PBP Thread: Match #30, England vs Panama, 24 June 2018 [R]

It would have been way more intriguing if England -Belgium were the first match played.

The dynamic of the Group could have played out a bit differently.

 

Which team is better? Watch panama vs tunisia end in a draw.


I think Tunisia has more goal threats than Panama.

 

Tunisia is better but the game means more to Panama and their fans will be louder.

 

Gareth Southgate has just said he didn't like the performance. He's a hard man to please.

 

That's good for the English.

 

Needs to say something to keep these youngsters level headed. Their next two matches will probably not be so easy.

 

England impressed me in previous game
This might be the best English team i have witnessed in my life

These guys can go far

 

Props to the English for letting Panama score.

Panama coach Gomez had walked up to English coach Southgate, asking for mercy. Interesting exchange between coaches.

Panama has allowed 9 goals against during its WC debut, *with 1 match left to play vs Tunisia.

Panama is right on track with fellow Concacaf debutantes:

Team--------------------Debut---GF---GA---Points---W/D/L
Canada----------------1986-----0------5------0---------0/0/3
Costa Rica------------1990-----4------6------4---------2/0/2
Cuba--------------------1938-----3-----11-----1---------0/1/1
El Salvador------------1970-----0------9------0--------0/0/3
Haiti---------------------1974-----2-----14-----0---------0/0/3
Honduras--------------1982----2------3------2---------0/2/1
Jamaica----------------1998----3------9------3---------1/0/2
Mexico-------------------1930----4-----13-----0---------0/0/3
Panama----------------2018----1------9------0---------0/0/2*
Trinidad & Tobago---2006----0------4------1---------0/1/2
United States---------1930-----7------6-----4---------2/0/1

 

You're a great man RealMadridista, a great man. I really hope you're right.

 

.@HKane: Man of the Match - #ENG vs #PAN

The England captain becomes the second player - after N'Golo Kante - to earn the WhoScored man of the match award in each of his first two appearances at the #WorldCup

Full player statistics -- https://t.co/x6dfPaWYDW #ENGPAN pic.twitter.com/fPN58YV3iE

— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) June 24, 2018

 

When i look at the previous teams On Paper England had lot better team in the past but Kane is one thing England needed.

that And this formation that works for them nicely
Not as sound names as back in the days but lot more capable as finally they are actually a team instead of group of individuals

 

Sorry game from Panama, wrestling in the box worse than Harvey Weinstein

 

From the WC Refereeing threads. Concacaf, the gift that keeps on giving.

Source: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/match-30-eng-pan-grisha-egy.2084522/page-2#post-36792715

 

Kane is getting fouled so much these past 2 games - like how many bear hugs has he gotten in the box? Liked both his bullet penalties.

Well deserved advance - sets up an interesting tie against Belgium - maybe some positioning

 

oh boy... I'll bet there'll be a flury of fouls and yellow cards coming from both team at the end of that match then

 

I have to admit I was wrong about Panama I though they would be the worst team in the tournament and not even score a goal. They are proving to be worst team in the tournament by a pretty good margin BUT they did score a goal. Admittedly the goal came after England was so much in control that their only real interest was not getting hurt, but it was a goal.

It says a LOT about the weakness of CONCACAF that a team as bad as Panama can qualify. This cycle the only team in CONCACAF with any real quality is Mexico. I hate to think how bad the US would have looked if we had somehow tied T&T on that last day of qualifying.

 

It is the fewest number of yellow cards not the most. But I bet you already knew that.

 

Yeah but the runner up has the easier route to the World Cup final than the group winner... so both teams will be trying NOT to have the fewest yellow cards lol.

Anyhoo I'm kidding, I'm sure they'll play to win but the runner up may have the long term advantage

 

English fans, a solid win by your team against a modest opponent. But know that in addition to bringing your team 6 points total and the exact same number of goals allowed and scored as Belgium, this victory also makes Team USA look quite bad because the Americans couldn't qualify out of the group that Panama earned a direct spot from.

 

Have you seen the quote from Arena on the game. Will come across as sour grapes to sum, but if taken in full context he is 1000% right and it's why Panama is currently on 0 points and playing with a GD of -8 after two games, and why Honduras finished with 0 points and a GD of -7 after the group stage four years ago. Here's the text I can find, and again, agree 1000%, and it echoes what I posted earlier about playing on the road in Central America, and the horrific ref work (as exemplified in the disastrous 2015 "it was rigged" Gold Cup):

"....The things that happened today with Panama were typical of CONCACAF competition, but they're never punished for it," Arena told the Associated Press. "In my view, the officiating hurts the progress of the region. You'd have to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer for them to call a penalty kick in CONCACAF. Mexico is a good, solid team. So is Costa Rica. Panama is an inferior team in the competition...I feel strongly that we should have been the third team, but we have no one to blame but ourselves."

link:
http://www.espn.com/soccer/panama/s...penalties-never-called-in-concacaf-qualifying

