I think the first PK was fairly solid. Defender making himself bigger by holding out an arm, and it gets hit by the cross. That's modestly textbook. The second one was soft, and the VAR thought the award was "clearly and obviously" wrong, which ought to give a hint to Roldan.
Am I correct in believing that Egypt have never won a World Cup match before so this would be a first I guess. Surprised to see the stadium as full as it is, Volgograd was a pain in the ass to get to and to find accommodation for.
I'm not watching the game but statistics say only one shot by Egypt on target. I was completely right about Egypt being one of the three four weakest sides in this World Cup. Losing to Saudi Arabia says it all.
this is the crappiest egypt side i ever saw. wtf happened to egypt.. all those years they didnt even quality for the world cup they could have easily qualified to the 2nd round... they always had a strong team. this egypt team is on par with saudi and panama. wtf happened to them. egypt also played tactically [mod removed word]... they completely allowed saudi to play their game/play to their strength with no resistance or counter tactic whatsoever. they come to the world cup after all this time for this? i feel sorry for salah. it is like giggs with wales. if salah had a decent team he could be on cronaldo and messis level. well he surpassed messi so far this world cup. i think group A is the weakest group in world cup history in terms of which 2 teams advance. i believe any other team in any other group, aside from panama, would have qualified if they were in this group instead of uruguay or russia. what a farce.
What a shame about Al-Dawsari's late goal. I had predicted a 1-1 game here before the tournament started. Not only that, I predicted that Salah would score the first goal, and that Saudi Arabia would equalize through a dodgy penalty. Ah well... https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/al...to-the-final-in-russia.2081060/#post-36720976
Egypt was really poor. As much as I hate the Saudis, they deserved to win this match. And I agree: Egypt was the weakest CAF side in this tournament and one of the weakest teams in Russia. The fact that they were outplayed by crappy Saudi Arabia just showed it.
they completely allowed saudi to play to their strength. saudis game is all flash and no end result... it is so easy to disrupt their game.. as we saw an average russia side win 5-0 even though saudi had more of the ball and put together more passes. but egypt just bent over and let saudi toy with them. very disappointing. saudi still did their damage and embarrassed AFC though. this win will never make up for that.
People made fun of Saudi Arabia when they lost to Russia 0-5. But they weren't that bad after all. The Uruguay game was OK too. Congrats Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is Saudi Arabia. You let them pass the ball around, do their rehearsed plays, and don't press them much, and they can look fine. Press them and prevent them from playing their game, and they are rubbish.
To be fair Saudi Arabia deserve that, much the better team in the second half and quite frankly Egypt have had a poor tournament given that they have a number of players who play at the highest level
No the first one wasn't a penalty either in my book. Ball to arm, the guy crossing was very close to the defender, and its not like his arm was completely outstretched. It was simply a natural position when you are running around.
Saudi Arabia definitely wanted it more and deserved in on basis of the 2nd half. The 2 penalties were still comical though, Egypt could have put SA away after they scored that first goal, but were far too casual with some really good chances in the first half. Very poor from Egypt to be honest. I don't think they ever recovered mentally from that opening day defeat to Uruguay at virtually the last minute. Same thing again today.
And Panama conceded two pens because they thought they were still in Concacaf. You guys should update your rule books.
Congrats to Saudi Arabia. They just need to control their nerves at the world stage. Beating EGYPT with literally no stars in their team is an achievement itself. And holding off Uruguay to one goal and playing while fasting against Russia (according to some posts). In order for them to compete at the world stage, they need to send their players to Europe to gain experience. Hope they start doing that immediately.