World Cup

General Discussion
1

I'm just interested to know who the expats will be supporting in the up coming World Cup? I would suppose the majority will say England, but any French sympathisers? What about choosing Lampard and Gerard but leaving out Cole?


(Non football fans are kindly requested to withhold from telling us just what a massive waste of time it all is.! We know!)

2

Gloster, Gloster.

3

Peter, I reckon so. There has to be some good ones - probably with not enough dosh for the football world.

Tony, no fool at all. The world is sold soft soap to hide what is too often hidden because it embarrasses. When I was first there the country had around 18 million street children (one report said over 50 million, as if the real number was not bad enough). It is probably about 2 million now which off the record the government accepts, the official figure is 2,400-ish. Roughly 90% of them come from nice places like this:

'In Rio de Janeiro, the number of deaths in conflict with the police rose by 69% from 2013 to 2014.'

Not the worst slums are they but heavily armed police patrols are to keep the natives quiet in the run up to the tournament.
I do follow football. I used to go to the Shed and follow them away as often as possible. I am more a rugby player, or was anyway, so no real technical expertise. I also like Brazil immensely, it is one of my favourite countries in this world of ours, the people are great. It simply looks like the government have carried out a massive PR exercise to lay blame on the poor (sounds familiar) but it has backfired. There is a lot of misinformation in circulation too, but I depend on more direct informants who are reliable and no they are not 'leftie political activists' but serious, normally impartial academics.
4

:-)

5

"...with big money and absolutely no conscience about what their business does to people "

You mean like the majority of businesses around the world Brian ?

6

:-O shock

:-) smile

:-D laughter

;-) wink

7

Hi Andrew - as a newby to the Network I need a bit of training. What do these signs you use mean?? :-O :-D

8

Hi Angela - started a new thread for football fans if you want to contribute. World Cup the Sequel

9

Hi Tony - started a new thread for football fans if you want to contribute. World Cup the Sequel

10

I'll be reading the telephone book.....it's more fun!

11

World Cup, you say? The only possible team to support is Brazil, of course.

12

trop fort, I missed the entire match apart from written commentary on the midi libre site via my till - in my tabac all afternoon and couldn't get across to the bar to watch it. Vivement Toulon - Castres :-D

but we've all lost on the betting as it was a match nul at the end of temps reglémentaire :-(

13

et être à poil, nothing to do with les poilus :-D

thanks for getting in there before I had a chance with the "spot on" ;-) and yes Véro - Véronique from Dédé - now there I think we'll need a new thread to go through all the names!

14

Look at the photos I have posted & you'll see the resemblance ;-)

15

Il n'y a pas de quoi! (nb if someone says 'un poil à gauche/droite' or 'un poil plus haut/bas' it means a teeny bit further left/right/up/down, not to be confused with 'se poiler' which means to 'ave a larf, nor with 'à poil', which means 'naked') we have a thing about hairs, obviously...

16

Yo Castres! :-D

17

Yes, a dinky little stadium at Lescure - the guy leading the Albi charge is an ex RL pro

I enjoy both codes equally but just prefer RL because of the physical impact plus it seems a much more 'honest' game to me probably because the people playing the game, in europe anyway don't earn enough to be arrogant & big-headed etc. RL in Oz overshadows RU by a country mile and serious money is to be made.

18

It's that golden job that looks like a statue of Munch's scream, isn't it ;-)

19

No I didn't - I'm surrounded by quinzistes - one of the reps I buy from played for Castres Jean-Pierre Valette, his daughter is in charge of com for the club, another couple of mates played at ProD2/top14 level years back. Could be very interesting, much faster game although I don't know it that well. The stadium's good - much easier access than Pierre-Antoine (for me anyway) I rarely get to see a game due to work, was invited to the castres-montpellier match (the last one in Castres, not this afternoon!) but couldn't make it :-(

Albi's much easier so look forward to it becoming the hotbed of rugby à 13 !

20

Top rugby country is Albi and a nice stadium too. Did you realise Andrew you have a lot of passionate rugby league fans in the area and the masterplan is to eventually make Albi & environs the capital of the 'treiziste' game in France ?