GENERAL World Cup Thread

watching how composed he was yesterday I couldn’t help thinking about Ireland defenders who without fail make stupid errors, and lose concentration in just about every match I can think of. You didn’t see a C V player doing a moronic Manning push in the box.
We were ok at home to Portugal but they had Armenia at home to win the group a few days later.

was curious had 4 draws ever happened in one day before

Pico’s grandfather is 98 and lives on the cape verde islands still and is apparently well with it and active.

I got them stats from that James Richardson's podcast "Totally Football" - yer man who used to eat the icecream before that Italian soccer show in the 90's on channel 4.

I watched them yesterday and if you think an Ireland defence could have kept their shape and held on for a clean sheet against Spain you’re deluded. There would have been the obligatory error and loss of concentration late in the game.

But you said yourself we held out against Portugal. But of course you add an asterisk that you didn't to this game.

Its just the typical barstool self hating Irish bullsht. It's as bad as fellas thinking we should pick League of Ireland players after this one game.

Thanks for that. Just shows the totally racist nature US the present administration. And FIFA are complicit in much of this.

Its not racist to enforce your border policies

Not that they are a shining example but Russia waived these factors for the World Cup.

Other World Cups haven't forced teams to camp in foreign countries or bar referees.

You can disagree with it but this World Cup has been shambolic from an immigration and visa point of view in comparison to every other major tournament most if us can remember.

Canada is the only country to flatly refused entry for a player. I know you didn’t say the US particularly but just saying.

torabi?

Yes Torabi.

Which is largely irrelevant. The rules are in place and are being applied as served. It's nice and easy to be able to look on from the sidelines and complain about how unfair and/or racist it is, but it's not some unknown quantity that ebbs and flows at the whim of what people feel about the US' immigration policies. They are in place and apply to all, they don't fall by the wayside just because someone wants to watch the football. I think most reasonable people would accept the US has a huge problem with immigration skips and visa overstays.

It makes great book for the likes of Gary Neville to make even more idiotic comments about 'how countries have to accept that they are handing over parts of their land to football while hosting'. Sorry Gary, that's not how the world works, or should it. FIFA rocking up doesn't invalidate what measures countries see fit so as to enforce their security - nobody bar the US authorities and the ref knows the full story behind that block - not me, not you, not Richie Sadlier. Similarly, the Canadians executed their immigration policy to deny entry as is their gift. Nobody should take umbrage with this, at least no more than any other Joe Soap in a similar situation. Complain about it being unfair, fine, but that is about all that can be done - if you're a citizen of said country, lobby your politician etc

As for the Iran situation. I think it's fair to say it's a unique situation, what with one country being at war with the other, so it was hardly going to be a scenario where all come out smelling like roses. But again, we are all on the outside of this with zero information as to what risk assesments the authorities made. As long as it all passes off without some major incident, I think most should appreciate the delicacy of things.

I think a lot of people happily get led on by the media in some of the outrage.

The media have told us that the tickets werent going to sell and there would be half empty stadiums and ordinary fans would be priced out and this hasn’t been proved to be the case at all. The tickets are too expensive but the media got carried away and created a false narrative.

Rigorous reporting is good to an extent but it’s gets to a point when people can literally say anything like Ian wright implying FIFA was fixed and Gary Neville saying it was a dictatorship because they hadn’t released the graphic of a marginal offside decision.

i kind of agree with Infantino when people probably should “chill” a bit. Especially in Britain and Ireland. It’s only a football tournament lads.

I think some lads like to complain about these kind of things because they have nothing to say about the football because they don’t really enjoy researching football ahead of a World Cup like they should.

And again, they were probably measures set out by certain hosts at the time of vying for host duties. Perhaps made their bids look more attractive, perhaps they preferred to get more rouble-paying bodies in etc........the US have obviously stuck hard to their rules and that's their decision, not anyone elses. The only decision a third-party has is to whether they travel or not per normal guidelines. Certainly looks like many have.