New drinking game: During Canada matches, take a shot very time they say "Ryan Reynolds." You'll need to Uber home.
I heard Donovan speaking on the Mexico match, then I heard Twellman and immediately went to the Spanish broadcast and they're not even cutting away from the match to show ads.
Reading more about Poch’s pentagon midfield and that’s impressive too. Well coached. Kudos for where it’s due. Paraguay - while ranked lower - is no slouch. Had only lost twice and defeated some heavyweights in CONMEBOL. So the whole “who are they?” argument loses water.
Brazil v Morocco: Seemed like the ref really really was told not to give anyone on either side a yellow card. It made the game more boring than it could have been. And the water breaks really seemed to disrupt the flow too.
water breaks do indeed break up the flow of games and from reading around the web and from casuals IRL, they all hate the water breaks, I get asked why the water breaks and I told them they used to be used during hot weather games but now greedy corporations figured out they can sell more ads during water breaks under the guise that its for player "safety" also I like my soccer games to be done within a 2 hour window, but now with greedy corporations I would not be shocked to see them stretch it out and have games go 2 hours and a half hours to fill the extra time with ads, so much for the sanctity of the beautiful game
How many players died from not taking a special break to hydrate? Can’t be that many. How many soccer fans died from using the products corporations are selling us during those breaks? Seems like more. For safety, I’m watching on Telemundo. No hydration break commercials.
I didn't realize I was on the english feed of the Aus/Turkey feed till the announcer made a snarky comment along the lines of hydration break in an air conditioned stadium and they went straight to commercial, quickly switched over to Telemundo, my sanity is partially restored
It is indeed though: NOT - Turk-ee-yay YES - Turk-ee-yeh I am beyond frustrated. At the pronunciation and the play.
The Turkish team are playing scared. The moment is too big for them right now. I haven’t seen them this tight in ages. This is awful.
FURIOUS. Not sure what the coach was doing. Unprepared. Overawed. No ideas. Kinda praying Güler would have a moment of brilliance. You're short. STOP CROSSING IT INTO THE EFFING BOX. This team is better than that and was during all of European qualifying. Lack of major tourney time showed - youth.
Australia executed a bunker and counter game plan to perfection. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team that organized for 90 minutes committed to this plan. Also yes, with that beast of a man in the middle of Australia defensive lines, Türkiye’s constant attempts to force the ball wide of the 10 man Aussie defensive block and send in crosses was doomed to fail. There weren’t many other options but I’m surprised we didn’t see players like Güler start trying to dribble directly through the center and see if they couldn’t get a lucky bounce that’s falls to someone to strike. Game plan for the US will have to be to jump on Australia early and get a lead or they’ll risk having a lot of the same issues.
announcers begging for this. Me begging for this. Instead got to watch crosses never make it to a 5’ 8” player. Cmon man. Going to need speed and creativity for the US.
We (Galaxy) should watch the way Japan managed the end of their game against the Netherlands. It was so smartly handled Also Peacock/Telemundo > Fox. They don’t cut to ads during the hydration break and best of a no Alexi Lalas. He’s tiresome and boorish at the best of times, but he’s really outdoing himself this go round. Yesterday Rebecca said something like “Alexi with all that talent on the bench for Brazil I’m sure we see some in the second half” to which Alexi replied “Maybe … maybe” — yes Alexi maybe a team in the second half will bring on subs like 99% of professional football matches I’ve ever seen in my life. Like I get it was a sort of softball question, but I presume it was an educated broadcaster setting up an opportunity for the expert to take the assist and explain who and why to an audience that likely includes more new viewers to soccer than the usual broadcast.
Japans defense was soooo organized. They kept their perfect spacing, if a defender was beaten they had cover ready, they pushed out quickly and in unison. Made me dream of what the Galaxy could look like with a good coach. And because of the solid D they came out with a point against a side that was much better than them. Good D keeps you in games even when you should be toast.
I think that the need for hydration breaks should be separated from the showing of commercials. You could get rid of hydration breaks, if you allowed/required some form of free substitution like the college game. Also is it just me, but has anyone else noticed that the amount of extras time seems to have dropped to back to the pre 2018 cup levels plus an extra 3 minute allowance for the hydration break.
hydration breaks should have been used as intended and not exploited as it has been, I recall it started for the Brazil World Cup due to the dangers of heat. if anything, they need to have someone on the sidelines monitoring the conditions and call the hydration breaks once the conditions hit a certain thresholds,and if they aren't reached no breaks and heck once the games start getting played in colder conditions, they can take hot cocoa breaks instead of water breaks
One of the broadcasts brought this up. The decision was made that giving some teams hydration breaks because of a certain humidity and temperature while other teams don’t get it, it could be an unfair advantage. so the decision was made to let every game have the hydration breaks, so it’s more fair.