West Germany

243’2023 (2023-08-31) – Thursday

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned about:

How exciting sports at top level can be. Sometimes, it is impossible to judge who won the competition and who was only runner up. Some say that we should stop there and give the winner’s award to both, but others think that we should apply measures to find out if one of those athletes was just slightly better than the other and thus win the sole gold medal.

You have probably heard and maybe seen that this month we saw a new champion in women’s football, Spain, who beat England in the final. But before that, we also saw that on three occasions the winner of the match had to be decided in the penalty shootout, because both teams could not be separated, having made the equal amount of goals during the 120 min of normal play.

In the first of those three games, between Sweden and USA, in the round of 16, the decision came when both teams had scored the same number of goals, but where Sweden still had one more chance to win the game. It was then that the Swedish player Lina Hurtig kicked the ball, the US goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher touched it, but not sufficiently to impede it from passing the goal line, with the least possible measure, only possible to judge because of the video recording system called VAR (Video assistant referee). That is the situation you can see in the photos.

This is the user interface of FIFA’s Video Assisted Referee (VAR). Here we can see how the penalty kick from Lina Hurtig passed the goal line with a minmum distance.
GOAL !!!

A video clip from the match can be found in reference #1 below. You may remember that I already talked about VAR five years ago, in my post 224’2018 (2018-08-12) .

By the way, the Swedish team finished third in the competition, but in sequence was rewarded with the top spot in the Fifa ranking of all nations. Grattis, tjejer!

Men’s World Cup final 1966

In the final of the 1966 Fifa World Cup, held at Wembley stadium in London, the match between England and West Germany, was tied at 2-2 during overtime, when Geoff Hurst shot the ball into the crossbar and the question is if the ball did make it inside or not. The referee decided it was a goal, a very questionable decision. If VAR had existed then, how would the outcome have been?. See also reference #2 below.

Was it a goal?

To be continued …

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: The deciding goal, at 01:26

2: World cup final 1966

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2018-06-23 (Midsommardagen)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

In the midst of the World Championships in football, which takes place in Russia, today is scheduled the game between Sweden and Germany. If we include the games played between the two countries when the biggest German nation was West Germany, this will be the 37th time the countries meet on the football ground, and the 7th time in official games, such as Olympic Games, World Championships or European Championships.

The last time Sweden beat Germany in an official game was in the World Cup 1958, held in Sweden. Tomorrow, we celebrate that exactly 60 years have gone since that game. For Swedes, it is a game to remember forever, not only because Sweden won the match and advanced to the final game, but also because of the marvellous goal made by the Swedish right wing player, Kurt Hamrin, in the last minute of the game. See reference # 1 for more about that World Cup and reference # 2 for a video clip of Hamrin’s feat.

Kurre

Two photos from Kurt Hamrin’s legendary slalom run against Germany in 1958, see the whole video sequence in reference # 2 below.

At the time of writing this post, the current leader in the chase for the Golden Boot, which is awarded to the player who scores most goals in the World Cup, is the Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. Implicitly, he is also the main character in today’s photo. It was taken on 2017-06-07 in the Latvian capital of Riga and shows football fans waiting outside Hotel Radisson Blu Latvija to catch a glimpse (and an autograph?) of the Portuguese squad, and of Ronaldo in particular. Thus the number of fans using shirt # 7! (Two days later, in a qualifying match for the 2018 World Cup, Portugal beat Latvia with 3-0, with two goals scored by Cristiano Ronaldo. More about that game can be found in reference #3 below.)

CR7

Football fans outside Hotel Radisson Blu Latvija in Riga waiting to get a glimpse of the Portuguese squad, in particular jersey # 7, the superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, thus the multitude of fans wearing that shirt. This photo was taken on 2017-06-07, two days before the World Cup qualification game Latvia vs Portugal two days later. The result of the match was no surprise, Portugal won by 3-0, Ronaldo made two goals.

But since we are in Latvia now, we should remember that the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) are celebrating their 100 years of the first independent from Russia, which happened at the end of World War I, in 1917-1918, just like Finland, see my post of 2017-12-06. If you became interested in knowing more about the Baltic states, see reference # 4 below. Reference # 5 is an interesting article from the Finnish Broadcasting Co. (in Swedish) about the activities there during this year of celebration.

That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: 1958 FIFA World Cup

2: Kurt Hamrin scores 3-1 against Germany on June 24, 1958

3: Latvia-Portugal on 2017-06-09

4: Baltic states

5: Baltikum minns hundra år av självständighet

*: What did you learn in school today ?