Greece, a team that enjoys rolling around on the ground and not leaving their half of the field more than scoring goals, managed to weasel their way out of the group stage of the World Cup and into the round of 16. They managed to accomplish this feat by being placed in a group that featured the inept Ivory Coast and Japan, then basically waiting for those two to screw up, which they did.
After getting drilled 3-0 in their opening game against Colombia, the only legitimate team in their group, Greece plowed ahead with a 0-0 draw against Japan and yesterday’s 2-1 win over Ivory Coast. In the Japan game, Greece played most of way with only 10 men thanks to a red card, yet Japan was so worthless they couldn’t manage a goal and were outplayed by Greece.
Against Ivory Coast, Greece needed a last-minute foul called that lead to a penalty kick to give them a 2-1 win (had the game ended 1-1, Ivory Coast would’ve advanced). This means that Greece, a team that scored TWO GOALS IN THREE GAMES and has a goal differential of MINUS TWO will play in the next round (remember this when the United States doesn’t advance tomorrow).
To demonstrate how miserable this is, I called upon the most miserable team and offense I can remember watching, Houston Nutt’s 2011 Ole Miss Rebels. Now, I realize comparing a football offense to a soccer offense presents all sorts of issues, but we don’t allow the math and logic police around here.
This is about things over which we can all scream and be angry because it feels RIGHT. So let’s get to the number crunching and comparing.
For the purposes of I SAID SO, I’m only using offensive touchdowns in this comparison because the goal of any offense is to score touchdowns. Unless you are Florida, then it is to punt as quickly as possible.
In SEC games during the 2011 season, Houston Nutt’s team scored 10 offensive touchdowns. TEN. TEN. TEN. TEN. TEN. TEN. TEN. That is like, WAY NOT MANY (Hugh Freeze’s offense scored five against LSU in 2012).
Over eight conference games, which is 480 total minutes of game time, Nutt’s offense averaged scoring a touchdown every 48 minutes of game time. And a brief note on that stat, I have no idea how I lived through 2011.
By comparison, Greece played 270+ minutes (somewhere close to 280 with stoppage time, but we’re gonna use 270 here) of soccer and scored two goals. That comes out to them scoring a goal every 135 minutes.
That means it took Greece nearly three times as long to score as Houston Nutt’s 2011 offense. DO YOU SEE WHAT WE’RE DEALING WITH HERE? PEOPLE WHO INTENTIONALLY TRY TO BE WORSE AT SCORING THAN HOUSTON NUTT, WHO WAS TRYING.
The point of all of this is that Greece is beyond the worst and needs to be free-kicked into the Atlantic Ocean at once. Our next hope in that happening rests with Costa Rica, so let’s all get behind the Ticos and cheer for them to deliver justice so severely that another Greek bailout is needed.
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