how many rules has been broken in SA?

the big 4 + host theory is done

no europeon team has ever won outside europe is done

the big favourite never wins the tournament is done

any more?

Losing your first group stage game and winning the tournament.

Qualifying being meaningless took a big hit as well given that the 2 finalists won every game in qualfying.

Euro winners never winning is also broken.


Re. the qualifying, it's a tricky one because it can be interpreted different ways - for example, Uruguay scraped through after coming 5th in CONMEBOL, and winning a playoff by 1 goal (over 2 legs) against Costa Rica. They were the last team to qualify IIRC. Yet they reached the last 4. So I don't think "qualifying" is a rule anyway.


I think the only one left is that Confederations cup winners never win the World Cup, but that's a bit shit anyway considering the Confed cup has hardly been around for too long.

kas wrote:Euro winners never winning is also broken.

Didn't Germany won Euro 72 and WC 74?

kas wrote:
Re. the qualifying, it's a tricky one because it can be interpreted different ways - for example, Uruguay scraped through after coming 5th in CONMEBOL, and winning a playoff by 1 goal (over 2 legs) against Costa Rica. They were the last team to qualify IIRC. Yet they reached the last 4. So I don't think "qualifying" is a rule anyway.

Obviously there are counter examples for each side as teams can change between the start of qualifying and the end of the World Cup, but since 1974 the winning team has dropped points in at least two matches in qualifying and the one time a South American team won with the one group format Brazil were 3rd.

Dwarf is pretty much right.

Can an admin ban this Sports Guru person? It's clearly a bot using some kind of new technique, maybe he gets paid for mentioning certain keywords as much as possible. I'm tired of editing his posts.

I think his posts are quite interesting. Much better than yours kas

He's not a spambot, just an Arsenal fan.

Yeah. With Ronaldo as favourite player

What is all this shit about "Euro winners can't win the World Cup"?!

Maybe he means fat Ronaldo. He was pretty universally liked.


That was supposedly also a rule, that a team that won the Euro never follows it up with the World Cup. Turns out it wasn't even a rule in the first place.