GENERAL World Cup Thread

With Chris Iwelumo on Co-comms

You can't play that clip and not have this commentary

I have a feeling we might have lost to the South Koreans. Looks like they completely dominated last night and could have won 2-0 or 3-0. Might have been a tiny bit underwhelming of a tournament for us, I don't think we are the finished article yet.

I can honeslty say i have never seen a red given in any league in England for that type of challenge(although of course there will have) I just checked, the ref is Brazilian. They throw reds around like confetti in Brazil serie A,B,C

Look at the ref for the Czech game though, he let nearly everything go. I'm putting this down specifically to that brazilian Ref. I'm gonna check his stats for this season and see what he averages cards wise

https://www.whoscored.com/referees/531/show/wilton-pereira-sampaio

Piece below from the BBC about the continued lack of awareness of the tournament in the US.

Unsurprisingly it's better than 1994 but it's still low, but probably less so from younger people.

I can understand how it is taking a back seat to the NBA finals in New York but the story of the Scotland fan in Boston is weird

Boston is a fairly "European" city, soccer always had a decent of not spectacular foothold in Massachusetts in general, plus there is nothing else on there, the Red Sox suck this year.

Yes but wouldn’t VAR show that a player is play-acting if he goes down holding his face when no contact was made?
Im thinking of the 2010 final when De Jong stayed on the pitch because the referee didn’t have a clear view of the assault on Alonso. The ref admitted afterwards when he saw it he would have sent off De Jong. VAR may not be such bad thing after all but some of the penalty decisions for what is clearly accidental hand ball are ludicrous.

I wouldn't blame your average American for hating soccer. It's status as an upper middle class sport is only getting worse and worse.

Private companies have taken over oretty much all the underage leagues so if you want your child to play in any organised form you have to pay for an expensive version of Samba Soccer.

There are a myriad of historical reasons why soccer is not popular in America.

"Soccer in a football world" is a very good book that chronicles them.

But one other major reason is because soccer can be extremely dull.

Watching some of the Mexico game last night there were multiple occasion where the Mexican defenders just stopped and stood on the ball in their own half, before passing it to a teammate nearby who then did the very same.

It reminded me of this from The Simpsons.

And he's entitled to his paid opinion which in this instance is correct.

Yeah. I think he'd be great in the Bundesliga. Milan are a bit of a mess at the moment. And have just sacked their manager.

Milan fans have also come to believe #9 is cursed post Inzaghi. They have tried also, young, up and coming or highly experienced and with the exception of Giroud and Cassano have hated them all. Unless he was able to seamlessly carry his form over the despair would set in fast among the fans.

He does have the qualities to be the new Pippo though so maybe 197th times a charm for Milan.

Everything in football has an outcome, it just doesn’t stop for all of them. In the NFL you basically make a play, and you either retain possession, lose possession or score. Football is the same but more fluid as losing possession in a play is normal - and allowing the play to develop without resetting it makes it a far more interesting game to me.

One of the reasons I hate these ad breaks, momentum is hugely important in football and enforcing a mid half break kills it stone dead. Can imagine a lot of the games we’ll see will be negatively affected by it.

There is a key factor in any match that leads to more entertainment (goals) and that's fatigue. I don't need need to check any stat to know more goals are scored in the second half of a game, fatigue plays a key part in that. With these stoppages, this is allowing players some time for recovery.

I'm baffled by the water breaks though, they don't have them in the MLS or Liga MX. It was 22 degrees apprently in Mexico city, with the host nation and south africa playing. There was no need for it. Same last night. Game played in the evening.

Whatever about Florida/Texas, the water breaks should be only used based on a common sense approach