Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Day 3: Player of the Day

I went into yesterday hoping to be able to crown a French player, but since they played like ass (see the post below for more on that) I had to check out the Italy v Netherlands match. I assumed Italy would win, so when the Dutch finished 3 goals to the good, I was pleasantly surprised. I have hated the Italian team since they won the World Cup in 1982. Whenever they lose, I feel good, but losing to such a well-polished group of Oranje, was just so nice to watch. I was going to give the award to Ruud van Nistelrooy, but his goal was pretty shady (about 5 yards offsides). That left us w/ 10 other people to consider but only 1 of them really deserves this great award so w/o further ado, I give you the Visions of Ypsi Player of the Day for Day 3 of the group stage: Wesley Sneijder.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Van Nistelrooy was actually not offsides. The Italian goalie threw one of his defenders down behind the goal so that guy was actually keeping Van Nistelrooy onsides. Which is hilarious and sweet. I hate the Italian soccer team too. The second goal that the Dutch scored was freaking sweet!

peltierinator said...

That guy was out of bounds. If he is out of play it doesn't matter, in fact the dutch had 2 players offside on that first goal.

I loved the reactions from the defenders after the goal was allowed. I also hate Italian soccer.

Andre said...

Yeah, I saw the replay & UEFA's explination. Even the panel of refs they were talking w/ wasn't able to come to an agreement about it & the explination was pretty contradictory.

Either way, the second goal was amazing.

Anonymous said...

If he doesn't count if he's out of bounds like that, then why wouldn't teams use that as a strategy to make the other team offsides all the time? Instead of moving forward, just run out of bounds on the end line. Know what I mean? He has to count so that shit won't happen all the time.

Andre said...

That's the thing, stepping out of play has always been something people could do, except in this case he was knocked out by Buffon. And when an attacking player steps off he or she is out of play and can't be called offsides. Watching the replay a few times, it does look like they made the right call, but I definitely see why there was some confusion.