PBP Thread: Match #20, Iran vs Spain, 20 June 2018 [R]

You obviously haven’t watched this World Cup. But anyway, won’t derail this thread anymore.

 

this game was a heartbreaker, similar to the argentina match in 2014. we did not deserve to lose. a draw would have been the most fair outcome, as well as the best reflection of the game play. i was watching it and twice i celebrated but both were phantom goals: first the karim ansarifard shot that hit the side netting, and after the offside call. although the offside call was technically correct, they should amend the offside rule to not be against common sense. the whole point of the offside rule is to not allow a player to camp too far up and get easy 1 on 1 situations with the keeper. however, in cases such as the call that denied Iran a goal, our would be goal scorer was about 1 foot in an offside position and then he CAME BACK towards OUR goal to score the goal. so if anything, being in an offside position was a DISADVANTAGE to him. these types of offside calls on a technicality are lame, frustrating, and they ruin the game. if anything, with VAR now, we have the ability to allow goals in such situations.

spain had just a few more chances than us, but ours were more dangerous. so overall it was an even match. the only difference being that spain scored on a fluke goal while we did not convert our chances and got denied based on a pedantic technicality which would not have affected the outcome of the goal being scored, and on top of that, was used by VAR. in 2014 if there was VAR we would have gotten the penalty against argentina (a weaker similar call was given to france against australia via VAR), but no VAR denies us. we had bad luck in this game and did not deserve to lose.

i am so proud of our boys that despite our limitations we matched spain. my prediction for this match was spot on: I had predicted that Iran would defend to the death but spain, due to their overwhelming quality and type of gameplay, would eventually find a way through and win 1-0. but i am surprised how we attacked spain once we went down: i was not expecting such quality. what is more important is that spain didnt come to close to scoring once we opened up. that was impressive. if i was portugal, i would be scared: they would 100% have to rely on cronaldo for an individual miracle, if spain couldnt score against us in such a situation. i also enjoyed how late in the game spain was satisfied with a dangerous 1-0 lead against us that they resorted to passing back among their defenders in order to kill time. that is how badly we scared them with our offense.

i had said at the time of the draw and this was confirmed after watching the match: spain is the only team that could open up the Iranian defense. if ANY other team played us, be it brazil, germany, france, they would likely not have scored that 1-0. against spain the final ball was a fluke, but the fact that diego costa was put into that position in the first place was something only spain could do against Iran.

the draw was not favourable to us. i think we could have advanced from any other group. we now have a tough task against portugal. after seeing this poor portuguese side, i genuinely think that if we were tied with them in terms of group ranking right now, we would have a good 50% chance to beat them. but since they have the advantage before kick off (they only need a tie while it is a must win match for us) this skews the game in their favour and makes it much more difficult than it would otherwise have been for us. still, with a little bit of luck we can go through. i rate our chances at 25%.

 

Sure, I personally love Canada..., but we are talking football here.

 

lol no it isn't. No country is the greatest. How do you even quantify that? I've lived most of my life in Canada and I can list a million positives and negatives. Saying country X is better than country Y is one thing, but saying it's the greatest.... lol such an American thing to say.

 

Be calm dude. But perhaps growing up in Canada has made you oblivious to the shit that goes on around the world even in the states.

Besides that was more of a throwaway line relevant to something we were talking to I believe. Not really relevant to soccer tho so let's move on.