He won't get sacked because he had already publicly announced he would leave the job after this World Cup.
Full marks to Croatia, they're in the semis with one actual win so far in the WC - an emphatic one, it needs to be said - , but they are truly class where it matters in the KOs - ET and PKs. At this point if you go into ET against Croatia you're not really favored to win, no matter if you're France England Portugal or Argentina. And you're screwed if you're up against them on PKs. Just stone cold, smart strategy on PKs and so much calm experience in these high pressure moments now.
Congrats to Croatia for getting the job done. I have no gripes with the way they played. In the past when Italian teams played pragmatic and counter attack it was always called negative football. I disagree with this notion, along with the notion of "modern football" both are stupid memes. Ancelotti proved that pragmatic football is as valid today as it has ever been. What is pragmatic football? It's playing tight in your end and taking your chances. It's not playing open and letting teams with potent attacks have endless runs on goal. That's stupid football. People call Pep's style, "modern". What's modern about it other than making 1000 sideways passes in the midfield and trying to walk the ball into the net? I guess most "modern football" pundits forget the total football of the 70's or jogo bonito of the 60's. Those styles died for a reason, they don't work anymore. Spain had a good run with a generation of great players. Even still in 2010, 4 of their 8 goals came on set pieces. So I reject the idea of modern football. There are just good coaches who can adapt to their opponent and pull a style out of the right playbook to play to their strengths and shore up their weaknesses. It's a good thing that Dalic didn't fall for the meme to play "modern football" or Croatia wouldn't be in the semi's. Ask Brazil where they'd rather be right now.
its just a case of playing to your strengths. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Just need to find out what they are, once you have that figured out then you adapt
I would have no issue with this if the same Croatia fans weren't deriding "Morocco's negative football" just a few days ago
🚨 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆: Tite is no longer Brazil manager… He says: "A painful defeat, but at peace with myself. End of cycle.” pic.twitter.com/vAwxtPRqVF— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) December 9, 2022
Fair enough. It's like English pundits calling it anti football when Italy used it and when Italy did, they always generated more than one chance on net, but when England do it is organized, compact and fantastic. What's the conclusion we can draw from this behavior? Fans are biased and hypocrits. When their team wins using it, it's all about the winning. When they lose to it, it's ugly and negative. Portugal in 2016 comes to mind. They used to say that they lost in 2004 to negative football because they were brave and played pretty. Fast forward 12 years and they were all fine with it. Carlo Ancelotti begs to differ. He has a good team with good players. So does Pep. Pragmatic football won.
I say it's even simpler than that. If you're playing a team that can finish and literally dribble the ball into the net, you tighten up and don't give them lanes to run through. The misnomer of anti-football is pure bullshit. What's anti about stopping a team from running up the score? What's pro football about losing to Spain 7-0? Once you've done that, then you seek goals when opportunities present. France won the world cup that way in 2018 to a Croatia that did attack them. All of it is football. There's literally no such thing as anti, modern, negative, nothing. There's just football and styles/formations. Most are variations of either attack more or defend more. You need to play in both ends of the pitch to win.
If it's anti-football that turns off fans then someday the laws of the game will be changed in order to discourage it. Until that day happens people should just accept every team plays to WIN and not for style points. Without these different approaches and tactical plays to neutralize opposition then we wouldn't get stories like Morocco or Croatia if it's all about which team has the highest transfer market value
That's why I say anti football is just a stupid meme. Football is played on both sides. You go out to stop a team from scoring as much as you go out to score. If fans don't like that, then stop watching until Fifa bans all goalies and doesn't allow players of the anti football, defending side into their own 18. Then it's no longer football, but stupidball.
We don't like it too, and people here are mostly negative about coach and his decisions, about some players (starters) too... but at the end of the day it is us who are dancing into the semifinals.
One of the cruelest eliminations I can remember was Croatia getting knocked out of Euro 2008. The futbol gods have repaid them back in multiples.
