Knockout Stage General Discussion Thread

Belgium were tiring rapidly. A shown by the failure to close down that long range shot.

 

It was kind of a bad goal, but Merino is clinical. 2 chances, 2 shots, 2 late winning goals.

I have no clue why Ferran gets more minutes than Merino. My friend and I were actually laughing our arses off at how badly Ferran sticks out like a sore thumb compared to everyone else on this Spanish squad.

If it was any other type of business other than football, you'd think Ferran was a nepo baby or something. I mean, how does he get these opportunities? But I'd like to think that in football, these decisions are still 100% based on player quality.

 

France will win it. They will have an extra day's rest -- that could be quite decisive especially in the second half of the game. They also have more match-winners than Spain. People like to talk about when the two teams met at the same stage of Euro 2024. France are MUCH better than they were two years ago largely because Mbappe has been firing on all cylinders, Dembele has been transformed and is now a big game player, and Olise burst on to the scene to become one of the best playmakers in the world. I would probably start Theo Hernandez at left back over Digne just so he can neutralize Yamal's pace. If fit, I would play Tchouameni over Kone because he has more experience in games of this magnitude.

 

Are you sure? Courtois was awful today. He made a mess of the first goal.

 

On the evidence of the last two days France wins. Spain were more vulnerable than I expected to Belgium. France have a much more dangerous attack. Perhaps Spain can step up to the challenge but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

He could have made a mistake too. But you are probably right. But we will never know for sure.

 

Spain is the only team that can play good enough defense and control the midfield against France. It could go either way.

 

Don't buy the "rest" factor. If anything that favors Spain, as all of Spain's attackers and midfield have basically played 4 matches so far, with all of their rotation and early subs, except Rodri who rested all year. That's 4 matches in 4 weeks.

Spain are relatively well rested compared to France but they just haven't reached their Euro 2024 gear and it feels at this point that they never will.

 

Olmo, Yamal, and Nico Williams have not been at 100% this tournament. They were flying in 2024. They will need to raise their game versus France, and even if they manage to do so, that still might not be enough.

 

No man that is not proper defense. It is the same with Morocco and France. You are conflating playing counterattacking with weak defense with a few more men back with defense. Defense was Iran vs Belgium or Ghana or Congo games.

 

I agree could go either way.

France just needs a small opening.

Spain's control is amazing.

Everytime Yamal touches the ball you wonder what kind of magic is about to happen.

Everytime Mbappe touches the ball you wonder how he will score.

Will be an amazing semi... I'm excited.

 

Which games had 30+ yard non free kick goals?

Also, for context, there have been 285 goals scored so far in 98 games.

You might find these interesting:

https://sportsanalytics.studentorg.berkeley.edu/articles/screamers-to-tap-ins.html

https://blogarchive.statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/mythbusting-is-long-range-shooting-a-bad-option/

There are unfortunately a bunch of naive people who take things literally without context and apply "science" rigidly to try to gain an advantage, while not understanding it. It is the same kind of simple minds who think FIFA showing a random graph on a screen equates to "evidence" that the ball touched someone. They don't understand that you need to compare data to data, you can't just take data in isolation. (e.g., FIFA needs to prove that the sensor of the ball was for the Croatian player and not another player: they needed to show the "spike" in the sensor data for the touch off the back of the Portuguese player as a comparison, or a touch off a mosquito, or a touch off hair versus body, the spike off a close miss due to body heat for example potentially registering a spike, but they failed to do this, and they just showed a graph with a line, without showing scale for context, to make it visually look like a "spike" in activity: this is easy to game, for example you can put your y axis 0 to 10 but if you lengthen the distance on the graph from 0 to 1, 1 to 2, etc.. you can make the graph more vertical so that microscopic movements would visually show up as a steeper/longer line on the graph to fool the audience, and the audience was successfully fooled, because they are naive minds who lack logic and automatically believe everything they are told. Imagine you are building a car and want to include in it an automatic phone dial system that calls emergency services automatically if the car has crashed: you need a cutoff point, in terms of registering what a crash is, otherwise for example a hard brake might trigger the call because the sensor will be fooled into thinking it is an accident, this would be a false positive. Apply this to the ball sensor technology that FIFA uses, which they apparently did not choose a cutoff point for, while simple minds get wowed by their out of context "scientific graphs" popping up on their TV screen then these mouthbreathers claim that
"technology" backed up the poor call).

 

^these same mouthbreathers failed to spot the basic logical limitation: if you reduce shooting from far because of an old dataset (from a time when there was long range shooting) showing lower expected goals from long range shooting, then you are creating a new reality, and the findings from the old reality/dataset will not magically transfer onto the new reality. For example, this can mean since defending teams expect chances to be limited to inside the box, they will then defend in a manner to prevent goals from shots inside the box: this can then reduce expected goals from inside the box. And in this era, if you then shoot from the outside the box, it can increase expected goals from outside the box shots, because teams would be caught off guard, which is what we saw with the Spain goal today. They don't realize that in the past (when long range shots were more common), most teams did not spam with long range shots or use long range shots as a primary scoring method, rather, they did some long range shots to keep variability/keep the possibility open/to keep the defense guessing/allocate defensive resources away from being able to fully focus on other scoring changes such as shots inside the box. But all it takes is some mouthbreather to say "xG inside the box>outside the box: cease all outside the box shooting if you want a scientific advantage."

