Thread to discuss the football itself.
This is not a thread to discuss the hosting of the competition in Quatar.
You can discuss the hosting in the relevant thread.
This policy of having a playing teams pundit on is stupid. Especially if it's one young enough to know the players.
Because many would not be bothered supporting Qatar as ex pats they would support their own teams. That to me is fairly obvious. It is kind of shocking how uninformed Doyle was. Where are you getting the million locals from it is 313,000 Qatari the rest expats.
#stadium974ornowhere
That is good now in fairness, well played.
But Where are you getting the million qatari fans from. It is 2.8m 90% ish foreigners. So they only have 300k.Then divide that by 2 - women don't really go to games - no culture of it. Nevermind the men. It is not going to leave much is it?
There is obviously enough of a population there to expect proper support for the 3 games. Even beyond the 300,000+ citizens, there are loads more who are Qatari in all but name, but simply are not granted citizenship. Sure of their current team, 16 of their players were born in Qatar - but only 7 are citizens.
Also seems a bit mad that you'd reckon that of those 2 million people living and working there there would be such little affinity for the place they live that they literally wouldn't go down the road to watch a World Cup match, particularly given in most cases their 'own countries' aren't in the WC anyway.
This explains the population very well
That wasn't me.
That's different though they are manufacturing a team in Qatar. Surely the Qatar support would have to come from Qatari born and bred?
My auld fella has lived in Dublin longer than he has lived in his birthplace - Galway. But he wouldn't be seen dead supporting the Dubs. Nevermind wearing a Jersey.
So I can't really see how expat soccer supporters are going to throw Qatar geansai's on them and roar on the team? They would support their own. Plus Qatar are fairly shite, you wouldn't be rushing to watch them as neutral would ya?
That looked a very clumsy challenge by Sarr. Senegal lucky to get away with that.
Yeah, very very lucky to get away with that. Did it even get checked by VAR?
Looked a clear penalty to me
I can’t believe people get fooled by that carry on all the time. No chance that was a peno. The attacker jumped into the defenders path to create the foul. How people can’t see this is flabbergasting. Never a peno. Well done VAR.
The Qatari player should have just tried to score rather than trying to get the penalty
Just think about the logic of it for a second - those kids were born and raised in Qatar for long enough to be found to be good at football. They'd still have existed even if there was no world cup, and all the non-citizen kids born and raised in Qatar that weren't good at football all also exist. There are loads of long term residents in Qatar, who have raised families in Qatar, but do not have citizenship and never will have.
That was a gift of a goal for Dia.
I agree, but if the ref gave a pen would VAR have overturned it?
I still don't get it soccer is only new to Qatar and the pool of Potential Qatari support is small.
Great header for 2-0.
If it was a premiership or English or Irish player people incl pundits would be blathering on about how clever the attacker was. At least we can put to bed the conspiracy theory that the Quatas's have bought the ref / VAR
Should have granted the world cup to Saudi Arabia if human rights was not a consideration. Qatar must be the worst host countries and shouldnt be playing in a world cup.
Well Qatar have a goal. Muntari with a good header. It's been coming.
Bamba Dieng surely wraps it up.
That'll possibly be the 2030 WC.
Funnily, Messi has signed a massive deal to be an ambasador for the Saudi 'Vision 2030' tourism venture - which is centred on the WC bid. While Argentina are leading a WC bid with uruguay, Chile and Paraguay.
So Messi may/will be bigging up a WC bid AGAINST argentina.
Christ, the look of the stadium with all those empty seats really is so embarrassing, whatever the reasons some will have for it, it just looks terrible... normally losing the hosts is a big downer for the tournament, will barely make a blip this time.
The bit I found funny on RTE when they were on about it, old school Kenny Cunningham gave the impression that he would have taken the belt and shrugged it off - no real harm in it according to Kenny.
That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
He only get a yellow card for that elbow as well, pure madness. And he got away without any booking for another elbow in his Wimbledon days.
Don’t see too many “footballers” like him anymore in the Premier League, thankfully.
If the Netherlands don't lose to Ecuador later on, Qatar will be the first host nation eliminated after two games since the round robins began.
Also up in arms a clip of England giving away a pen is being used as to what is not acceptable
Not sure they did really. It seemed mean-spirited. Iranians are very angry about the coverage, which focused on Iranian gamesmanship. Some calling it racist. I would say it's more the usual myopia you get from BBC sports broadcasts.
Sounds terrible from Klinsmann alright, and definitely mean-spirited - though I would say he perhaps deserves the benefit of the doubt that he's specifically referring to their footballing culture rather than their societal culture... we all know exactly what everyone says about Irish footballing culture in the same way for instance (old "british" style, hard running, all heart but no intelligence or technical ability), but I don't think any of us ever takes it to be indicative of what they think of us societally.
