Ashes of devoted fans spread across the pitch.
Cemeteries in a part of the stadiums.
That was talked about.

Northern Ireland - Slovakia
0 : 2

We're so close now !!! Look at this:

you should sail through now. Who do you have left to play?

England are through after absolutely throttling Croatia. We were reaaly good but I can't believe how awful Croatia were. Still, it could be worse for them, they could have Maradona in charge.:eek:

how weird will it be to have no Argentina Portugal or maybe even France at the world cup? Might be our best chance of winning it again!

edit. was excellent last night

Slovenia at home and then Poland away.
We need one more point out of these two matches and we're through!

There's also a young rising star in our squad, only 19yr old teenager Vladimir Weiss, who plays for Manchester City. He played only two qualifier matches so far and in both he was pointed out as the Man of the Match (against Czech republic and now against Northern Ireland). Finally we've got some lightning-fast players that are not scared of playing one-on-one with enemy defence and don't think too much with the ball.

Some tunes sung by football players :
http://www.rue89.com/2009/09/11/musi...du-ballon-rond
Gasp.

Slovakia - Slovenia
0 : 2


Now we FUCKED up this real bad. We needed one point only to sail through to Africa !!!! I'm terribly dissapointed. The Slovenians were way better than us tonight.

Poland - Slovakia

0:1

WE'RE THROUGH!

the first time EVER in the history of Slovakian independence (=since 1993) on a major world/euro tournament.

sorry for the endless rants, I've just grown to be a big fan recently.

congrats slavo-predicting a huge party in slovakia tonight :)

nah, i'm going to sleep.
but i bet half of the nation will be alcohol-poisoned within following 2 hours

So whats everyone thing of the play-off draw?

Republic of Ireland v France
Portugal v Bosnia-Herzegovina
Greece v Ukraine
Russia v Slovenia

Obviously FIFA deciding to seed the playoffs was a move to make the possibility of Cristiano Ronaldo at the finals more likely? Interesting match-ups, I suppose.

Poor Slovenians, they did not have a lucky day in the draw. They have a good team now, though it will be more than tough to beat the Russians.

As for the the Irish, they can be a surprise and I cross my fingers for them to win.

Greece and Portugal - nothing to discuss here.

go bosnia-herzegovina!

anyway, watched liverpool-lyon today, wunderbar game tho the injuries...

France, Portugal and Russia; sad to go with the bigger teams, but in this instance I find it difficult to see any upsets.

Greece vs Ukraine is interesting though. Greece should do it, as Ukraine have lost it a bit and needed 90 minutes of apathetic drivel from England to vault them above Croatia. But Ukraine still have something to them, and I shall be rooting for them.

in true Eurovision style, I'm backing the old Balkan block vote

I think the Republic has a good shot against France.

yep despite frances real cheap gutter tabloidism of irish people... w e will invade paris and drunkenly wreck the place and rape all french women while we burn down the city.... the french media shoild be ashamed ...now come over to dublin and stink the place up with garlic! terrible journalism.....for that i hope we kick seven shades of shit out of them at croke park....

also the french are trying to flush out all irish tickets for the return match in paris...they are very worried about us, very worried.... we shall see. it will be far from a foregone conclusion.

Ireland managed 18 points and a goal difference of 4 in what, Italy aside, really was an extremely weak group. France accrued 21 points and a goal difference of 9.

France are ranked 9th in the world, Ireland 34th.

France have better players playing in a variety of strong leagues. Plus, they have the confidence that comes with being recent champions.

We could point to the draws against Italy and rightly say that they are a good sign, but scraping a draw because you don't want to lose is very different from actually beating a decent team. The fact that France finished second to Serbia might indicate a weakness though - great stuff from Serbia, who fully deserved to top the group, but still a bit of a surprise.

Ireland may win, I just consider it very unlikely.

The second paragraph is true, the ticket part... Very petty from the French side.

As far as garlic is concerned... It's a pretty good thing for your health.

It will be tough, as Ribéry's struggling with whatever part of his body is concerned. I don't see the team doing good during the Cup shall they overcome Ireland. Nor do I think Serbia will achieve anything, based on their last game against les bleus.

This world cup will lack the excitement and intrigue of possible dark horse winners, I think. It's hard to see any underdogs causing much of an upset this time.