 

The reason I agree that CAF is the most likely to break the UEFA/C’bol duopoly on winning the WC is because CAF, more so than C’CAF or AFC has players born/raised in Europe, so CAF can draw on their European diaspora. The diaspora has the European football benefits (strong academies, elite competition) that AFC and C’CAF mostly lack. I saw some chart about how (I think it was France) which has the most players at this WC, many playing for their heritage nation.

 

@persianfootball (I didn't want to quote your epic post!)

You asked which goals were from 30+ yards. This isn't definitive but is what I can find...

Peter Sucic (Croatia v Ghana)
Anthony Elanga (Sweden v Japan)
Kylian Mbappe (France v Senegal)
Sidny Lopes Cabral (Cape Verde v Argentina)
Wilson Isidor (Haiti v Morocco) (borderline 30 yards)
I'll add Hans Vanaken (Belgium v USA) for distance although it doesn't really fit with the others.

My post was in response to your comment...

"To be fair I have not seen a shot from that far out this world cup"

...to point out that there have been goals from distance, and even more in the 20+ yard range. It wasn't intended as part of a discussion on the evolving tactics of where to shoot from.

 

Belgium made it all a bit more difficult to Spain than I thought it will. But on other hand, Belgium after that win vs Senegal was finally a Belgium which I expected to see since the beginning of the tournament, but it never happened till that Great Escape vs Senegal. What comes to Spain. They could've finish it earlier, but some laid back attitude in finishing stages of attack after they scored didn't let them to. And overall that final (key) pass or decision is somewhat a big problem for this Spanish side in almost every game. They has no big troubles to bring the ball to penalty box or close, but when final move is needed, they screw up with poor pass or simply poor decision. Yamal, Olmo or almost everyone else does that. If they want to win against France, that must be improved. If there's a weak link in French side, that's defense. I was not sold by it in some group stage games, previously in qualies, friendlies or the same Nations League and they were barely tested in KO games, so it will interesting to see how they'll cope with such caliber offense like Spain.
Overall, France looked more convincing in this tournament, so no wonder they are a bi tmore favorited in this semi, but when such two heavyweights meet it all usualy is in details - better day, better finishing, better efficiency and even one moment, one mistake can seal the deal

 

If Yakin ain't playing some mind games - Manzambi is out. It wouldn't be that much worrying if that would've happened before the tournament, cause he wasn't a regular starter, but seeing how Swiss attack is dependable on him in World Cup, that's a big blow. Atleast unlike Colombia game, when news came very late after last practice, this time they've known this for a few days, so had time to prepare. Hard to say how Yakin will approach the game, maybe he'll try to revive Vargas-Embolo-Ndoye connection which worked quite good during qualies and friendlies

 

Dude, you should check your arithmetic.

PAR was the 6th-placed team in C'BOL. Its 2026 WC qualification has EVERYTHING to do with a WC expansion to 48 teams. Sorry excuse of an R16 team.

Fun fact: URU achieved its worst WC placement in history during 2026 WC (37th of 48, grouped). Beating its lowest placement from 2002 WC (26th of 32, grouped).

C'BOL better get its act together, or their WC lunch meals will be devoured by CAF.

 

It is France. 99 players who were picked for this World Cup were born on French soil. Most of them are nations with historic links to France -- Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, DR Congo, and Haiti.

 

Even though Morocco were the only CAF nation to get to the final 8, it does feel as if Africa is in the ascendancy while CONMEBOL is regressing. The quality of players coming out of South America isn't what it used to be. AFC countries are leveraging the considerable African diaspora in Europe and as a result, their national teams are getting stronger. The playing field is leveling off. Moving forward, I think World Cups will continue to be less predictable, and that's a great thing for the game.

 

Nobody cares about Copa Libertadores and its antics. No club was won it outside of BRA for almost ten years, da fuq?

I remember when PAR brought better ideas to the game, proper attack plays under Haedo Valez / Roque Santa Cruz, or even freaking Salvador Cabanas before Mexican mobsters logged a bullet in his brain.

PAR squad in 2026 WC is worse than prior squads. No heart like CPV. Its 2030 WC qualification as *hosts* will not fix things either.

 

I remember Nelson Valdez and Roque Santa Cruz. People talk about nations like Brazil, Germany, and Italy as being obvious examples of established footballing powers that are in decline, but there seems to be a wider issue of real talent impacting the game all over the world.

 

For every MAR team, we got two CAF teams who will screw themselves at a WC:
- SEN: federation starved its players during tournament, while SEN officials hosted a large delegation of parasites.
- TUN: the joke writes itself, with an interim *white wizard* as cherry on top.

CAF's new trend just matches C'BOL's old trend: 1 or 2 dominant teams with great WC runs, hitting UEFA walls in R8.

In the end, UEFA keeps laughing all the way to the bank:
- 85%+ of top WC prizes collected by UEFA federations
- Even higher percentage collected by UEFA clubs as compensation for using UEFA-based players in tournament.

ROW federations will be happy with their USD 10M you-were-here prize money, though. NZL is set for life (guaranteed USD 10M every 4 years).