World Cup: Holland to win, Spain to slump Spain is chewing on the chorizo of defeat thanks to Switzerland's 1-0 victory yesterday, and history shows this result is a major setback. In the last 40 years only one top 10 team has won a World Cup group after an opening game defeat. Only four have finished in the top two. The tournament favourites Spain now face a serious …
Do the stats also take into account how lacklustre the opening games are? This World Cup has got to be the most boring opener I've ever seen!! There's been a few gems, but on the whole it's nowhere near as entertaining as previous tournaments.
I only hope the next round matches have a little more spark...
"The Reg caught up with Dr McHale at half time during the Spain – Switzerland game. At the time he was saying “It's beautiful to watch, Spain do know what they're doing”, and hypothesising that someone like Owen Hargreaves would have been better for marking Spain's Xavi out of the game, than Frank Lampard."
wow, who would have thought a central defensive midfielder/ right back would be better at marking than an attacking midfielder. what next? david james is more likely to touch the ball with his hands than say peter crouch?
stopped reading - too much bollocks even after page 1
also, everyone knows that friendlies are useless at determining how good a side is. they often play with reduced squad (like we did recently) or play with different formations and players to test things out. plus some teams play good opposition as a test and some like a more mellow warm up game against minnows.
"Holland" is a city in the American state of Michigan, or 1/6th of a small, wet country in Europe.
This is just like "England" is an oft-used misnomer for the entire United Kingdom.
Please, use "Netherlands"
Thank you.
(FWIW, "Holland" refers only to the provinces of Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland. The other *ten* provinces are Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Overijssel, Gelderland, Flevoland, Utrecht, Noord-Brabant, Limburg and Zeeland)
- A Dutch resident most assuredly and happily NOT living in "Holland"
I asked some Dutch people about this when I heard them repeatedly refer to their country as Holland even though they weren't from the region. They said that many Dutch use the term interchangeably with the Netherlands and is far less controversial than calling calling the UK, England.
It is also a little confusing for the rest of us when you hear Dutch supporters chanting Hup Holland Hup (Go Holland Go!) at Internationals.
All of which goes to reinforce the national stereotype of liberal, laid back Dutchies. They don't make controversy out of small things like naming a country.
- Hey Van Dijk, why are all the silly foreigners mistaking Holland for our entire frikkin' country?
- I dunno, Smit. Hmm. Let's do it too if it makes life our easier.
- Good idea! Pass the spliff, willya?
*puff* *puff*
@ac chill out jongeman. FIFA et al but more importantly nearly all supporter material refers to holland. Don't make it even more confusing for our foreign friends. The two can be interchanged, ever been to one of our foreign embassies?
Besides bar Utrecht, there isn't much to the Netherlands anyway, and that's coming from a zeeuw ;-)
Anyway more importantly our our football chants go like; Hup Holland Hup
You seem to have the same chip on your shoulder like our Scottish friends have with England.
"Dr Ian McHale is Senior Lecturer in Statistics in the University of Salford."
That's the problem. If he really had a system for predicting the outcome of footy matches that actually worked, he'd have cleaned up on the fixed-odds (betting accumulators of course) and retired to a nice, private island somewhere in the Caribbean by now.
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