Italy hasn't beaten Brazil for 31 years now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/happy.gif) Their last win? 1982. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) Today was a good chance to tilt the statistics, this is one of the worst Brazil NT of all time, some very mediocre players in.

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Class

Haha, yeah, tell me about it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) No Silva, no Pato, only a fleeting Kaka combined with a bunch of doofuses, Italy had as good an opportunity to register a win and the let it squander. Though it must be said Julio Cesar was massive today, it was like watching Samir Handanović in goal. Shades of Inter.

it really is a shame to see brazil at such a low point.. they have always had many players that i loved at one point or another but now i dont really care for the roster. i think with brazil it has always been a situation where the top players cycle coming through was never ending but now it has ended and it will probably take a while to get it going again.

USA - Costa Rica going on right now in a snowstorm. The ref tried to stop the match at 55' and the players on both sides got pissed and convinced theref to change his mind. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

from this photo it looked terrible.. maybe it shouldve been stopped?

btw how do they determine where home matches are played for team USA? popularity of the soccer in certain areas or random?

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It most definitely should have been stopped, but it was really fun to watch. Not too many players lost footing until the end, by that point there was probably about 6 to 8 cm of snow on the pitch, except for the sidelines and sometimes penalty box that guys with shovels kept trying to keep clean. Free kicks were useless, the players would try to clear out a patch so that they could get some power on the shot, but it never worked. Visibility was poor too.

I'm not sure how they select where to play. More often than not for important games like qualifying they play at places that have larger stadiums (and MLS teams that play in them) like Los Angeles or New York or Washington, D.C., but every once in a while they throw a game into seemingly random locations like Utah or in this case, the Denver area even though it only seated 19,000. To their credit, the stadium was still packed until the end, but people in that area are used to snow so they probably didn't care. It's unusually cold in most of the north here this week (here in Chicago too), we are all getting January-type weather even though it is spring, so I don't think it was planned to try to play in winter conditions.

Seems pretty poor decision making to have a qualifying game in that area at this time of year. Imagine if the US lost or something as a result? I'd have thought they'd have given it to Florida/California or something that wasn't expected to snow!

Costa Rica is filing a protest with FIFA. I don't blame them. The article said that Denver was chosen as the location in order to help prepare the team for playing at high altitude in advance of playing at Mexico City next Tuesday.

the protest will/should be rejected. It's up to the ref and clearly he felt it was okay.

Not sure I agree?

Silva, Cesar, Sandro, Hulk, Lucas, Pato, Oscar, Neymar?

Sounds pretty tasty to me tbh!

I'd suggest they're favourites for the next world cup and I don't base that on it being in Rio.

Spain will still remain the favourites no matter what

Then there's Germany, Italy, Holland who all have very strong teams

Holland's defense is far too weak I think.

It has been a long time since we had 5 starters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)