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French was still more lingua franca in western Europe than English, when I was a child 40 years ago. That role still echoes in the name of many international organizations, especially in sports. Check the title at http://www.fifa.com/ and the name of http://www.fia.com/ The languages at http://www.olympic.org/ and at http://www.uci.ch/ are English and French (the original ones for the Comité international olympique and Union Cycliste Internationale). And wonder why http://www.fiba.com/ is FIBA and not IBF despite the title of the page is International Basketball Association. It used to be Fédération Internationale de Basket-ball Amateur. All of them were born at a time when French (the people) were internationally as active as English speakers are now, and English speaking countries where more centered on themselves than they are now. Ultimately the language follows the power and dinamism of countries: if you have to know a language to make money, you learn it. Chinese could be the next one but it's severely handicapped by the writing system. Nobody really wants to learn by heart thousands of characters unless you're born there and have to. I expect a very bumpy transition, if it will ever happen, and a lot of resistence. A Chinese written with latin alphabet would have more chances. Given the attitude of Chinese rulers maybe I'll see them mandating a switch to latin characters, and don't dare to protest. After all they already use qwerty to write Chinese.

105 by 68 metres (115 yd × 74 yd)

Who came up with these numbers? Ew. They don't work out nicely in either scale.

I don't know where you got those numbers, but they're wrong.

The real answer is: (From The Laws of The Game - Law 1 - the field of play)

Dimensions

The length of the touch line must be greater than the length of the goal line.

Length (touch line):
* minimum 90 m (100 yds)
* maximum 120 m (130 yds)

Width (goal line):
* minimum 45 m (50 yds)
* maximum 90 m (100 yds)

Or, for international matches:

Length:
minimum 100 m (110 yds)
maximum 110 m (120 yds)

Width:
minimum 64 m (70 yds)
maximum 75 m (80 yds)

Weird enough for you?

It *is* metric. The diameter of the object in question is 270m, or exactly 3x the minimum length of an association football pitch (a.k.a., a "soccer field").

Explosives, especially homemade explosives, degrade over time and with exposure to moisture and weather. So do control electronics, and organic poisons. The stability of C4 is the exception, rather than the rule. Documented cases of old mines and artillery going off at unexpected times are common in the aftermath of military conflicts around the world. Maintenance in buildings that large, occupied by the pubic on a frequent basis, absolutely require maintenance crews to do thorough inspections to avoid collections of far more mundane materials. Some of the relevant regulations can be found at http://www.fifa.com/mm/documen....

It's not really a World Cup, it's a European-South American Cup with a couple countries from other continents invited.

"Invited?" Every World Cup tournament is preceded by World Cup qualifying matches in which every country meeting FIFA criteria (which is pretty much every country) participates. That's why it's called the World Cup.

Netherlands and Uruguay have always been good nations but haven't made it to the top in ages.

You really should shut up if you know nothing about football, because the Netherlands is the most consistent top football country. If you say what you said you are a total non-expert. I think the USA will not win the next Basketball gold, because they haven't made it to the top in ages. Similar statement.

hours lost at work

Here in Portugal some companies have made a deal: "You can watch the games as long as you leave later to compensate the time". Not only the company gets the same hours, but the employees that enjoy football are more productive when the team wins the game.

Speaking of national football, at least in the UK; Manchester Untied owe the banks around £2.2 Billion (a million million, not a US thousand million). That money would pay for about a tenth of the cost of the war in Iraq to the UK. That's just one football club. Most football clubs in the UK are in debt.

It's the banks fault for lending them. I wonder what happens if the bank takes possession of a team by lack of payment?

I take great pride in hating Zurich Financial ala Farmers Insurance (farmersreallysucks.com) because they're assholes.

Now if you mean strictly hating something incapable of harming you if you watch it (like football,football, or rugby), then yeah I agree with you.

Actually, Fifa is currently running a World Cup fantasy league, which features rather diverse scoring system for individual players. Players are awarded points for e.g. offensive and defensive action, scoring, and keeping a clean sheet. The scoring is also dependent on player's position on the field. It's not a perfect system, but works okay. IMHO, the system favours offensive wing backs, since they're often active in the offense, but are also egligible for the large bonus for shutting out the opponent. Of course, there are a limited number of players in the world who can successfully contribute both offensively and defensively at the wing. It's not an easy position to play.

>> I will not let lobby organizations like the MPAA or RIAA have more power than any other company in the world
> And what, pray tell, do you think the EFF is?

Unfortunately, they were suspended.

