After seeing Italy and England go out after playing in Manaus first up, thought there may be something more to it, posted this on another forum:
Games in Manaus so far:
June 14: Italy beats England 2-1.
June 18: Croatia beat Cameroon 4-0.
June 22: United States draws Portugal 2-2.
These are the follow-up results for the first four teams:
June 19: England loses to Uruguay 2-1 in São Paulo.
June 20: Italy loses to Costa Rica 1-0 in Recife.
June 23: Cameroon loses to Brazil 4-1 in Brasilia.
June 23: Croatia loses to Mexico 3-1 in Recife.
So they've all lost their next games, conceding a fair few goals in the process (and late too). Take it one further and look at Italy and England going out with flat performances last night (of course a late goal to boot for Italy). A lot of people said it before the tournament, make no mistake, playing in conditions like Manaus has absolutely no place in this World Cup, or any World Cup for that matter, it is nothing but an absolute disgrace.
Fortunately there's only one more group game left in Manaus (Honduras v Switzerland tonight), and none in the knockout stages, so it won't affect any more big teams.
It's clear to me that both England and Italy were dramatically inferior in their next 2 games after playing in Manaus, and it is absolutely no surprise. We put in our best performance of the tournament in Manaus and we paid for it in the next game at least, we looked heavy legged and flat throughout and made 2 defensive errors (one late on) which definitely looked that way.
