Just got back from the match... was probably the best game I've attended so far. Lots of tension due to the Kosovian ties of many Swiss players. In the end I guess the better team won it. Unfortunately, I was behind the wrong end of the goals but got some decent footage anyway. Mitrovic's goal: Shaqiri's winner: You can tell who most of the crowd were behind lol...
Favorite commentators? I really like Shaka, Moreno, and Seedorf... Lalas love him or hate him he interjects personality. Ian Wright and Munoz are terrible
We tied Mexico in the Azteca and Mexico beat Germany on neutral ground (closer to Germany). By the Property of Transitivity in soccer, we'd have beat Germany, hence we'd be World Champs. QED. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler To BSMX: That's called sarcasm. We folks who actually deal with other people in real life can recognize it easily.
At 2.23 goals per match, this tournament is on it's way to becoming the lowest scoring world cup of all time. Only Italia 90 at 2.21 has fewer goals per game. And this tournament record is slanted a bit thanks to the Russia- Saudi and Spain-portugal games in the first 2 days. Since then it's been incredibly low scoring. Goals per game from what I believe tend to decrease dramatically after the group stage but don't quote me on that. Ironically though, still no goalless draws lol and we're almost finished with the 2nd round of matches from the group stages.
We are gonna have our second blood bath of the tournament here........ Belgium look ferocious. Better than Brazil, Argentina thus far.
apparently magic CONCACAF spray doesnt work for African teams. thats two down in the first half, and two subs
Personally, a call like that penalty, where it could go either way - I honestly would've leaned towards not awarding a penalty so early in the game. It changes the game so dramatically, for the rest of the match. That said - it might've actually opened Tunisia up, because they're looking much more interesting.
man, you dont get much prettier assists than that, all done by one nasty cutback. Lukaku probably should have a first half hat trick.
Tunisia's actuallly not playing that bad. Much better than against England. But two sublime goals make the difference.
Martinez not adjusting formation and personnel is odd. Tunisian continue to get a lot of chances. A better team would be exploiting this Belgium side. I think the load of individual talent and freakishly good goal keeper might be glossing over some organization problems. We will see.
Yeah, Belgium has looked very good, but Panama and Tunisia are two of the worst teams in the tournament, so I'm not completely buying them until we see how they do against England.
Is there some force field in front of the goal right now lol. they could have used it earlier. That belgium player has just no luck righ tnow
So, as we await the kickoff to the Mexican annihilation of South Korea, let me give you a bit of background and color to help you appreciate just how terrible this Korean team is. This team had a single, very unconvincing win (a scrappy 1-0 over Syria) out of five competitive matches in all of 2017. They are definitely the worst team at this World Cup. Like the US MNT, Korea too had an incompetent German coach completely out of his depth, who employed bizarre tactics, weird selections, got into feuds with players, and turned the locker room against him. Only the Korean FA decided to keep Uli Stielike on - for months and months past the point it was obvious that he was shit. Ironically, keeping him on so long may have helped unite the locker room – because by the end, the entire squad hated him as one. They eventually fired Stielike – after he oversaw a historic loss to China (first in 31 years) and a historic loss to Qatar (first in 33 years) – and the KFA announced they were seriously looking at candidates. Then they announced they had no time to look for a candidate and no one was available, so they were promoting their U-20 coach, instead. Shin Tae-Yong, a coach who had never coached a senior national side, and - what do you know - just happened to be available now that the U-20 World Cup hosted in Seoul was over. Wasn't it convenient that they'd fired Stielike right as Shin, their long cherished and favored son, had just become available? Anyway, Shin led the team to two scoreless ties to fall ass-backwards into the World Cup on goal difference, and the KFA declared this evidence of his greatness and gave him their full support. Who is Shin Tae-Yong? He’s been called the Asian Mourinho – presumably by someone who was being unbelievably sarcastic. Which is a shame, because he’d clearly prefer to be the Asian Jogi Low. He’s the kind of coach who thinks that deep down, he’s secretly a genius. And the KFA is convinced he’s secretly a genius. Examples of this secret genius: Switching the numbers of his players between friendlies, in order to confuse opposition scouts, on the grounds that white people can’t tell Asians apart - that actually happened. Playing a World Cup tune-up match behind closed doors, with no public viewing, so no Swedish spies could get a glimpse of his secret plans. (The scout just watched from a nearby apartment building) Interestingly, just like the US MNT, Korea had the opportunity to hire back their old coach from their glory run in the ’02 World Cup. For Korea, it was a guy named Guus Hiddink. Now, Hiddink doesn’t have much in the way of trophies, but he’s got a very unique track record of taking outsider, hopeless national teams around the world and taking them to new heights (Korea in 2002, Australia in 2006, Russia in 2008) and a good track record for stepping into dysfunction nightmare situations and stabilizing the mess (Chelsea probably still have him on speed-dial). And when they fired Stielike, Hiddink personally texted the head of the KFA to say he was available and willing if they wanted him in any role during the transition – manager, technical director, advisor, whatever to help. But Hiddink had failed to grasp that this entire drama had been set up specifically so the KFA could set things up for their boy - and anyway, the KFA has issues with Hiddink for idiotic ego issues. So they basically told Hiddink – who, after 2002, is basically Soccer Jesus in Korea – to go screw himself. It's a dysfunctional organization. And now it's on the world stage with nothing to hide. I'm now going to find out firsthand what's worse - to watch your team miss the World Cup when they really should have made it, or to watch your team compete in the World Cup when they really shouldn't have made it.