Italy is good. Hey, our schedule was soft, and so was Argentinas. I know we are pretty good and I love the way we play, but as a few have mentioned, we might have had to easy of a schedule and it might screw us by not being tested. Still can‘t wait to see.
The second Italy goal was a gift from the Ref. Can't believe that he came to the conclusion that his no call on the field was an egregious error. I was thinking there isn't any place on earth where that's a hand ball. But apparently it is in Argentina.
His arm was out. He made the mistake of fully turning his body and not keeping them tight. I‘m not saying I would have called it, but I am not shocked it was.
Bye Felicias. Bye bid stealers. Phony faves. Good thing we didn't get anyone from group D right off the bat, huh.
There's still 1 measuring stick left, and the more important one. The 2nd place finisher in our group is yet to play his round. We'll find out tomorrow how legit they were.
Yeah. I watched 30 minutes of the Slovak match before a call and it was clear only poor finishing or stellar keeping would keep that close. I knew they weren‘t good. It‘s the Ecuador match will tell me how to feel. Still love our team either way, but we needed to be tested more. Oh well. Go play!
No tournament ever does, but this one hasn't even been that surprising. The late games today weren't even that weird. Italy lost to England 2-1 on an 80something minute goal in the semifinals of the U19 Championships. This time they win 2-1 on an 80something minute goal. I'm more curious about what happened to Italy in the second game against Nigeria. What was up there? As for Nigeria, as I mentioned pre-game, I don't know what they are. All their losses are to really good teams: Senegal, Gambia, and Brazil. But what the hell happened in that 2-1 win against Domin'can Republic? They dominated the stats, but they never put them away. Weird. They were also just not as good, period, as Senegal and Gambia. On the other hand, they played Brazil and Italy even, and those two sides look like title contenders except for one Italy slip up, so maybe Nigeria's really good? I'm just not sure. But all in all, not much is surprising, dig under the hood and all the results are largely reasonable. No monster upsets yet. Even Argentina falling is in keeping w/the fact that they didn't do well in Qualifying and beat nobody of consequence in the group stage. This entire cycle they basically did nothing of note. So, so far? It's pretty in keeping w/the relative quality of the teams.
My fingers are crossed that France and England's A sides beating the piss out of us by a combined 8-2 score line in March (I keep forgetting we scored 2, not 1, against England) insured that nobody would get big heads just two months later beating a bunch of patsies. One can only hope, but yeah, the road forward is probably Vs Uruguay and then probably vs Brazil, so YIKES. But at least they have the unfair rest advantage against Uruguay.
1.91-1.72 for England in xG 42-40 for England in dangerous attacks. Kinda like their Euro 19 championship match last June where England won 2-1 on a late goal. They seem very close. For some reason I kept thinking England also played them in the group stage, but they didn't, I was mixing up Italy with Israel.
Group D put three in the quarterfinals. Not implausible that all three will even advance to the semifinals.
I don't know what he's talking about, they do show the replays while the ref is checking. I recall that being the case during the Brazil v Tunisia game.
I know of Paredes and Pukstas from us and Carney Chukwuemeka from England, are there any other players who joined after the group stage?
I don't think they ever showed the replay of what they were checking in the first half of the US/NZ game, did they? It felt like they took a long time to get to a replay of the handball in the Italy/England game. There has been lots of strange footage of players just standing around, while we wait on the VAR decisions, even if they've usually gotten to replays eventually.
[QUOTE="Boysinblue, post: 41431954, member: 192334" Carney Chukwuemeka from England, [/QUOTE] Is he who sang Tubthumper?
Fox Sports' production is terrible, and this was another case. But they did EVENTUALLY show it. They were also looking at a handball in that case. It was by Gomez. The ball ran up his foot or body after he blocked it, and eventually made way to his hand. But it was adjudged to be accidental/incidental, which was the right call. They took an incredibly long time to make the decision too. I guess that's what you get when you don't invest much $ in a tourney.
For us weirdos this is the second most important tournament in the world. For the real world it's very, very niche and there's not much money in this.
I'm guessing that there is also a common feed everyone has to use? I agree you can tell there isn't a lot of production value going into the broadcast, but these problems are usually made more clear b/c Fifa is showing one thing and the commentators/networks have to react to it w/out knowing what is coming up.