Sunday’s highly anticipated match day featuring two great international football rivalries ended in a relative fizzle, with Germany defeating England (4-1) and Argentina defeating Mexico (3-1) by multi-goal margins. To talk about those matches and Monday’s two Round of 16 fixtures, I was joined by Kartik Krishnaiyer and Laurence McKenna for this edition of the World Cup Buzz Podcast.
I’m starting to wonder if Kartik has some short term memory issues. He seems to change his opinions based on results and adamantly pretend that it was his opinion all along.
How can you pick England to beat Germany one day & then go on & on about how England is not even close to being in same class with Germany the next day after Germany wins?
Also, Kartik’s over emotional propensity for considering every one of his opinions an undeniable fact is starting to become tiresome, especially when he says completely ridiculous things like Lampard not being an international caliber player to the point of not being able to make the USA WC roster. Then the next day when USA loses to Ghana it turns out that USA has no good players in midfield. Which is it, Kartik? One day they’re all better than Lampard & the next they all suck?
Speaking of ridiculous opinions saying that USA was never in the game vs. Ghana. Not sure what match Kartik was watching, but the US dominated in the 2nd half! That is proven by the fact that, as Kartik admitted himself, Kingson had a great game in goal for Ghana. How can a keeper for Ghana be forced to have a great match when his team is supposedly completely in control of the whole match? That just isn’t possible!
What really happened is that USA had a terrible first half, but after subbing in Edu & Feilhaber a great second half during which they very much looked like winning the game & only a great performance by Kingson & some last ditch tackles prevented it. Just before Dempsey earned a penalty I said to my friends at the bar, “Watch the US get a penalty very soon because one of these last ditch, desperate tackles will miss the ball” (there were about 3 or 4 tackles just prior to that which just barely got the ball… had they not done so they would’ve resulted in penalties against Ghana) & that’s exactly what happened.
Overall, Kartik just needs to start taking himself a little bit less seriously & possibly not try to sound so controversial all the time because it often results in him contradicting himself, often within the same show even.
I agree with many of his opinions like English players not being as good as most English believe they are (for example, Gerrard had a terrible season at Liverpool after Xabi Alonso left for Madrid). Also, what many English forget when they base their opinion of players on their performances in the EPL is that there are only a handful of good clubs. Most of the games the likes of Gerrard play & often shine in are against pretty bad teams. I’ve also noticed that in recent years when the top English clubs come up against each other the games are often very boring and don’t live up to expectations because they simply cancel each other out.