FIFA Confederations Cup

Opening game:

South Africa v Iran

then

New Zealand v Spain

Who will be watching?

What sort of chances do the All Whites have?

Who will be favourites to win?

Sky TV has all the games live, brings in some much-needed football action after the European season concluded in May

Well our result vs Italy will have done us no favours vs Spain....I beat it sent the Spain brain trust scarmblin for tapes of our boys. Spain will clobber us 4-0 or such like

Hopefully Iran and SA draw so we can eeeke out a result against of of them adnmake the next phase

No Iniesta but everyone else is fit for Spain... And they have a fairly able replacement in Cesc Fabregas.

couldn't agree anymore, 20 mins in Spain are already 3-0 up

HAHAHA WE SUCK!!!!

stick to horses pstu

Oh dear, would have been nice to keep the scoreline a little more even. Watching replay at 12.30 as I kinda missed it the first time 'round :>

woah just looked at the highlights on fifa.com
http://www.fifa.com/newscentre/videos/player.html#ch=cc09hl&id=1071564

our backs are so shit. all soft goals.

0-0 for IRAQ vs RSA. RSA could seems to find the next

Disagree, I just think they are that good... we were just out of our league. Looks like this Spanish team will become the greatest team ever.

Nah, the NZ defense were caught out of position a number of times and just failed to mark the Spanish players properly. A couple of the goals should not have been scored.

That is true, but they wouldn't of been caught out if not for the fluidity of the Spanish??

yeah no doubt spain are awesome. but i didnt think we were that bad.
watch how many unmarked players there are at each goal. it was like they were just lining up to score.

When I was watching it this morning there were several instances where NZ players were caught out through basic defensive lapses. Sure the Spanish are awesome, but basic errors will make them look even more awesome.

They are really missing Ryan Nelson as well.

Maybe if he was there in the center of the defense directing the others it wouldn't have as much of a shambles at times ...and maybe they would have held out against the Italians the other day.

heh, you guys are no doubt right, maybe just giving Spain to much credit than what they deserve.

It looked like a shambles but bear in mind that marking Torres and Villa with Xavi supplying them has proved impossible for most European teams so hardly a discredit to our boys. Hell, Torres made Vidic look silly earlier this season and Vidic is probably the worlds best centre back. 5-0 is always disappointing but this Spain side is outstanding, barring the 1982 Brazilian team it was probably the best team a NZ football have ever faced.

Oof, was a reasonable enough game and we did ok to keep the score to that but I'm not terribly dissappointed; the boys still made a couple of half chances

Resonable result considering Spain are constantly in the top 5 teams in the world but always fail to impress at World Cups (sounds like All Blacks really)

Good thing this tournament has taken place though as it has highlighted the need to ban the vuvuzela (those fucking horns that were blowing incessently throughout the match) from any and all World Cup matches.

Can't see that happening dude

It's hard to judge a team based on playing such inferior opposition. The fact is we were playing what is clearly the best side in the world right now and the gap in talent was huge. The most notable thing when comparing the two teams is no so much what they do when they have the ball but when they don't. The movement from the whole Spanish team just completely destroyed us. As a Liverpool supporter I feel that if anyone is going to make us look ridiculous then I'm glad it was Torres and company

the Italians win it ugly again

coming from behind to beat USA 3-1

was that ever a red card? no fucking way! shocking refereeing, no intent, yes the tackel is late, but maybe a yellow at worst looks worse than one that Lampard did to Alonso in prem league this season



more controversy as Brazil beat 4-3 with a last gasp penalty, good for the neutrals at least with the amount of goals we had

Slick turn by Pirlo on the 3rd goal. LOVED IT!

What was going on in the brazil game Egypt had them reeling for 15 mins or so late in the second half! but a very good game for the neutrals i loved it!

NZ has a good chance of qualifying out of Iraq S.A and NZ i think we played better football.

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N164788090620-0842.htm

"La Furia Roja are 34 games unbeaten and are chasing the world record of 35 which is currently held by Brazil who set that between 1993 and 1996.

Spain could also set a new record tonight if they beat South Africa as they currently are level with Australia, Brazil and France with 14 straight wins."

18 minutes left for us to get a point!

lol @ AW's celebration after the game as if they won the match!

can you imagine if we qualify for the WC?

Italy are out

Brazil played some slick football and scored 3 times in 8 minutes in first half to effectively clinch the game

the Yanks thumped Egypt 3-0 as well to go through

Spain and Brazil final?

The reactions after the match were pretty OTT imo

I dunno re celebrations, I'm pretty pleased with the lads managing a draw and dominating the game (to the point I'm pissed we didn't win it tbh) but they had just scored their first Confed point which is a good milestone and worth both recognition and celebration

Hey, it could have been an impromptu haka, remember this is NZ we're talking about!

lol spain

fuck I think I wrote the match times wrong on my whiteboard I'm gonna watch this game tonight

*facepalm*

Fabregash was awful....

dub tee eff!

Stink one

Seems like SA really played a strong game against the Brazilians... would have been so sweet if they made the final

Yeah I wasn't following it too closely but the match was on at the pub tonight and from the parts I did see South Africa definitely seemed to have the better of the chances... Dani Alves is just too good though.

FUCK i Can't handle another 30 minutes of this :!

great final