thiago_simoes

Olympic gold is shunned as if it was not important, but it's funny that in recent times no nation was able to hold both Olympic and World Cup titles at the same time. The last nation to do this was Italy in the 50s, I think, and it was such a different time that we cannot really compare.

Poor Tunisia.

I predicted England would beat Tunisia 5-0. I clearly know nothing about football.

I predicted 4-0 to Belgium but I guess I was wrong. Panama is doing remarkably well given their level.

It will be fun to see who had the best prediction for today.

We use this in a Brazilian dessert called Brigadeiro. I'm sure @heywoodu must have eaten it by now.

I know. I'm just being overly dramatic (as always).

Why not Netherlands? Oh, wait...

Two hours ago everyone was talking about how Europe was doing so well and now the European world champion has lost the first match. Nice surprise.

I'm amazed by Mexico's kamikaze tactics. They will be known as Kamikazexico if they win this match.

Mexico!

Very boring match, but a deserved win for Serbia. Costa Rica has lost a lot of steam. And I agree that Europe deserves more quotas. In my opinion we should have something like this: UEFA - 14 CAF - 4 AFC - 4 CONMEBOL - 4 CONCACAF - 2 OFC - 1 And 3 quotas for intercontinental playoffs, what means every continental zone would have the chance to qualify one extra nation. Of course we need to deduct 1 quota for the host nation from the numbers above.

In Brazil, when a tennis player wins by 6 : 0, we say "pneu" (tire) and winning by double 6 : 0 is called "bicicleta" (bicycle), just like in Polish (and Serbian).

I hope he did.

Pablo Jhosua Calvache Arias.

What happened? Does he have any reason to be against the fencer or is he just being a jerk?

qualified in men's artistic gymnastics. I'm shocked with Colombia failing to qualify both in men's and women's artistic gymnastics. At least they qualified in rhythmics. Chile failed to qualify in all four disciplines so far (acrobatics, rhythmics, men's artistic and women's artistic) and it is highly unlikely they will qualify in trampoline. This is surely going to increase tension between the two competing gymnastics federations in the country, which in turn could cause disastrous results for current gymnasts. And what a huge accomplishment for Costa Rica to qualify a gymnast in women's artistic gymnastics. Granted, they qualified because the US chose not to use their quota and Panama was not allowed to qualify one of their gymnasts according to the rules, but it is still huge for Costa Rica to place ahead of Colombia, for example.

You guys are disappointed with Argentina? Really? Argentina was a lot better than I would expect, and people I know were skeptical about their performance and said they would lose the first match, so I was expecting the worst, to be honest.

Argentina is a lot stronger than many would have thought. I expect them to challenge for the title. Also, good result for Islandia, especially since they didn't crumble under pressure in the final minutes.

I knew about "fica" because I watched an interview with singer Mafalda Minnozzi (she's moderately famous in Brazil and she speaks Portuguese quite well) and she said she brought her parents to visit Brazil once and the first thing that was said to them was "fica a vontade" (literally "stay as you wish", but it actually means "make yourself home"). I can imagine they have a bad opinion about us and our fascination about "fica". Also, we use the word "figa" in Brazil to refer to the gesture of putting your thumb between your index and middle finger. I was told this gesture is quite obscene in Italy, but in Brazil it means a way to superstitiously protect yourself against curses and bad luck (and it was appropriated by African-Brazilian religions as a way for one to protect oneself from bad things).

Yeeeesss! Guaranteed gold medals for Italy (and probably all silver medals too) And more chances for Aleksandra Podgorsek to earn a historical medal for Slovenia.

Yay! Nice award! Thanks!

I can't believe I got the score absolutely right for the first match. I hate football, so maybe the secret for doing well in a prediction contest is hating the sport. I love gymnastics and I didn't do so well at the prediction contest for last year's world championships...

I was reading the list of topics and the national thread of Slovakia had the sentence "Cesta do Tokia" added to it. Then I remembered that in Portuguese we usually say "cesta" (literally: basket) when someone scores (one, two or three points, it doesn't matter) in basketball. This made me curious about other languages, since there might be different or unique terms related to sports and we have people from all over the world here, so I would like us to share what we might know. As a side note, it's amusing that in Portuguese the name of the country Peru refers to both turkey (the animal, not the country) and a penis. Their slogan, "arriba Perú", is sometimes understood by Portuguese speakers as "rise up, cock".

Here.