Fifa World Cup Russia 2018

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

Thin skinned moi?

My skin is so Thicc a rapper would make a music video about it.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

To be fair, if ye do do it lads I'll be ******* delighted for Gary Lineker.

 

[ncurd]

To be fair, if ye do do it lads I'll be ******* delighted for Gary Lineker.

He's a top bloke

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

To be fair, if ye do do it lads I'll be ******* delighted for Gary Lineker.

Ah Mr Leicester himself.

(BTW my comments are **** banter nothing personal)

 

[McTallshort]

not sure I am happy with England winning or that bunch of dirty, play acting choppers getting knocked out.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

The problem with going extra time and penalties is the physical and mental toll on the team and not getting it done in 90mins. Sweden will be the relatively fresher of the two sides and if it goes extra time again I'm not sure how much England will have left in the tank.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Social media is straight up hilarious this morning,

Go look at the comment section for the BBC article about England winning, every single comment is saying how the ref gifted England the game.
I think world peace could be achieved if England won the world cup just by uniting the rest of the world in their hatred of us.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

BBC comments section is always full of trolls looking to make outrageous statements.

Anyway 3 days to recover. Sterling should be dropped for Vardy and Ali unfortunately is still not fully recovered from that thigh injury, so replace him with Loftus-Cheek. Otherwise same team. Got to create more chances from open play though. But suspect it will be another stalemate and extra time and penalties again.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

To be fair, if ye do do it lads I'll be ******* delighted for Gary Lineker.

He'll be selling many more crisps

 

[ncurd]

Colombia by the sounds of it do think the ref was against them......not entirely sure how they worked that one out unless there's some weird persecution complex.

Don't think Swefen will attempt to wrestle Kane down in the box though...

 

[Mrs. Peter Quinn]

These penalty area wrestling antics highlight an issue which has been in the game for a long time: why are defences afforded such protection by referees? The tinest shove or use of the arm by an attacking player in the box is an immediate freekick, and on the other side we've reached a crisis point in the sheer amount defences get away with.

Genuinely, can anyone explain to me why the game is reffed this way? This inconsistency drives me mad.

Nice let off for england but it should be a reality check for us too.

 

[Cruz_del_Sur]

I thought i'd stop watching after we lost, then i thought at least i wouldnt post, yet here i am.

I thought Rojo's penalty against mbappe was as stupid as you could get, but what Sanchez could only be described as a monument to stupidity.
This is not about strategy, skill or anything of the sort. This is about bloody common sense and training.
Everyone knows VAR is a new thing and penalties for minor holdings have been given (Mascherano vs Nigeria). I dont expect ALL players to adjust overnight, some of them have decades of indoctrination and that is hard to switch off in the heat of the moment.
What i cannot forgive, is stupidity. Sheer stupidity. Anyone who's played the sport at any level that involves a referee, knows that when you are defending on a corner, the last thing you want is to draw attention. The LAST thing. So 5 seconds before corner, Sanchez was doing everything he could to get not only the camera's but the ref's and his assistants' attention. He literally and forcefully put himself in the middle of a red wall (like a yellow t-shirt wouldn't stand out). Not only that, but he also put himself in a position where those english players could prevent him from moving freely (kinda) legally.
He literally lets Kane go past him only to jump on his back while tripping him.... with the ref 5 meters away and looking in his direction.
And last, the foul was completely unnecessary.
Before the corner a friend said "what the **** is he thinking". That was a brutal display of foolishness.

What happened to Colombia in 1994 was bad luck (the own goal at least). What happened to them yesterday was Sanchez' idiocy.
Chances are they would have lost anyway thou, as they wouldnt have gone all in if england hadn't scored, so it would have gone to penalties either way.

I generally do not give a turd about other teams, but i was screaming at the tele. I dont care who wins of loses, but for some reason i care when people at that level make such stupid decisions.

I could write a case for Japan too. Good lord that was silly. I would really like to ask the Japanese coach /players what were they thinking. I dont get it. I honestly do not. Were they injured and had to risk it? Were they aware of the risk they were taking? Against whom?
There are moments to go all in and take a risk and there are moments where, regardless of your system, you need to fall back. This was one of those situations.
Japan had no incentive to do that. None. I loved the way they played. Their goalie screwed them, more than they realize probably. Momentum change at that point was huge.

I can understand lack of skill. I can understand someone choosing a different system and therefore a different risk/reward equation associated with that choice. I can understand that in the heat of the moment you have to decide very fast and that means making mistakes.
I cannot understand the two cases i described above. Both were carefully planned stupid decisions. I m angry just thinking about them..