Ah well that's because football pitches (in USian, "soccer field" I think...) can vary in size. FIFA's Laws of the Game note minimum and maximum sizes for width and length of pitch: Page 7, Dimensions. Teams are entitled to lay pitches anywhere within these dimensions which leads to learned followers on the terrace mulling about "narrow" and "wide" pitches favouring differing teams or players styles...

Just to confuse things further I believe these are approximate metric measures which have been translated from the original Imperial measures used in England, home of Association Football's Laws of the Game....

A player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to himself or another player (including any kind of jewellery).

Not that I would put much faith into FIFA rankings, considering Mexico and USA are ranked 4th and 5th in the world, while Argentina ranks 9th and Italy is 13th.

http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/index.html? static=1

First off, the Aussies aren't ranked 88th, they're 42nd. Quite a bit of difference between the two.

Secondly, there aren't any wooden spoons here. (That would be American Samoa at 205th.) Every team in the World Cup is good, or else they wouldn't be here. Yes, there not all at the level of Brazil, but every team here can play.

[My prediction: Argentina.]

First off, the Aussies aren't ranked 88th, they're 42nd. Quite a bit of difference between the two.

Secondly, there aren't any wooden spoons here. (That would be American Samoa at 205th.) Every team in the World Cup is good, or else they wouldn't be here. Yes, there not all at the level of Brazil, but every team here can play.

[My prediction: Argentina.]

By the way, FIFA rankings are absolute nonsense.

You are correct... How can we believe the USA soccer is ranked #6, ahead of Germany, Spain (as of the date of this post, from http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/index/0,254 8,All-Feb-2006,00.html)

Rankings are not a good index at all. Australia just lost it.

You know it strikes me that probably 90% of the Internet audience these days would have no clue what ASCII is, much less how to telnet into the server.

On one hand, that's slightly sad - I remember being able to type faster on a C-64 than the modem could transmit - on the other it's amazing how far technology has come in only a decade.

My other thought is to ask the likelihood that FIFA will shut them down as an infringing activity.

Terrorists have their target audiences. The Al Qaeda wants to impress people in the muslim countries, who think of "football" as the sport that's played by kicking a round ball with the feet. If 90% of the TV news anchors around the world have to explain what this "super bowl" thing is, and its true importance in the collective American mind, the intended message of the attack would be wasted. It's not as if there was an attack in the World Cup, whose audience does reach in the billions mark.

I actually take pride in the fact that the U.S. sucks at soccer.

The U.S. doesn't suck that much at soccer, according to the FIFA World ranking (April), they are 10th ! In the same ranking, Germany is 20th...
FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking : http://www.fifa.com/fifa/media/history.teamrank.ht ml

Wrong. Taiwan does not have a team in FIFA. Taiwan plays as Chinese Taipei, which was a compromise between China and Taiwan. you'll note Hong Kong also has a team. BTW, they do this for the olympics too. So the reason can't be "taiwan."

It seems that SEGA is just following FIFA here.

I've played the game..although I only looked at the European teams, it basically lists all the countries that FIFA recognizes.

You can be a manager for English, Scottish, Northen Irish and Welsh teams because they have their own leagues even though they are all technically the United Kingdom. Hong Kong has it's own team and so does Macau. From what I can see, Hong Kong may even have it's own football league. The game tries to put you in the shoes of a real world manager..if the leagues and teams are separate in real life, then the game puts them this way. China seems to be trying to alter reality here..they should be going after FIFA if they have a problem with this.

It seems that SEGA is just following FIFA here.

I've played the game..although I only looked at the European teams, it basically lists all the countries that FIFA recognizes.

You can be a manager for English, Scottish, Northen Irish and Welsh teams because they have their own leagues even though they are all technically the United Kingdom. Hong Kong has it's own team and so does Macau. From what I can see, Hong Kong may even have it's own football league. The game tries to put you in the shoes of a real world manager..if the leagues and teams are separate in real life, then the game puts them this way. China seems to be trying to alter reality here..they should be going after FIFA if they have a problem with this.

I was about to mod you down, but then figured most people wouldn't get it, so I chose to post.

Here is the news for you: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are FIFA members (and have been for a long time), and Taiwan isn't.

Declaring Taiwan (unlike England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) a team is thus fairly likely to be a political statement.

I was about to mod you down, but then figured most people wouldn't get it, so I chose to post.

Here is the news for you: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are FIFA members (and have been for a long time), and Taiwan isn't.

Declaring Taiwan (unlike England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) a team is thus fairly likely to be a political statement.

