “special†players up front to conjure goals, Maradona and Claudio Paul Caniggia. These same two men would put the final nail in Brazil’s jogo bonito coffin.

The Italy 1990 knockout stage match between Brazil and Argentina will be remembered for all the Brazilian goals that didn’t go inâ€"and, by Argentines, for the one special one that did. For most of the match, a flashy Brazil ran over a depleted, limp Argentina on the pitch, pinging shots off the crossbar like an arcade. Yet the stubborn Argentinesâ€"using every trick in the Bilardo playbook (including, it’s been suggested, tainted water bottles) clung on for dear life. When Argentina’s solitary genius flashed between a cluster of Brazilian legs and threaded an unimaginable pass to Caniggia for the game’s only goal, 200 million Brazilian hearts sank.

So as they geared up for the 1994 World Cup, the Brazilians had a choice to make. Modernize and try to win, or stay “bonito†and risk everything yet again. Pragmatism won out. With the stingy Carlos Alberto Parreira at the helm, a rugged marking midfielder named Dunga as captain, and two very special players up front in Bebeto and Romario, Brazil clawed and elbowed its way to a narrow World Cup victory in 1994. Brazil’s bitter Bilardista medicine had worked. Save the occasional flash, they haven’t looked back.

Fittingly, it’s Maradona’s 1990 dagger through Brazilian hearts that’s being commemorated in song by the hordes of Argentine invaders taking over the beaches of Rio de Janeiro for this World Cup. As the World Cup banger of the moment goes, “Diego juked you, Caniggia dicked you, and you’ve been crying ever since Italy.â€

And Brazil is certainly crying. But now the whole world cries when Brazil plays, too, because it’s 1982 all over again. Brazil is now Italy. Fernandinho is the butcher Claudio Gentile. What the former, along with his equally punishing teammates, did to Colombia’s 22-year-old boy wonder James Rodriguez in last friday’s cynical quarterfinal, looked eerily similar to the treatment received by another sublime 22-year-old South American in 1982. Except this time the bully also wore a South American kit.

Perhaps a return to the beautiful game’s barbaric calcio roots is inevitable. Brazil, almost alone, carried the torch as far as it could through the 1980s. But as the famous Brazilian song (sorta) goes: Tristeza nao tem fim, jogo bonito, sim.

Now, only Lionel Messi can deliver us from catenaccio.

:lol::lol::lol:

 

[Draggs]

Do you guys really turn every thread you meet in into football v rugby? Conrad, Simon, I hate to call people out like children, but seriously quit it. Any more and there will be bans.

 

[Jaguares]

Do you guys really turn every thread you meet in into football v rugby? Conrad, Simon, I hate to call people out like children, but seriously quit it. Any more and there will be bans.

Why are you going to ban me? Everybody know who is the troll

 

[iINDOMINUSxx]

Why are you going to ban me? Everybody know who is the troll

because your talking football on a rugby forum

 

[Jaguares]

because your talking football on a rugby forum

So why have not banned Simon that all he does is talk about football? From long time ago.

 

[iINDOMINUSxx]

So why have not banned Simon that all he does is talk about football? From long time ago.

i was not being serious, i dont know the rules that well

 

[TRF_Cymro]

So why have not banned Simon that all he does is talk about football? From long time ago.

Conrad just drop it. Give respect to Draggs, he has a valid point. Simon is in the same boat no doubt. People got to stop questioning the Admin every time.