 

[Cruz_del_Sur]

Just had another thought. Not that long ago a NZ friend of mine told me he had it on good authority that All Blacks had a planning team that had a strategy for pretty much every conceivable situation the team could face other than natural disasters. Think of things like: you need to score a try and have a red and a yellow (so 13 vs 15). What to do? Course it involved risks, but the rationale behind it was: if we ever end up in this situation, we want the players to focus on execution and not waste resources and get nervous second guessing what to do.
I know a guy in Ireland that makes video analysis of third tier teams, some even amateurs, and sells it with incredibly detailed and actionable insights (imagine, your 7 has 80% tackling success on his left side, 50% on his right, practice that).

Then i see the resources that our national footie team has and that we end up throwing high crosses when our three forwards are all under 175 cm tall and the average defender is well over 180 and i want to bang my head against the wall. In 2006 Germany spent approx. EUR 50K on a video that had pretty much everything you needed to know about everyone on how they shoot penalties. Same with goalies. Argentina said "we don't need that". Their goalkeeper stopped 2 of the 4 we shot.

I've seen small drugstores with better planning than our national footie team. I kid you not.

Without knowing, i guarantee you our national team does not have a team that makes data analysis.
US sports are half a century ahead of the rest in that sense.

 

[ncurd]

England have bought in sports psychologists and gone into huge details about penalties (previous couches wouldn't even practice them). Considering Southgate's history its not surprising he wants the team to be best equipped to deal with the situation.

One of key factors in determining penalty takers isn't just ability but psychology, who is able to deal with the situation best under that kind of pressure.

I mean its easy to say after the fact but considering England's history with shootouts the fact to win a world cup you're likely to have to partake in at least one. It would make sense to make sure you're as fully prepared as you need to be and England look like they have got it right after Henderson's shot was saved it would of been very east to give up at that point. I wonder how many shootout are won after going a goal down.

 

[unrated]

Just had another thought. Not that long ago a NZ friend of mine told me he had it on good authority that All Blacks had a planning team that had a strategy for pretty much every conceivable situation the team could face other than natural disasters. Think of things like: you need to score a try and have a red and a yellow (so 13 vs 15). What to do? Course it involved risks, but the rationale behind it was: if we ever end up in this situation, we want the players to focus on execution and not waste resources and get nervous second guessing what to do.
I know a guy in Ireland that makes video analysis of third tier teams, some even amateurs, and sells it with incredibly detailed and actionable insights (imagine, your 7 has 80% tackling success on his left side, 50% on his right, practice that).

Then i see the resources that our national footie team has and that we end up throwing high crosses when our three forwards are all under 175 cm tall and the average defender is well over 180 and i want to bang my head against the wall. In 2006 Germany spent approx. EUR 50K on a video that had pretty much everything you needed to know about everyone on how they shoot penalties. Same with goalies. Argentina said "we don't need that". Their goalkeeper stopped 2 of the 4 we shot.

I've seen small drugstores with better planning than our national footie team. I kid you not.

Without knowing, i guarantee you our national team does not have a team that makes data analysis.
US sports are half a century ahead of the rest in that sense.

Agree with most but i would like to comment on your last sentence which i completely disagree with.

The USA has a population of over 300 million people. If their sports are half a century in front of the rest then why do they do so poorly in the majority of international team competitions? They have better living conditions and their facilities are better than most of the world, and if they have the world leading data analysts to go with that then i beg the question why the hell do they perform so poorly, especially the US mens Football team who didn't even qualify for the world cup.

Now i cant apply this to Argentina and explain how to fix their barren run as its probably way more complex than i can understand but one of the things i did notice was their decision making on attack. It was pathetic. They have all this amazing players and they would be hogging the ball in the opposition third but as soon as a opposition player puts one of the players under even the slightest pressure they just seemed to pass it back and repeat whatever it was that they were doing. You could really see these guys were determined to win, they were passionate but the decision making of both the players and the coaches baffled me. There were risky situations in their games where they could have made that through pass to one of their forward players but then they would rather go for the safe option and just pass back, the thing is though that the Argentinian attackers are good enough to deal with that high pressure/ high risk scenario, pass it to the forwards put them under that pressure and let them show their talent by working their way out of that high pressure scenario. But they just seemed to go the conservative route in terms of decision making until they really got desperate, then when they chase a game their defense becomes exposed.

 

[unrated]

On another note i would like to publicly call right now that Belgium is going to kick Brazil out of this edition of the World Cup.

 

[RedruthRFC]

The USA has a population of over 300 million people. If their sports are half a century in front of the rest then why do they do so poorly in the majority of international team competitions? They have better living conditions and their facilities are better than most of the world, and if they have the world leading data analysts to go with that then i beg the question why the hell do they perform so poorly, especially the US mens Football team who didn't even qualify for the world cup.

It would be interesting to hear from our American poster(s) on this, but my suspicion is that it's because the vast majority of resources go into the big three, coupled with a lack of a culture of international competition in team sports and the fact that soccer is one of the very few truly international team sports. Whichever way you cut it, the manner of their failure to qualify for the World Cup does seem pretty incredible. Generally speaking though, I'd be interested to hear what makes you think that the USA performs "so poorly" as a country - they've been almost twice as good as the next best nation for the last five years according to the only attempt at an objective measure that I've come across. If an example of one team in one sport can be seen as proof of anything, then the sudden success of their men's sevens team proves what a superpower they indeed are given what they have achieved so quickly with a few crumbs from the table.

