BTW...

As I watched Italy celebrating with the Jules Rimet Trophy, I started wondering what the other 31 teams in the tournament had to be thinking at that moment. I think it was probably something along these lines:

Costa Rica – “At least we scored two goals against Germany.”

Ecuador – “If only we didn’t roll over against Germany we would have won Group A and avoided England”

Poland – “If Klose and Podolski had never left, that would be us holding the third place trophy!”

England – “I can’t believe we lost on penalty kicks AGAIN - and to a team whose best player looks and acts like the lead singer of a boy band.”

Sweden – “Where the hell was Ibrahamovic?!”

Argentina – “Hey, at least Brazil didn’t win either!”

Brazil – “Hey, at least Argentina didn’t win either!”

Serbia & Montenegro – “We’ll do better now that we don’t have Montenegro bogging us down”

Australia – “@#$%^ Italians!”

United States – “Italy, Ghana and the Czech Republic, you’re the new ‘Axis of Evil’; we’ll be invading any day now…”

Switzerland – “Watch out for us in 2008”

Ukraine – “UKRAINE IS NOT WEAK!”

South Korea – “It’s too bad we can’t we play every World Cup in Korea with Hiddink as our coach”

Spain – “Whew, for a minute there I thought we were going to have to play Brazil in the Quarterfinal…”

Togo – “At least now people have heard of us!”

Saudi Arabia – “I think it’s time to raise oil prices on Europe…”

Ivory Coast – “Damn, I knew we should have brought more witch doctors”

Mexico – “At least we’re still the best team in CONCACAF”

Czech Republic – “If Koller and Baros had been healthy, that might be us holding the Jules Rimet”

Japan – “We’re fast but we need to improve our technical abilities if we’re ever going to get better. And we could use some height too.”

Paraguay – “Chilavert should have been coaching us. And probably should have played in net too”

Trinidad and Tobago – “Damn, now we have to go back to our real jobs. At least we did our country proud.”

Ghana – “Why oh why did we have to draw Brazil in the second round?”

Angola – “Sure was nice to get out of Angola for a couple weeks”

Iran – “At least the Great Satan didn’t get further than us”

Portugal – “At least we were voted ‘Most Entertaining Team’, even if it was more for our theatrics than our football…”

Croatia – “If Prso had scored, it might have been us losing to the Italians in the second round instead of the Australians!”

Tunisia – “We should have beaten Saudi Arabia”

Netherlands – “If Van Nistelroy ever gets his head on straight, we might actually have quite a team”

Germany – “Two minutes…we couldn’t hold on for two more lousy minutes…”

France – “We didn’t win it all because the Italians said some very hurtful things to us in the final. At least we made it all the way through the match without surrendering”



OK, that last one was kind of mean...