Cue rant about the Electoral College, and their lack of a good football team

Well the Electoral College thing is debatable, but if you mean the national team, it led England in the FIFA rankings for a good part of the last year or so, and it still leads Germany. You may argue that the rankings are no exact measure of how good the teams are, but you have to admit the top 15 or so have to at least be considered 'good' teams.

-Chris (one of the 10 U.S. Soccer fans ;-)

I've often thought that this would be a great idea for football matches (proper football - you know, with feet )
The most basic idea would be to stick a transponder on each player and on the ball. Relay all that positional info to a multicast server somewhere which will will then draw a map of the pitch and the position of all the players in realtime. Kind of like watching the match on Championship Manager. Coupled with audio commentry, this would give you a good idea of what was happening for not a lot of bandwidth.

The ultimate extension of the idea would be to give each player a transmitter on each limb, then use the Fifa 2004 engine to render the game on the client. THAT would be cool! - check out this for the start of this idea (uses flash, sorry, but worth checking out if you can be arsed with shockwave). Presumably somebody had to enter all the positional data by hand for those but it's a start.

Of course, multicasting the olympics has probably blown the whole idea out the water but that uses lots of bandwidth, which the majority still do not have.

taking off the shirt is considered acceptable behaviour again.

taking off the shirt is considered acceptable behaviour again.

What are you talking about? Last time I looked, the U.S. did have a very good national soccer (football) team. Indeed, a FIFA top 10 team (currently #8). And, I might add, Spain has one of the top national teams in the world, but that didn't seem to help much in Madrid. The fact is that the US is quite competitive in most international sports. We even have a reasonably competitive national cricket team.

As in this?

Anyway, isn't offside a rule, not a Law?

Nope, it varies from sport to sport but in Soccer they are Laws.

Actually, there were eight questions in my original post. You don't think that "Where are you from?" is a sports question do you?

To answer your second question, law is quite correct. Do a quick google for "football laws" and you'll find plenty of links, including this one.

QED.

Americans don't hate soccer, American journalists hate soccer.
The sports media is controlled by sports writers who only understand the so called major sports they grew up with. The MLS which is still not a mature league gets 100,000+ people per week at their games. The US national team is ranked 10th in the world, FIFA World Ranking ,and they regularly draw more than 50,000 per game. People have been saying for years that once the US national team is good the media will cover them better. Well, they're good now and nothing's changed.
I know I can never convince anybody of how great "the beautiful game" is but in a country where the national sport is baseball I can't accept the "soccer is boring" excuse.

Why can't people agree to use that name in international context, and call the american game "american football", although in it the ball is moved around (AFAIK) mostly with hands?

ITV Digital going bust had more to do with the fact that its parent companies, Carlton and Granada (the two largest regional terrestrial TV broadcasters) decided to renege on their £315 million (~US$475 million) football (the type that's played with the foot rather than the type that's played with the hand ) rights contract than any technical issue.

Basically, they overspent on the live rights of domestic football's lower divisions (minor rather than major league baseball is a rough analogy) and were somehow amazed when the viewers didn't sign up in droves. After the footballing authorities refused ITV Digital's greatly reduced "take-it-or-leave-it" offer, Carlton and Granada took the easy out and let ITV Digital go into liquidation rather than bite the bullet and honour their contracts.

Currently, the Football League and its clubs are fighting a legal battle to get the money they are owed from these parent companies.

Bottom line: ITV Digital collapsed because some suits wanted to rid themselves of a less than profitable contract that they and clubs both signed in good faith.

Can we settle this once and for all, Germany automatically qualify (as hosts in 2006), Brazil don't. Read the official FIFA announcement here.

"The Ships Log, sent down almost daily from the ISS crew, will no longer be available on the web due to legal concerns with the freedom of information act"

You seem to be sure that they wanted to supress this information. Perhaps, rather than assume that it is "backwards politician weasal speak" we could assume that they wanted the information available to the public (after all, it's good press and they did place it there to begin with).

Maybe there was an employee who was upset that information about himself was being distributed without his consent. The "legal concerns" could have been that the FOIA was supposed to protect that employees personal records and NASA was concerned that the employee would sue.

I don't doubt that there are some dirty politicians and corrupt lawmakers, but to assume that anything questionable is a result of those people is ridiculous. Act on your urge and write to them... maybe they'll tell you or it can be your undeniable proof of the giant X-Files-type conspiracy.

Also, as a FIFA-certified soccer referee, I can tell you that Fédération Internationale de Football Association probably had very little to do with the suppresion of the NASA space logs.