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🇷🇺 FIFA World Cup 2018 🇷🇺


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AndyGanteks

Group H will be most tense and exciting to the very last minute. Very fun game Colombia vs Japan right now.

 

Also, some VAR jokes

 

Edited by AndyGanteks

5 minutes extra was brutal, holy sh*t.

 

This ref kept the game rolling, not giving away many fouls, which was nice. If Colombia wasn't a man down, they'd definitely have beaten Japan.

 

Well, I'm happy! Japan now has a chance to advance to the next round! Bring on Poland vs Senegal!

They should change the name of this game from 'football' to 'videorefpenaltyball' or something along those lines. And call it the 'videorefcup' in stead of worldcup.

  • Like 1

I think Southgate made a good call playing in the Tottenham 532 with two very offensive midfielders formation. I still find it strange he didn't select Wilshere, but I think the formation he played was ultimately right. England is a decent team on paper, and it will be interesting how they manage against Belgium.

We didn't take Wilshere cause he didn't really deserve to go on club form and there was, as always, question marks over his fitness. Southgate's been great about that tbh, picking players who deserve to go and not established old names that the press are calling for.

I thought England played really well, and dominated the match. They had at least 3 or 4 other clear cut chances that they could have put away. I'm blaming debut nerves for those.

 

I expect this England team to go far in this cup, and build well for the next Euro and for 2022.

13 hours ago, stinomontana said:

england isn't what it used to be, still a good team, but not good enough.

They certainly don't have a squad like Beckham, Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, etc, anymore. But even when they did it was failure after failure.

 

I'm a lot more optimistic about this group of hungry young players than I would have been in the past with the old guard.

AndyGanteks

Portugal, Uruguay and Spain all felt like they didn't want to play today and just get the job done. Unlucky for Morocco Saudis and especially Iran who put up a great fight.

All the Islamic countries seeing their chances evaporate. Must be a great day for Geert Wilders.

No but all kidding aside, those were some boring ugly matches.

11 hours ago, Laker23 said:

They certainly don't have a squad like Beckham, Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, etc, anymore. But even when they did it was failure after failure.

 

I'm a lot more optimistic about this group of hungry young players than I would have been in the past with the old guard.

I'm finding with this squad it's the actual lack of big names like the ones you've listed, which is making them more of a team than group of individual players.  Yeah, players like Kane, Sterling, Rashford etc, are big names, but they've not been pedestal'd like previous players (although the press can eff off with their Sterling BS), and big props have to go to Southgate as he's seems to have got rid of cliques in the squad, which I think was a problem before as players for England were always grouping with their club mates, where this group are more like the Bobby Robson team of Italia 90 and are all gelling together.

 

All this coupled with the next generation of players coming though makes me a little more optimistic about England.  I don't think we'll win it this year, go far, possibly yes, but not win it.  But going forward with the youth players coming through the ranks at City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs for example, and with performances in the U17s, u20s etc, I think we're at the start of new golden generation.

Southgate's got a lot (but not all, obviously) of the press onboard as well by doing things like inviting them to the training campus, mingling with the players, playing some games together etc. Usually it's a 24/7 smeer campaign during the WC and while it hasn't been perfect this year there is a really different feel to this England team and this tournament than there usually is. Expectations are not sky high for once, buuuut it would be interesting to see the reaction if we got smashed in the 1st knockout round or something.

Captain_Fluffy

As an Aussie it was a frustrating result...entertaining game, did quite well that second half and the Danes looked spent but not having that quality forward hurt. Wish Daniel Azarni had come on a lot earlier, he was lively and threatening...much better than that spud Kruse. 

 

Wont quite need a miracle to get through but going to be hard now. 

AndyGanteks

First week of WC had some really good moments, but last 2-3 days has been a bit dull. Goddamn modern football.

Edited by AndyGanteks

Brozovic, Modric and Rakitic have just given an absolute masterclass. Tireless defensively, calm, composed and clinical going forward.

Croatia is a serious team. That was a fabulous goal by Modric. It would be great to see them go far. They've had a great team for a long time, but they've never succeeded with it like they should. I still hope Argentina goes through though. I think Sampaoli has made some questionable choices. Somehow Messi hasn't really been utilized well. I think Pavon is an interesting player with a good career ahead of him, but he didn't get much space after he came on. I hope Argentina can still turn it around, but there's a good chance we'll see Iceland go through. I don't really see Iceland beat Croatia though. 

Edited by Eutyphro
AndyGanteks

Well, well. Argentina needing a lot of results to fall their way if they're going to make it. Barely any service to Messi, horrendous effort on defence, especially when they went down.

 

Otamendi is a piece of sh*t.

Otamendi is actually a great defender. I don't think he even played a bad match. I think Perez and Meza were bland. I don't think Argentina should play a three man defence, because their wing backs aren't special.

Otamendi was a bit rash towards the end there, but I think it was more frustration at the performance.  Although Croatia should have been down to 10 after that tackle in the first half, but VAR gonna VAR.

 

Cabellero did a great job for City in the cup runs, but he's not a consistent keeper, which is why he moved on.  If Argentina had a better keeper that instilled a bit more confidence in the defense, then Argentina might not have shipped as many as their defense overall is not bad.  But the main problem with Argentina is that, at the back minus the keeper they're decent enough, up front they're great with Messi and Aguero, but there is a massive void in the middle of the park which doesn't link the two, which completely opens them up.

 

Still can't fault Croatia on the other two goals, and their overall performance.

 

Also, tasty goal by Denmark as well.

Argentina have a good keeper, his names Sergio Romero. While officially he was dropped due to injury according to his wife he was perfectly fine for the WC, so read into that what you will. Their wingbacks are both wingers from what Pablo Zabaleta was saying on BBC's coverage I believe? So that'd explain their uselessness when it came to defending. Lot of odd decisions in picking that team and squad, to be honest. Mascherano as great as he's been looks miles off the pace and they have no creativity from midfield (why is Banega not starting?). The core of the problem starts with that formation though, jesus.

 

Also while I genuinely like how this WC has been ref'd with some quite heavy tackles being allowed to go in, that kick to the head from Otamendi was disgraceful. He deserves retrospective punishment for that, you can't be doing that.

I think Romero was their #1 goalie, but got injured before the tournament. (I see Jason beat me to this comment)

It's true that Argentina doesn't have stars in midfield. Sampaoli dropped Paredes, who isn't a star, but in my opinion a fantastic player. It seemed to me that he was dropped because Sampaoli wanted to build a team around Messi with small technical player like Lanzini and Pavon, which I understood. But if you look at todays performance you start doubting such decisions.

Edited by Eutyphro

Holy hell Argentina.

 

You know, that 6x1 against Spain should have lit up all kinds of warning lights at the team. But it didn't, they stayed the course. And it'll likely cost them a spot in the next stage.

They don't even look like a team. Feel bad for Messi, his likely last chance at winning a World Cup, and it will go down the drain next week.

 

Croatia though, superb. Really giving Suker's team a run for their money. Can see them going very far, and would be delighted if we had a brand new World Cup Champion this time around.

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