He's right on every single angle of his take. This Mexico side is good, better than he suggests, and that I thought they were (their performance at the Gold Cup in '15, and in friendlies in the lead up to the Cup had me doubting them, now I think Osorio was just tinkering w/ideas, not giving a damn about the result, which is actually pretty smart). Costa Rica is also a good team for now, not so sure what they'll be down the line, they have not done well in U-20 and U-17 World Cup qualifying and performance if memory serves which is usually a good bellwether of where your team is headed in Concacaf (Honduras did well a decade or less ago and suddenly qualified in '10 and '14, and made the playoff for '18 before falling to Australia, Mexico collected a ton of hardware in youth competitions over the past 12 years or so, and not surprisingly played fantastic at WC '14 and now in '18, and the US had its worst stretch of youth performances at the U-17, U-20, and U-23 level between 2007-2013, and not surprisingly those kids are the ones whose absence played the key role (along with veteran self-satisfaction and hubris) in the US failing to qualify when they would have supposedly been in their prime.

Panama earned their way to a playoff, not to the cup, they got away with murder on that faux-goal, but I also think it was a bit of karma after the broken hearts in '14 qualifying (the US knocked Panama out on Matchday 10 Finale with injury time goals late on). Unfortunately, as Bruce said, teams like Panama and Honduras simply don't have the quality to take their teams on the road outside of Concacaf. Other than Honduras at the 2012 Olympics, no Concacaf teams other than the US, Mexico, and Costa Rica has ever done a damn thing at the World Cup, and one of the reasons why is that the refs don't punish tactics that the Central American sides in Concacaf are notorious for getting away with in our regions in major competitions combined with ref incompetence and corruption. For whatever reason the Caribbean sides don't seem to indulge in the same sort of thing, it's much more closely affiliated with Central American sides (especially Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama, not so much Costa Rica and Mexico).

To be perfectly fair in representing things, the first time a gold cup featured an abomination of ref origins that I can remember that was truly horrible benefited the US in a game against Canada in the knockout rounds a good 11 or 13 years ago, can't remember, but I've never seen anything like '15, where the refs literally must have taken handbags of money to assist Mexico against Costa Rica in the semifinals, before taking another huge bag of money to give Mexico the title over Panama in the final. The Panama debacle was created by a US ref at the World Cup if memory serves, not sure about the semifinal debacle against Costa Rica which was even worse.

Anyway, again, Arena's spot on in this. I'm happy Panama got their goal, but it's going to be a problem once we convert to 48 teams, as the teams best positioned to advance to the World Cup other than Canada (never puts it together) and Caribbean sides T&T, and Jamaica (both have really struggled to put it together outside of their individuals campaigns in 1998 and 2006), are all Central American sides notorious for the unpunished thuggery and diving, so we're likely to see more, not less, of this ugliness in future cups.

Panama is frustrating. They worked so hard to get there over the past four cups, and if it hadn't been at our expense, and their thuggery in the 0-4 loss to us on Matchday 9 I would have been happy for them this time. Unfortunately they've become hard to like, though I was happy for their fans.

 

Depends upon if the US had gone w/the kids, or trotted out the same decrepit, entitled losers who jaked it on Matchday 10. The kids showed what they could do when they were totally overmatched against Portugal, and France, and during these friendlies and at the more recent youth World Cups. A young team lead by Pulisic would have lost to Belgium, and should've lost to England, but likely would've beaten Tunisia but they wouldn't have gotten battered 8-1. They played Portugal in Portugal immediately after the debacle and won 1 to Horvath, they tied France while being played off the fielding a game France certainly wanted to stomp us in, both of these games played without Pulisic.

I know it's kind of en vogue to poop all over us and rightfully so, we were an abomination in qualifying. But our kids sure as hell aren't, and if enough of them had gotten a chance at this World Cup it probably would have looked more like the US in '06, than Honduras in '14 and Panama in '18. The kids are good. They would have gotten a lot out of this, even in defeat, which is why I want the veterans punted into the nearest septic tank, France Post-2010 style. They lost the right to wear the shirt after what they did at T&T, most especially to the kids who should've had this opportunity just as Donovan's generation gave kids their chances in '06 and '10. It's time for them all to be kicked to the curb, if for no other reason than justice. Keep some glue guys and move on. Do not give us a mixed squad.

 

I could see this being a bit of pick your poison if it's Senegal or Columbia. I definitely think if Japan advances, that would be the preferred opponent, but Senegal is a hard out, and Colombia, w/o any stupid red cards is as well.

Definitely a difficult decision there. Need to look at the bracket to see the other likely scenarios, I feel like I've got a grasp on where every groups headed except for D, and H. I could add C, as Peru has the most power there to throw a monkey wrench in. but for now if I were to predict it I'd go:

Russia vs Portugal

Uruguay vs Spain

France vs Nigeria/Iceland/Argentina

Denmark vs Nigeria/Iceland/Argentina

Brazil vs Germany

Mexico vs Switzerland

Belgium vs Senegal/Colombia/Japan

England vs Colombia/Senegal/Japan

That's kinda how I see it.

C/D and G/H pairings are the most difficult to figure out.