I think you'd find Brazilians would tolerate lots of things they don't now if their population was only four million. They would probably play like Paraguay.
If I was grading the two teams on a 10 point scale, I would grade them in their match as follows: Brazil 9 Croatia 8.5. The Croatian goalie, Livakovic, is excellent and their defense, especially Juranovic, Gvardiol, and Lovren, had big games. For most of the match, Modric actually had an off game. For Brazil, I don't understand why Danilo wasn't subbed; he carried a yellow and wasn't that good. I also felt Casemiro was having an off day and was below par. Vinni Jr began fading quickly but like Richarlison, I would not have subbed either if I were Tite. Thiego Silva continued to impress. Most of the others (including Neymar) were also notch below their best but had moments of brilliance and class. Neymar's goal deserved better tha this ending. Other than his dive, Anthony was great and was Tite's best sub in place of Raphinha.
If we (Croatia) had a great striker option, we wouldn't be relying on penalties. But each NT manager has to work with what's available. 4 years ago, we had Mandžukić, a top striker. But our defense was worse. Now, the situation is reversed. Dalić has to think about the striker and right wing every game. 2 strikers can't last more than 45 minutes, and one of them isn't even a penalty box striker. One guy is a forward that works best in a 3-5-2, while the last one is hard-working, but slow and not the best on the ball. I think Dalić is doing an OK job tactically, since at least our defense keeps scores tight. Then individual determination pulls us out of the grave.
Yup. And why are we even talking about anti football is this thread? A game that Croatia was comfortable and had more possession for large chunks of time. Anywho, I wonder where NEYMAR goes from here? Wasted the past 5 years of his career. Doesn't seem like it's gonna happen for him with the national team, so surely he has to get out of Ligue 1 and join a top league at the club level, where its not all jokes and champagne(?).
Neymar is 5 years younger than Messi. If Messi is "rocking" it now in 2022 (whom also plays in Ligue 1 at present times), we could still expect to see more things from Ney, in 2026...
Well said. You don't get points/wins for style of play, the best style of play is whatever style within the rules of the game allow you to achieve the desired result. The job of a manager is to look at what players he has at his disposal, study the opposition and come up with a plan to win, as opposed to dogmatically playing the same way every single match. If you're Guardiola with some of the best players in the world in your team then you can perhaps afford to be more dogmatic but for everyone else... If you go up against a team like Man City who average 70-80% possession then you are going to need a good defensive plan, for someone like Nottingham Forest to go into that match with an attacking formation is just asking for a good thrashing.
This is the biggest criticism Italian fans have of Mancini. Stubbornly sticking to the system and players that won him the Euro when it was not getting the job done. There was the Jorginho two penalty misses in each game vs the Swiss, but besides that, the team could not break down a solid bunker and he switched it up too late. Credit to him for coming up with alternative formations in the Nations League, but the milk was already spilt. It's hard to break down a bunker as we saw again today with Portugal. Possession is becoming one of those useless stats that I ignore now. Especially useless when it's sideways passing in the midfield with no threat at all. Italy had 80% vs Macedonia. Portugal had 76% vs Morocco. Spain had 75% vs Morocco, and there are many other examples.
Yeah and I'm not a big fan of that style of play either, England have been guilty of it a lot this tournament but just passing sideways at the half way line and going back to keeper for the sake of keeping the ball at any cost (like Guardiola teams tend to do) is boring to me. I'd much rather teams be direct towards goal and take risks with losing the ball but I'm not going to call teams "anti-football" for depriving the opposition team of the ball whilst not doing a lot with it themselves. Statistics are a thing that seem to have crept in from North America, when I was younger I don't recall the same amount of obsession with statistics like they had in NFL. Sure, they always kept track of who scored, bookings etc but it's gone a bit over the top now with distance covered etc, but then society as a whole seems to have gone that way with everything being increasingly tracked and monitored.