 

[Cruz_del_Sur]

The USA has a population of over 300 million people. If their sports are half a century in front of the rest then why do they do so poorly in the majority of international team competitions?

Short answer: they don't care and that's why the people who make it to their footie national team were third tier athletes in primary school.
Argentina (lower population, better historical performance in footie) gets the very best to play footie from day 1.
That ends up affecting not just the talent pool but the resources to exploit that talent.

The best example i can give you is from rugby sevens. US was non existent till one day they decided to get a little bit serious about their sevens team, preparing for Rio's olympic games.
They got a few speedsters who didn't were top 50 at best, a couple of guys who didnt make it in the NFL, and in less than five years they were giving fiji, nz and south africa a run for their money on a consistent basis. They basically got a few of the scraps from the big boys table and became competitive.
People in the US do not care. It is that simple.

One comment tho, progress in football is trickier than in other sports. Luck plays a bigger role, and transitivity is less strong. And laying the groundwork is more along the lines of cultural shift. It's not something you can buy overnight. This takes time. You can't import what happens in the villas/favelas in Rio/Buenos Aires to the US. You need to find a way to adjust it to your country/culture.

And regarding the analysis, i dont enjoy american football, but the analysis you see on their tv shows is 10x ahead of anything i've seen from outside the US.
It's fact based, analytical and statistical. Most footie/rugby pundits could't barely even read and comprehend the results of those analysis, let alone, produce them.

 

[RedruthRFC]

England have bought in sports psychologists and gone into huge details about penalties (previous couches wouldn't even practice them). Considering Southgate's history its not surprising he wants the team to be best equipped to deal with the situation.

Typical English arrogance! Maybe not, but typical of the hard headed attitude that you get within many sports that was certainly pervasive in English football at the time. I remember thinking as a kid with an interest in various sports (including American ones that leave no stone unturned) in 1996 how crazy it was that six years after 1990 the team were having a confab about who should take the sixth penalty seconds before it happened. Happily "sports science" is no longer viewed with such suspicion.

One of key factors in determining penalty takers isn't just ability but psychology, who is able to deal with the situation best under that kind of pressure.

Well said. Although they were prepared for the physical / skill challenge, as I said before, given England's World Cup history, the psychological challenge was as great for them as any team (with the possible exception of the Russians picturing their new jobs at the salt mine if they missed), so massive credit must go to all involved.

I wonder how many shootout are won after going a goal down.

Good question. All World Cup shootouts are listed on Wikipedia if you care to look it up (I am that sad and took a look at that and some other articles to refresh my memory in preparation for the inevitable on Tuesday). Given that Columbia had the darts, I had all but given up hope when Henderson missed. Talking of that, I'm surprised that the ABBA system hasn't been rolled out further. Apparently the current ABAB system hands a 60% advantage to the team than win the bull. Maybe they are problems with the ABBA system that I haven't heard about.

 

[unrated]

Generally speaking though, I'd be interested to hear what makes you think that the USA performs "so poorly" as a country - they've been almost twice as good as the next best nation for the last five years according to the only attempt at an objective measure that I've come across.

the sudden success of their men's sevens team proves what a superpower they indeed are given what they have achieved so quickly with a few crumbs from the table.

Well i mean poorly in a sporting sense only. They seem good at NFL, NHL , NBA, Nascar, MLB but its only sports that either just them or just them and Canada and/or Russia takes seriously. And its national leagues so they compete within themselves.

But in the other sports that most "western" culture countries play they either dont take it seriously or as some have pointed out just dont care about.
So sports like:
Cricket
Rugby
Formula 1 (pinacle of motorracing)
Netball
Football
Hockey

They really fail at, and since this is the only major sports most of the other countries plays its the only way we can compare them with the rest of the world and in the above mentioned sports they do perform poorly, especially for such a large and wealthy country.


They do seem to be good at individual sports such as:
Tennis
golf
swimming
Track and Field

So still want to see a sport that the USA excels in against other countries. Lets be honest what other countries really take up sports such as Ice Hockey and Basketball in a very serious manner?


Regarding Sevens i think the sport really still is in its infancy and no team has reached a high performance, and by that i mean even here in South Africa all the boys just aim for 15 man rugby and if they cant get selected there then they move into sevens. So we arent
taking it up so seriously that we are introducing it at school level in the same manner that we do for 15s and i suspect the other rugby powerhouses are the same hence why they arent really dominating sevens either. But i can tell you now that if nations such as England, NZ, Australia, SA etc. make sevens the priority in schools over 15s and take all their best talent there then the USA would not be nearly as competitive as they are now.