Knockout Stage General Discussion Thread

I just look at the way Egypt attacked them on the wings and Even England on their goal today. If Spain can hold possession AND attack them outside on the flanks I just cannot see how Messi will be walking away happy in the N. J. Swampland sunset.


But they are survivors and street fighters so they have a chance.

 

Maybe but that England goal came out of a broken play, to use an NFL expression. Its the only reason Rodgers wasn't offside.

 

Take another look. It was clearly an intentional chicken wing to knock it on. I have seen that called when I was playing, with no VAR.

 

Huge tactical fail! Surely Tuchel is done as manager of England.

it doesn't help his case that England only looked good in moments this WC. Their very first match of this WC was still their best, you'd have to say.

 

Yet you had them as favorites over Spain just a few days ago.

 

Since you're obviously new to football, some bedtime reading for you.

https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-11---offside

 

I had some recency bias i guess because thatvwas right after Spain looked poor against Belgium. Then they played by far their best game of the tournament.

 

How do YOU sleep at night?

 

I've actually been following the game for nearly 40 years. There's no need to be patronizing.

 

Sorry your dignity has been offended so let me make a suggestion: you explain how Messi was offside under the rules of the game and I'll stop "patronizing" you. Deal?

 

Lol. What?

There were no controversies in the semifinal round so we're just going to invent some?

Just like the Digne foul this is black and white, factual call.

 

Not a fan of statistics in football but one stat from the game is revealing: in the 37 minutes between England taking the lead and Lautaro Martinez's winner, England had exactly 12% possession. That's what a 7th tier Southern Football League side does in an FA Cup tie against an EPL side.

Argentina had almost an entire half of football to run through their repertoire of attacking moves, unchallenged, with the arguably best player to ever play the game calling the shots.

The result was inevitable.

 

My mistake. The offside non-call was on the equalizer not the 2nd goal that Lautaro scored.

Yamal touched the ball with his arm below the shoulder before Digne kicked him. That should have merited a VAR check, but that didn't happen. Also, what was with having a referee from a Spanish-speaking country officiate a game between France and Spain? If that doesn't scream conflict of interest, I'm not sure what does. FIFA need to do better when it comes to these things. Unfortunately, they are not proactive enough to avoid these types of controversies. It's usually only after someone gets the short end of the stick that we see meaningful changes.

 

Grats Argentina! Atlanta was fun today

So I've been thinking about how all these players are complaining the field in metlife dries up fast and is rock hard...

I remember Xavi complaining about Barcelona not being able to play their possession game in similar conditions in madrid.

Does this mean we can crown Argentina already

 

My mistake. The offside non-call was on the equalizer and not the winner. The TV replays show Messi behind the last England defender. There was no VAR check here.

 

The better quality games at this World Cup have been played at covered stadiums like Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston.

The heat and humidity at some of these open stadiums have been inhumane. I'm surprised that players didn't have more problems during these games.

 

Yep.

I just rewatched the 2nd half. England had exactly 10 touches in the 7 minutes between the 2 goals. When they didn't even have a lead to defend anymore.

This was Barca 6-1 PSG level of bad.

 

Luckily its not supposed to be too hot on Sunday. Since they decided to play the matcg at 3pm for dumb reasons, it won't be comfortable, but at least we got as lucky as we could realistically hope for

If the final was today it would have been another Norway x England disaster. Not only was it 37 degrees and humid, but air quality was terrible because of wild fire smoke.

 

Argentina players held up Falklands banner. Let's see what FIFA does, likely nothing that will impact them in final, no suspensions.

 

I mean at least Egypt went 2-0 up before sitting back to defend.

England doing that, given all the players they have is just pathetic. Tuchel should be fired.

 

Just because they didn't show it to you on TV doesn't mean it didn't happen in the background. When a side takes 2 minutes to celebrate the checking means that its done well before the teams are ready to restart play.

 

The TV replays show no such thing.

You need to start reading. An eye test would do no harm either
https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-11---offside